A Life In Ruins

Latest Episodes:

Getting "in tune" with the Paleoindian with Dr. Jesse Tune - Ep 50 Apr 05, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we are chatting with Dr. Jesse Tune, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Fort Lewis College. Now, this isn’t the first time Dr. Tune has been a guest on the Podcast, he first joined us on Episode 37 with Dr. Shane Miller where we talked about some recent updates on the Cerutti Mastodon Site. For this episode, Jesse tells us about his introduction to archaeology, his graduate school experiences (Carlton and Jesse talk about D.C. living), and his current research in Paleoindian archaeology.

Dr. Tune's Twitter: @jwtune

Hunter Gatherer Research Collaborative & Lab

Literature Reccomendations

Jesse W. Tune 2020 Hunter-Gatherer Occupation of the Central Colorado Plateau during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition. American Antiquity. 85(3):573-590.
Heather L. Smith and Jesse W. Tune (editors) 2019 Fluted Point Technologies: An Interregional Perspective. PaleoAmerica 5(2):105-108.
Jesse W. Tune, Michael R. Waters, Kayla Schmalle, Larisa R. G. DeSantis, George D. Kamenov. 2018 Assessing the Proposed Pre-LGM Human Occupation of North America at Coats-Hines-Litchy, Tennessee, and Other Sites. Quaternary Science Reviews 186:47-59.
D. Shane Miller and Jesse W. Tune. 2018 When the Levee Breaks: How an Ant Hill and a Deer on a Mound Made Us Re-Think the Effect of the Younger Dryas. In The Archaeology of Everyday Matters, edited by S. E. Price and P. J. Carr, pp. 14-23. University Press of Florida.
Jesse W. Tune 2016 The Clovis-Cumberland-Dalton Succession: Settling into the Midsouth United States During the Pleistocene-to-Holocene Transition. PaleoAmerica 2(3):261-273.

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

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Just the Boyz: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and WWII Aircraft - Ep 49 Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, David, Connor, and Carlton each take a segment to talk about a topic in the past that interests them. David takes the first segment to discuss Alexander The Great and explains his greatness. Connor talks about some of Genghis Khan's policies and his brilliance (although he was still a very bad person). Carlton nerds out about WWII-era aircraft, the "Blitz", and their relationship to sampling bias.

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Our Ruined Lives with Gino Caspari - Ep 48 Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we are chatting with Dr. Gino Caspari, a Postdoc in Archaeology at the University of Sydney and the University College London. Dr. Caspari also runs a very popular archaeology Instagram account @ginocaspari that currently has over 123K followers and we discuss the importance of science communication and his experiences on Instagram. We cover his wild and interesting academic career, with many changes in majors and degrees. We also discuss Dr. Caspari's ongoing research in Siberia and his collaborative work with Indigenous Siberians and the issues of language barriers in publications.

Dr. Caspari’s Literature Recommendations:

Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Iron-Age Horsemen by S. I Rudenko
Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich
Kon-Tiki: Across The Pacific By Raft by Thor Heyerdahl

Contact for Guest

Instagram: @ginocaspari

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Our Ruined Lives with Erina Baci II - Ep 47 Mar 15, 2021

Show notes

In this edition of Our Ruined Lives, we are pleased to have Erina Baci return to the Podcast. Erina first appeared on Episode 7, way back in October 2019. We begin the show by catching up with her on what she has been up to since she first appeared on the podcast. We then delve into a discussion on the importance of geography and resources to people in the past, modern geopolitics, and how modern issues affect our current understanding of the past. This leads us to discuss an upcoming Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Albania and the potential implications of the MoU for Balkan Cultural Preservation. We close out the episode with Erina serving up some awesome advice for future and current graduate students.

Erina's Literature Recommendations:

Archaeological Guide of Kosova - Online PDF
The Illyrians by John Wilks
Evaluating social complexity and inequality in the Balkans between 6500 and 4200 BC by Marko Porčić (2019)
Archaeology as Bearing Witness By Hauser et al. (2018)

Contact For Guest

Erina's Instagram: @TheAlbanianArchaeologist
Erina's Twitter: @TheAlbanianArch
Erina's Blog: https://thealbanianarchaeologist.com/

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Near Eastern Archaeology with Maria Diget Sletterød - Ep 46 Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we are pleased to introduce Maria Diget Sletterød, a Danish archaeologist studying the Pre-pottery Neolithic in the Near East at the University of Copenhagen. We start off with a brief introduction as to how the hosts found Maria which was through an Archaeologists in Quarantine episode with Carlton hosted by Tash. Then we delve into her diverse archaeological research and excavation projects and how she has worked all across the Near East and Europe. David and Maria swap stories about visiting/working in Israel. We follow up with a discussion on Maria's thesis work and where the discipline of archaeology fits in the Danish educational system and what exactly is the "Pre-pottery Neolithic". We close the episode out by asking Maria about what it's like to work in the Near East, a region that is known in the American media for being geopolitically tenuous.

