SAPIENS Talk Back: Studying (& Not Studying) Sacred Sites by RadioCIAMS

The Archaeology Centers Coalition and RadioCIAMS present “SAPIENS Talk Back”: eight conversations with students and scholars that expand upon the insights of Season 4 of the SAPIENS podcast entitled “Our Past is the Future.” In this episode, we continue the discussion that began in episode 5 of season 4 of the SAPIENS podcast, a conversation that examines how archaeologists study sacred sites, and when they don’t. Our guests for this episode are Dr. Ora Marek-Martinez, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University and Director of the Office of Native American Initiatives, and co-host of the SAPIENS podcast this season, and Dr. Nicholas Laluk, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

“SAPIENS Talk Back” was developed in collaboration with the Indigenous Archaeology Collective and the Society of Black Archaeologists, with special help from Drs. Sara Gonzalez, Justin Dunnavant, and Ayana Flewellen. Special thanks also to Chip Colwell and the production team at SAPIENS, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and House of Pod.  

This episode was made possible by financial support from The Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Hosts Anna Whittemore and Alex Symons from the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies join Gabby Hartemann (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil), Eric Mazariegos (Columbia University), and Maryan Ragheb (UCLA) for a conversation on how to reshape the discipline.

SAPIENS Talk Back is a production of the Archaeological Centers Coalition. You can find more information about their work at archaeologycoalition.org.  RadioCIAMS is a member of the American Anthropological Association’s podcast library. Our theme music was composed by Charlee Mandy and performed by Maia Dedrick and Russell Dedrick. This episode was produced at Cornell University by Adam Smith, with Olivia Graves as engineer and Rebecca Gerdes as production assistant.