Behind the Scenes Minis: Latest Unearthed!

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Friday. This week we had our Unearthed episodes for the first three months. It is always an adventure going through these and this adventure this time has been informed by another podcast. UM. That podcast is called Sapiens, a podcast for Everything Human, and this season of the Sapiens podcast is specifically about how black and Indigenous people are changing the field of archaeology, which is something that I have been trying to be more mindful of while working on these episodes. UM. As of when we are recording this UM, I think there are six episodes out in the season. I'm not sure how many there will be all together. UM. Some of the stuff that they've talked about is stuff that I have thought about before and have tried to incorporate into the podcast, like the kind of language that we talk about when we talk about the things that are done at archaeological sites. Like something that has already been on my radar is making sure that when we're talking about, uh, something related to an indigenous culture, we're not using different language with loaded connotations that we wouldn't use something that makes UH, that would make what we're talking about seems somehow less or inferior. But then there's also layers that I have never thought about at all. Like in the first episode they talk about language, and one of the things that they talk about is describing the objects that are found in archaeological sites UM as belongings, because in a lot of the cultures that we're talking about, that's a person's belongings. It's not an artifact, it's not a relic. It is something that belonged to a person UM and you know that person is an ancestor, not like a set of remains. And so it has given me a ton to think about. UM. I highly recommend it to everyone. I'm sure there will still be times that we are doing stuff in Unearthed and UM we talk about stuff that looking back on it, I'm like, oh, I might have handled that differently, or I might have described that differently. But it also before even getting to this podcast, it has these kinds of ideas have affected the sorts of work that I want to talk about. So, like when we were talking about the community led project to look at UH specifically, genetic ancestry to indigenous people. Like all of that is is so complicated for a lot of different endig as communities, And the project that we were talking about, like it came from the community. The indigenous community was leading and guiding a lot of it, and like that's the kind of work that I'm most interested in talking about when it comes to um any indigenous community in North America, but then also communities anywhere that was colonized. Like there's just a whole layer of you know, like Europeans colonized this place, and now European archaeologists are coming to do work without necessarily consulting with the people they're like all of that. I would really much rather talk about work that like has that community's involvement and ideally is uh not like not just something that's like, hey, we're gonna repatriate this stuff afterward, like not like that, but like getting that community's involvement, being collaborative with that community from the beginning, not as like an afterthought. That's definitely shifted how what kinds of projects and what kinds of excavations have have been on the show over the last several installments of an Earth You also UM dovetailed on another podcast without realizing it because as we record this, an episode of Criminalia has just come out where we talked about how many uh fairly recent pardons and apologies about witch hunts, witch trials and UM executions have happened. Because our current season is about witchcraft and alchemy and it's all so much it is horrible torture, awfulness. Um, we just did an episode where we talked about how how many of the the events that happened have been apologized for in recent times, as well as apologies that have happened throughout the year. So you accidentally, um, you know, ven diagrammed us, which is great, Yeah it. I did not put that part about Scotland's apology in the update because I don't think we've actually ever talked about any of the witch trials in Scotland specifically. We have lots of episodes, Yeah, we have episodes about UM which trials and witch hunts and witch hunters and things like that UM in other parts of the world, but I think not Scotland specifically. If we do, I missed it when I went looking to double check have we ever talked about this specific thing? I don't think so. Another thing that you put in this edition of an Earth made me laugh so hard in my soul. What was it? And I bet you would never predict what it was. It was the bit about um the discovery of geese being domesticated in China much earlier than we thought, because my first thought was, you can't domesticate a goose. Um. And I say that because when I was a kid, we had a farm, we had geese. They're very smart and wonderful. But my mother, who was a character uh fancied herself to be like some sort of animal whisperer m hmm. And we had this one goose named Judy who was, to put it kindly, mean as hell like. She was just like I was a little kid at this point, and Judy would see me and be like, I'm coming for you, and so like I thought she was terrifying. But my mom was convinced that she and Judy were BFFs, and she would like show Judy to people