Contact For Guest:

Maria's Instagram: @maria_archaeology
Maria's Email: mariaconstanze@hotmail.dk

Maria's Source Recommendations:

The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why did Foragers become Farmers- by Graeme Barker
The Archaeology of Mesopotamia - By Roger Matthews
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt - By Ian Shaw

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Just the Boyz: Emails, Gaming, and Columbus - Ep 45 Mar 01, 2021

Show notes

We are now uploading video versions of the podcast to our YouTube channel thanks to Zencastr's new video podcast component. You can find the video version of this episode by going to our YouTube Channel "A Life in Ruins"

A Life In Ruins Youtube

In this episode, the guys gather around their mics and webcams to talk about a recent email they received at the beginning of the new year and the impact it had on them. In the second segment, they actually begin to talk about archaeology through a conversation about the PC game Dawn of Man. This leads the guys down a path to talking about how cultural evolution is portrayed in popular gaming and a hypothetical discussion regarding what would the Americas have looked like if Europeans hadn't arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Hoo dis? with Tash and Raven - Ep 44 Feb 22, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we are pleased to have Raven Todd da Silva and Natasha Billson return to the Podcast. Raven is another OG from the early episodes, appearing on episode 9 and runs a very popular Instagram and Youtube Channel called “Dig it with Raven” and Natasha aka Tash was recently on episode 29, and runs a youtube channel called Behind the Trowel. If you follow us on Social Media, then you know that both of these archaeologists are a part of the Archaeology Avengers and we are super excited to have them back on the podcast. We discuss Netflix’s new hit movie, The Dig, and discuss the archaeology of the site on which the movie is based on. We also discuss how archaeology is portrayed in the media.

Contact for Guests

Tash:

Instagram: @tash_archaeo
Twitter: @Tash_Archaeo
YouTube: Behind the Trowel

Raven

Instagram: @digitwithraven
Twitter: @digitwithraven
YouTube: Dig it With Raven

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Stefan Milo 2: This Time It's Personal #Paleolithic - Ep 43 Feb 15, 2021

Show notes

On this episode of A Life in Ruins podcast, we have a bonfire chat with YouTuber and Neolithic advocate, Stefan Milo. If you’re not familiar with Stefan, we introduced him in Episode 20. Or you may know him from his popular YouTube channel, “Stefan Milo.” We talk about the recent growth of Stefan’s channel and how he has now become the first full-time anthropology YouTuber!

We then quickly get into the Great Paleolithic-Neolithic War of 2020. This began as a meme and took off. It was fun for both our followers to follow and share along with.

We later have a serious discussion about the differences between the two periods and what it means for human history.

Contact For Stefan Milo

Email: hello@stefanmilo.com
Instagram: @historysmilo
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/stefanmilo
Website: https://www.stefanmilo.com/
Twitter: @Historysmilo

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Our Ruined Lives with Ash Boydston-Schmidt - Ep 42 Feb 08, 2021

Show notes

For this edition of Our Ruined Lives we chat with Ash Boydston-Schmidt. Ash is a descendant of the Crow Nation and shares with us her families history, growing up in Oklahoma, her experiences with the Tiger King, and her academic journey at the University of Oklahoma double-majoring in Anthropology and Indigenous Studies. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Museums Studies at the University of New Mexico, where she started this past fall during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We finish up the episode with a conversation about Ash's work with the Diversity and Inclusion Council for the Boy Scouts of America.

*Disclaimer: Ash's views regarding the topics discussed in the third segment of this episode are solely her own and not representative of the Diversity and Inclusion Council.

Contact

Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
Website: www.alifeinruins.com

Affiliates

Tools of Future's Past: Lomekwi with Lana and Ella - Ep 41 Feb 01, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we are pleased to have both Lana Ruck and Ella Beaudoin back on our show. Ella was on Episode 2 and Lana was on Episode 16. Since Episode 37 Settlers of Cerutti with Dr. Shane Miller and Dr. Jesse Tune was such a hit, we wanted to have Ella and Lana return to the show to talk about some controversial topics within paleoanthropology. Lana and Ella discuss the site Lomekwi, which is an archaeological site in Kenya where ancient stone tools have been discovered dating to 3.3 million years ago, which make them the oldest ever found. They deconstruct the tools, the context of the site, and the dating of the artifacts.

Guest Contact