anthrodish transcripts: dr. michael rivera

interpreting coastal diets of past peoples

This month’s AnthroDish Transcript is with Dr. Michael Rivera, a biological anthropologist and lecturer at Hong Kong University. He specializes in studying coastal human archaeology. He has previously worked at the Universities of Kent, Copenhagen, and Cambridge. He completed his PhD research in 2018 exploring life and human health in prehistoric Estonia and Latvia. His other activities involve teaching students, engaging with inclusion and equity issues in academia, and climate justice. He speaks today about how to interpret the diets of prehistoric coastal peoples, and what that meant for their health, as well as his perspective on anthropology podcasting (through his former podcast, The Arch and Anth Podcast).

The episode first aired on October 29 2019. The following is an abridged transcript of the show, edited for clarity. If you want to listen instead, you can check it out on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

“The thing about relying on an agricultural diet, one that's based a lot on cereal and a small selection of animals that we've domesticated, like cow, sheep, and pig... that actually really reduces the intake of different kinds of protein, or the different nutrients you can get from food. At least my findings, they support the idea that water-based foods and varied diets may buffer people from nutritional issues that are quite common to farming populations.”

- Dr. Michael Rivera, Bioanthropologist and Lecturer at Hong Kong University