The world over people live with plants. Whether it’s in apartment bedrooms or backyards, it’s hard to find a human who doesn’t have some relationship with a plant. Enter paleoethnobotany, a field of archeology that examines plant remains to understand the historic alliance between humans and their vegetation. In this episode, host Eshe Lewis interviews archaeologist Katie Chiou to explore the spiciest human-plant affair: chili peppers.

Katherine L. Chiou is an anthropological archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist whose research interests include foodways in the past and present, Andean archaeology, household archaeology, plant domestication, food sovereignty, agrobiodiversity, sustainability, GIS and data visualization, and responsible conduct of research. Katherine received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently an assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Alabama, where she oversees the Ancient People and Plants Laboratory. She is currently working on a project, funded by the National Science Foundation, to study and promote ethical cultures in the field of archaeology. Her writing and podcasting as a SAPIENS fellow will revolve around the subject of food, particularly the enigmatic relationship between people and chiles, past and present.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee was the editor for this piece, with help from producer Ann Marie Awad. Seth Samuel was the audio editor and sound designer. The executive producers were Cat Jaffee and Chip Colwell. 

SAPIENS is an editorially independent podcast funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Episode sponsor:

·   This episode is included in season 5 of the SAPIENS podcast, which is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Anyone who is in prison has been charged for a crime by a prosecutor. The charges are important because they determine someone’s punishment. How do prosecutors make their charging decisions? And what are the long-term impacts of those decisions?  

Reported by Esteban Salmón, an anthropologist born and raised in Mexico City, we learn just how powerful a charging decision can be in the Mexican criminal justice system. 

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee was the editor for this piece, with help from producer Ann Marie Awad. Seth Samuel was the audio editor and sound designer. The executive producers were Cat Jaffee and Chip Colwell. 

Esteban Salmón is an anthropologist who studies the ethics of criminal prosecution in Mexico City. He is currently a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Stanford University. His first book explores how immigration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border affects the relations between a community of undocumented migrants in New York and their hometown in central Mexico. Before attending graduate school, Esteban worked as a community organizer and policy advocate for access to justice initiatives in Mexico City. His research has been funded by the Fulbright Program, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Follow him on Twitter @EsteSalmon.

SAPIENS is an editorially independent podcast funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Episode sponsor:

·   This episode is included in season 5 of the SAPIENS podcast, which is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Jeri Hutton Green is a mother, daughter, and advocate for survivors of domestic violence and homicide in Baltimore, Maryland. Her journey as an advocate began when her mother went missing in April 2020. A text message launched a 2-year battle for justice for her mother and other missing Black women. 

Reported by Brendane A. Tynes, a doctoral candidate in anthropology and an interpersonal violence survivor advocate, this episode explores what it means to survive domestic violence and police violence as a Black woman. 

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee was the editor for this piece, with help from producer Ann Marie Awad. Seth Samuel was the audio editor and sound designer. The executive producers were Cat Jaffee and Chip Colwell. 

Brendane A. Tynes is a Black queer feminist scholar and storyteller from Columbia, South Carolina. As a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Columbia University, she studies the affective responses of Black women and girls to multiple forms of violence within grassroots Black political movements. Her scholarship has received generous support from the CAETR, Ford Foundation, and Wenner-Gren Foundation. She works with the Say Her Name Coalition and In Our Names Network to address sexual violence against Black women, femmes, girls, and gender-expansive people. Brendane also co-hosts the Zora’s Daughters Podcast, a Black feminist anthropological intervention on popular culture and issues that concern Black women and queer and trans people. Follow her on Twitter @brendanetynes.

SAPIENS is an editorially independent podcast funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Check out these related resources: 

·   “news.org/articles/how-do-we-listen-to-the-living/">How Do We Listen to the Living?” in Anthropology News

·   “72-Year-Old Woman’s Ex-Boyfriend Begins Murder Trial for Her 2020 Death”

·   U.S. Department of Justice Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department Report (2016)

·   Black Women and Police Violence: A Primer from the University of Illinois

Episode sponsor:

·   This episode is included in season 5 of the SAPIENS podcast, which is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

“Prime harvest”—that’s how one early 20th-century explorer described his collection of Icelandic human skulls. But why did he “harvest” those skulls in the first place? And what should happen to them now more than a century after they were collected? This case of the Icelandic skulls reveals an interconnected story of eugenics, international law, and the limits of current repatriation efforts. 

As reported by Adam Netzer Zimmer, an Iceland-based anthropologist, we hear how a community once targeted by anthropologists is now expanding our ideas of how to ethically handle human remains.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee was the editor for this piece, with help from producer Ann Marie Awad. Seth Samuel was the audio editor and sound designer. The executive producers were Cat Jaffee and Chip Colwell. 

