Ordinary People in Ancient East Asia: Interview with Professor Kate Pechenkina

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Professor Kate Pechenkina is an expert on the bioarchaeology of East Asia, utilizing cutting-edge tools to tell us about the lives and experiences of ordinary people in the distant past: diet, disease, trauma, the kinds of topics that written evidence simply doesn't illuminate.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wundery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad free right now.
0:04.3	Join Wundery Plus in the Wundery welcome to another episode of Tides of History. I'm Patrick
0:22.4	Wymann. Thanks so much for being here with me today. Welcome to another episode of Tides of History. I'm Patrick Wyman.
0:22.9	Thanks so much for being here with me today.
0:25.0	Over the past several years, I've talked a great deal about the new vistas that are
0:28.8	opening up onto the study of the past thanks to cutting-edge scientific tools. Some archaeologists have even called this the third science
0:35.5	revolution in archaeology and have argued that new approaches such as ancient DNA and stable isotope
0:40.6	analysis have launched us into a different stratosphere of possibilities.
0:45.1	From my perspective, that of a layperson who spent a lot of time around the material, I think
0:49.1	there's a pretty good case to be made for that.
0:51.9	The biggest reason is that these tools allow us to know people in the past,
0:55.8	real people, in a way that has never been possible before. And injuries, disease, and dietary
1:00.7	patterns, things that we can see in individuals, add up to a much more human view of ancient societies when we view them in the aggregate.
1:08.0	Today's guest works right on the cutting edge of these developments, and she does so primarily in a geographic region where these tools have a spectacular amount to tell us.
1:17.0	East Asia.
1:18.0	Kate Petronkina is professor of anthropology at Queen's College, the City University of New York, and also serves as Dean of Faculty for the School of Social Sciences.
1:26.9	Her research focuses on bioarchiology in East Asia, spanning everything from isotope analysis to paleopathology to disease.
1:34.9	But what I find really fascinating about her work is that it always keeps an eye on the
1:38.7	larger social implications of these findings, such as gender and other forms of inequality, the really big things that get at the heart of life in ancient societies.
1:47.0	Professor Pachankina, thank you so much for joining me today.
1:50.0	Hello.
1:52.0	So how did you get interested in bioarchology and why did you decide to focus on East Asia in particular?
	...

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