The Ancient Egyptians Believed the Stuff

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The ancient egyptians believed that when they died, the spirits within these things would accompany them to the after life. So for a lot of these tombs, especially at sites like wist, we find shrines so people could comed. And think of it cut of like a mexican day of the dead. Your family could come and picnic and make offerings. That was just as important as the grave goods. It's really harrd and i teach tis a lot of my marcheology classes, and talk about this when it went to give lectures. I mean, is there a more cynical way to think about grave goods?...

What can new technology tell us about our ancient past? Archaeologist and remote sensing expert Sarah Parcak has used satellite imagery to discover over a dozen potential pyramids and thousands of tombs from ancient Egypt. A professor of anthropology and founding director of the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Sarah’s work combines technology, historical study, and cultural anthropology to advance discoveries about the past while navigating the political and ethical dilemmas that plague excavation work today.

She joined Tyler to discuss what caused the Bronze Age Collapse, how well we understand the level of ancient technologies, what archaeologists may learn from the discovery of more than a hundred coffins at the site of Saqqara, how far the Vikings really traveled, why conservation should be as much of a priority as excavation, the economics of looting networks, the inherently political nature of archaeology, Indiana Jones versus The Dig, her favorite contemporary bluegrass artists, the best archaeological sites to visit around the world, the merits of tools like Google Earth and Lidar, the long list of skills needed to be a modern archaeologist, which countries produce the best amateur space archaeologists, and more.

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Recorded February 25th, 2021 Other ways to connect

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