Adam Netzer Zimmer is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), Amherst, specializing in biocultural anthropology. His research focuses on the rise of race-based anatomical science in 19th- and early 20th-century Iceland and the U.S. He is also interested in queer and feminist perspectives in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology, particularly in the history of science. Adam’s work has been supported by a Fulbright/National Science Foundation Arctic Research Grant, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Leifur Eiríksson Foundation Fellowship. Previously, he was the laboratory manager for the UMass Taphonomic Research Facility and is currently a co–primary director of the Rivulus Dominarum Transylvanian Bioarchaeology project in Baia Mare, Romania.

SAPIENS is an editorially independent podcast funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Check out these related resources:

·   “Harvard’s Eugenics Era” in Harvard Magazine

·   Museums: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO)

·   Discovery: The Autobiography of Vilhjálmur Stefánsson

·   Traveling Passions: The Hidden Life of Vilhjálmur Stefánsson by Gísli Pálsson

Episode sponsor:

·   This episode is included in season 5 of the SAPIENS podcast, which is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Being human is complicated. We require food and shelter. We have histories to contend with. We create rituals to control fate. We steal. We fight. We kill. We love. We shape the environment to suit our needs—sometimes with terrifying results.

This season of the SAPIENS podcast embraces the diversity of human experience, digging deep into our human past and how we live today. The throughline of this season is the way in which humans use cultural beliefs and practices not only to explain the past but also to imagine the present and future. These stories aspire to understand how cultures can guide knowledge of human truths and help all of us to become seekers of wisdom.

Join season 5’s host, Eshe Lewis, on our latest journey to explore what it means to be human.

Season 5 of the SAPIENS podcast was part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Today, we're sharing a teaser from our friends at Whetstone Magazine. They've started something called the Whetstone Radio Collective (WRC). The WRC is a collection of podcasts telling narrative stories through the lens of food anthropology. 

To learn more, visit: https://www.whetstonemagazine.com/radio

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, or NAGPRA, is supposed to curb the illegal possession of ancestral Native American remains and cultural items. But a year after it was passed by the U.S. federal government, a significant African burial ground in New York City was uncovered. And there was zero legislation in place for its protection. Dr. Rachel Watkins shares the story of the New York African Burial Ground—and what repatriation looks like for African American communities.

• (00:00:44) Enter the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology and its NAGPRA controversy.
• (00:03:19) A discovery in Manhattan is not covered by NAGPRA.
• (00:05:19) Intro.
• (00:05:44) Dr. Rachel Watkins, the New York African Burial Ground Project and Michael Blakey. 
• (00:11:40) Dr. Rachel Watikins meets the Cobb Collection.
• (00:23:44) Exploring Repatriation for the New York African Burial Ground Project.
• (00:28:26) The issue of repatriation for the Cobb Collection.
• (00:34:02) Revisiting season 4.
• (00:40:49) Credits.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human, is produced by House of Pod and supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is also part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. This season was created in collaboration with the Indigenous Archaeology Collective and Society of Black Archaeologists, with art by Carla Keaton, and music from Jobii, _91nova, and Justnormal. For more information and transcriptions, visit sapiens.org.  

Thank you this time also to The Harvard Review and their podcast, A Legacy Revealed for permitting us to use a clip from Episode 4 I Could See Family in Their Eyes, hosted by Raquel Coronell Uribe and Sixiao Yu and produced by Lara Dada, Zing Gee, and Thomas Maisonneuve.

Additional Sponsors:

This episode, and entire series, was made possible by the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, UC San Diego Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology, the of-michigan-museum-of-anthropological-archaeology.html"> University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology at Brown University, UMASS Boston’s Fiske Center for Archaeological Research, UC Berkeley’s Archaeological Research Facility, and the Imago Mundi Fund at Foundation for the Carolinas.

Additional Resources:

• From SAPIENS: Why the Whiteness of Archaeology Is a Problem
• Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 
• New York African Burial Ground 
• The Mismeasure of Man

Guest:

Rachel Watkins is a biocultural anthropologist with an emphasis on African American biohistory and social history, bioanthropological research practices, and histories of U.S. biological anthropology.

Archaeology helps reimagine a fuller range of experiences, including how people ate, innovated, and rebelled. In this episode, “slave cuisine” opens a window to honor the legacy of Black creativity, resistance, and community. 

Dr. Peggy Brunache, a food historian and archaeologist, finds shellfish remains in a village of enslaved people, uncovering an untold story of how people found ways to resist. Dr. Kelley Deetz uses Southern food, which is really African food, to initiate difficult conversations about the history of slavery. 

