New Books in Archaeology Podcast
1) Ashish Avikunthak, "Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on...Show More
2) Moudhy Al-Rashid, "Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
In 1923, archaeologist Leonard Woolley stumbled upon a room that dated back to 530BC, the time of the Babylonians. Oddly, the room was filled with artifacts that were thousands of years older. A clay ...Show More
3) Michelle Wang, "The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
What can a map do, beyond showing us where things are? Michelle Wang's new book, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China (U Chicago Press, 2023), explores this question through images painted ...Show More
4) Daniel J. Sherman, "Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
In this episode, Sarah talks to Daniel J. Sherman about his most recent book, Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940 (U Chicago Press, 2025). Sensations is a history o...Show More
5) Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, "Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East" (UP of Colorado, 2025)
Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) by Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni offers an in-depth exploration of the Urartian empire, which occ...Show More
6) Walter Scheidel, "What Is Ancient History?" (Princeton UP, 2025)
It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheide...Show More
7) Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is joining me to talk about her new book, Cave ...Show More
8) Lizzie Wade, "Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures" (Harper, 2025)
A richly imagined new view on the great human tradition of apocalypse, from the rise of Homo sapiens to the climate instability of our present, that defies conventional wisdom and long-held stories ab...Show More
9) J. P. Mallory, "The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth’s population. Yet the idea that an ancient, prehist...Show More
10) Emily Hauser, "Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It" (Univ of Chicago Press, 2025)
Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just ...Show More