Decoder Ring | How to Hunt a Mammoth, and Other Experiments in Archaeology

Slow Burn

Slate Audio

Politics, Society & Culture, History, News, Documentary

4.6 • 25.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Experimental archeology is, simply put, archeology that involves running experiments. Where traditional archaeologists may study, research, analyze, and theorize about how artifacts were made or used, experimental archaeologists actually try to recreate, test, and use them to see what they can learn. In doing so, they have given the field a whole new way to glean clues and get insights into the lives of our ancestors. Sam Kean is the author of a new book all about experimental archaeology called Dinner with King Tut. With help from him and a few archaeologists, we dig into a number of puzzles that experimental archaeology has helped solve—conundrums involving ancient megafauna, bizarre cookware, and deep sea voyages. In this episode, you’ll hear from archaeologists Susan Kaplan of Bowdoin College and Karen Harry of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Native Hawaiian activist and storyteller Nāʻālehu Anthony. To learn more about the story of Hokule’a and its first navigator, Mau Piailug, watch Nāʻālehu Anthony’s 2010 documentary, Papa Mau: The Wayfinder, as well as The Navigators: Pathfinders of the Pacific. This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis. We’d also like to thank Metin Eren and Paul Benham. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sam Keane is a science writer.
0:07.0	Back when he was a kid, he was really into Indiana Jones.
0:12.0	Oh, sure.
0:13.0	It wasn't everyone?
0:17.0	With Indiana Jones, you get the adventure.
0:19.0	You know, people going to distant, exotic places. They're the adventure, you know, people going to distant exotic places.
0:23.1	They're going after, you know, gold statues and the Ark of the Covenant.
0:27.4	That belongs in a museum.
0:29.5	In every movie, Indy, played by Harrison Ford, is constantly retrieving legendary artifacts and treasures,
0:36.2	venturing into temples and catacombs to rescue
0:38.7	fertility idols and sacred Hindu stones.
0:41.8	And the Holy Grail one, really, I loved that movie.
0:45.0	He who finds the Grail must face the final challenge.
0:48.4	What final challenge?
0:49.6	Three devices of such lethal cunning.
0:52.3	Who be traps?
0:53.0	Oh, yes.
0:59.0	Just the idea of them finding these relics from the past, I thought it was just fascinating, the idea that they might be out there and that there were people whose whole lives were dedicated to finding them.
1:05.0	Though it can be easy to lose sight of amidst all the international daring-do and bullwipping,
1:10.0	Indiana Jones is dedicated to finding all these
1:13.5	ancient relics because of his job. Archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it's truth
1:23.0	you're interested in, Dr. Tyrese philosophy class is right down the hall. Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr., is a professor of archaeology.
	...

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