• (00:01:44) A history of asking “why” – from Caribbean markets to American history classrooms.
• (00:04:50) Introduction.
• (00:05:56) Dr. Peggy Brunache’s journey to food archaeology as a Haitian-American.
• (00:13:57) Uncovering slave cuisine.
• (00:22:33) Dr. Kelley Deetz describes education through food at Stratford Hall.
• (00:30:43) Slave cuisine today.
• (00:34:38) Credits.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human, is produced by House of Pod and supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is also part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. This season was created in collaboration with the Indigenous Archaeology Collective and Society of Black Archaeologists, with art by Carla Keaton, and music from Jobii, _91nova, and Justnormal. For more information and transcriptions, visit sapiens.org.  

Additional Sponsors:

This episode was made possible by the UC Berkeley Archaeological Research Facility and the Imago Mundi Fund at Foundation for the Carolinas.

Additional Resources:

• About Whitney Battle-Baptiste
• About Stratford Hall
• From SAPIENS: The Resistance and Ingenuity of the Cooks Who Lived in Slavery

Guests:

Dr. Peggy Brunache is a lecturer in the history of Atlantic slavery at the University of Glasgow and the first director of the newly established Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies. Follow her on Twitter @peggybrunache.

Dr. Kelley Fanto Deetz is a historian and archaeologist who works as the director of collections and visitor engagement at Stratford Hall, the director of education and historic interpretation at Virginia’s Executive Mansion, and a visiting scholar in the department of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. 

The sky island of Dzil Nchaa Si'an is more than a mountain. It is a significant landmark in Arizona for Apache tribal members to collect medicinal plants, perform ceremonies, and connect with their ancestors. It is also a site of resistance against the development of an observatory informally known as the “Pope Scope,” for its ties to the Vatican. 

• (00:01:47) A history of competing interests atop Dzil Nchaa Si'an, or Mt.Graham.
• (00:04:18) Introduction.
• (00:05:06) Nick and the “Pope Scope” conflict.
• (00:07:04) About Field schools and Apache Trust Lands.
• (00:08:49) How Nick becomes an archaeologist.
• (00:11:09) Sacred vs holy on Mt. Graham.
• (00:14:30) Fire on Mt. Graham illuminates value systems.
• (00:18:32) Apache lands and the 1872 Mining Act.
• (00:23:19) Guidelines for archaeology learned from Apache ways of knowing.
• (00:25:18) The Apache methodology of Ni.
• (00:31:00) Credits 

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human, is produced by House of Pod and supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is also part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. This season was created in collaboration with the Indigenous Archaeology Collective and Society of Black Archaeologists, with art by Carla Keaton, and music from Jobii, _91nova, and Justnormal. For more information and transcriptions, visit sapiens.org. 

Additional Sponsors:

This episode was made possible by the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and the Imago Mundi Fund at Foundation for the Carolinas.

Additional Resources:

• The indivisibility of land and mind: Indigenous knowledge and collaborative archaeology within Apache contexts
• Ndee Hotspots: Ethics, Healing and Management 
• From Sapiens: Why the Camp Grant Massacre Matters Today

Guest:

Dr. Nicholas Laluk is a member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe in east-central Arizona. He completed his Ph.D. at University of Arizona and is currently an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

In this episode, museum curators challenge the status quo and connect their ancestry to advance how history is told in cultural institutions. Mary Elliot brings listeners behind the scenes into the Slavery and Freedom exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. And Dr. Sven Haakanson helps re-create an angiaaq, which is like a kayak, at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington.

• (00:01:24) Meet Mary Elliott, the curator of American slavery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
• (00:06:46) Introduction.
• (00:07:20) How Mary Elliott began tracing her own ancestral roots.
• (00:11:43) How Dr. Sven Haakanson begins his studies of the Alutiiq people.
• (00:15:57) A year of ethno-archaeology with the Nenets.
• (00:20:49) resurrecting the Angyaaq.
• (00:26:47) Sven and Mary share best practices and protocols for being museum curators.
• (00:33:13) Credits.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human, is produced by House of Pod and supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is also part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. This season was created in collaboration with the Indigenous Archaeology Collective and Society of Black Archaeologists, with art by Carla Keaton, and music from Jobii, _91nova, and Justnormal. For more information and transcriptions, visit sapiens.org. 

Additional Sponsors:

This episode was made possible by the Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology and Columbia University’s Center for Archaeology and the Imago Mundi Fund at Foundation for the Carolinas. 

Additional Resources:

• Slavery and Freedom at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History and Culture
• Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington 
• From SAPIENS: How Museums Can Do More Than Just Repatriate Objects

Guests:

Dr. Sven Haakanson Jr. is Sugpiaq and was born in Old Harbor on Kodiak Island, Alaska. He is a curator of North American anthropology at the Burke Museum, and an associate professor in anthropology at the University of Washington. 

Mary Elliot is a curator of American Slavery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Follow her on Twitter @Mne7829.