What a brilliant premise and why hasn't anyone thought of it before?! CSI/CPS/genocide investigators use forsenic anthropologists/archs, but t'other way around I'm not aware of until this series.
Prof Turi King, who has connected her disciplines across archaeology and genetics (with all the new exciting tech/data coming through) in academic and media before and here she joins forces with homocide detective and organised crime expert Rod Demery.
Rod brings fascinating human insights and hypothesis to the last moments of people who have been found dead in mysterious circumstances across time and space - from C20th USA to prehistoric mummified remains. It is engrossing, genuinely makes you think and they've wangled access to some really fab material culture and sites to enable the investigations. Some of the stuff is a bit cheesy but perhaps necessary to tie into these 'murder podcast' times and to illustrate ideas for lay people (the re-enactments, 'witness'/'suspect' shiz) but as someone with a background in anthropology who has always been a bit wary of the 'shove it all in the ritual box' our disciplines have been wont to do, having someone with a real world grounding looking at the most horrendous of human behaviours and applying that to folk throughout history was really useful, eye-opening and a reminder that people have more in common than what's separates us, whenever and wherever we are doing their thing.
I really hope they commission more episodes and that more museums and departments take advantage of this team having a look at what they've got in their archives. Loved it. Watch it.