and be like, oh, this goose hates everyone, but it loves me. And there was one day where she had picked it up and was holding it under her arm, and initially the goose who was a very pretty little thing. She had this great little weird um gray streak on her side, like she was otherwise like a you know that off white white goose color had this gray streak, so she was kind of distinctive. And my mom was petting her and talking about how docile and sweet she us with her, and then at one point Judy had just had it and turned and essentially mulled my mother. Oh no, And my mom had like this giant mark on her neck for like a month because it took a really long time to heal. But it just made me chuckle because the phrase domesticated goose isn't real in my world. That's not to say someone's going to write us and say I had a goose and it was very sweet. I'm sure they exist, but having had many geese growing up, they could be lovely at times, but you could not trust them. Yeah, they have a reputation for being ornery. Yes, Like I was on a I was on a walk the other day through the town where I live, and I saw a child who looked five or six years old just chasing some candy geese around and and their parents was there doing nothing about this, And I was like this is headed for a disaster. I was expecting at any moment for one of these geese to be done and and it did not happen while I was there, But I was like, never in a million years but adult me get anywhere near into the faces of these geese as this child was doing. No. I my own experience is that geese have more of a reputation for being sometimes hostile to the human beings around them, but chickens have more of our reputation for being hostile to each other. Yes, we also had chickens, and like that was again. I have certainly seen videos online of very cute chickens being very sweet, but like our chickens were not kind to one another. They had plenty of everything, and they lived in a big like outdoor space. It wasn't we didn't have like a tiny you know. It wasn't like they were competing for resources and it led them to that behavior. They were just territorial and mean in my experience. Yeah, I wouldn't even talk about our roosters, which like traumatized two of the meanest reasters I have ever ever encountered. The most traumatic UH incident with an animal UH in terms of that animals treatment of me that I ever had as a kid. Um. We had some some family friends that lived about as far in the country as we did, and I was walking down a path by their house and they had this mean old tomcat, and mean old tom cat out of nowhere just clawed the back of my leg from like thigh to below my knee. And at that point I knew I wanted a cat more than anything in the entire world. But I don't think I had managed to like will that into existence yet. Um. But even that was not enough to deter you deter me from the quest to get a cat than I did. I did. Listen. I still love geese, but I know to keep my distance. I ran into a group of them when I was out walking a while back. There's a park that I was near, and I presumed they had come up from the pond in that park, and I was just like, hey, guys, I'm gonna be super cool with you. I'm gonna walk this way and if you just you keep honking, but I'm going over here totally fine. Like I think they're adorable and funny, but like you, I would not get up in their faces for all of the money on Earth. Yeah. Um. I was walking to a friend's house one time a while back, and my my Google Maps directions had me sort of following this little path into a little wood and then crossing a bridge over a river. And I already was like, this looks like a place somebody would go to get murdered by that river. There was also just a field of geese between me and there, and I was like, I gotta get my way through all these geese. There's no other way to get over this river. Besides, she's gonna change the song to over the river and through the geese and it will be like a survival song and less of a Yeah again, geese very cute and they're so smart. Yeah, but they unpredictable in my experience. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Literally, you could say to any of my siblings for me, the word judy and we will start cackling laughing at my mother thinking she had a special relationship with this goose that just embarrassed and mulled her all at one. Oh No, she was fine. She wasn't like you know when I say she mulled her. She wasn't disfigured or anything. But her neck was she had a big, old, big old goose egg on her neck for a long time. It got to the point where she had, in her final lunge, bit my mom and then would not let go like geese teeth are sharp. Um, So that was Judy, Yep, I cannot be that. You're right. I never would have guessed that that was the one that made you laugh in your soul, deep in my soul, the darkness where I'm I laugh at my mother and her goose handling ways. Yeah, yeah, Well, I do recommend I have not listened to the other seasons of the Sapiens podcast, but I do recommend season four. Um. Like I said, I've I've learned a lot from it and it's given me a lot to think about and the six episodes of it that I have listened to so far. And I hope everybody has a good weekend lined up whatever is on your plate. We will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We'll be back Monday with a brand new episode. Hope everybody's doing well. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows h m hm