Welcome to SPOOKTEMBER! In previous years, Amber has treated Anna to a month of stories and studies from the ghoulish side of archaeology and anthropology. This year, since we moved to biweekly episodes, we're extending the season! This week, it's first of four lightly haunted topics with (!!!!) MINIMAL BUMMERS! We're talking about necromancy, the practice of communing with the dead via ritual. We explore a cave full of lamps and skulls, climb into a ghost pit, and flip through some Babylonian spellbooks. Let's ponder the OB together!

Placement of ancient hidden lamps, skulls in cave in Israel suggests Roman-era practice of necromancy (Phys.org) (cn: images of human remains)

Oil Lamps, Spearheads and Skulls: Possible Evidence of Necromancy during Late Antiquity in the Te’omim Cave, Judean Hills (Harvard Theological Review) (cn: images of human remains)

​​The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (via Internet Archive)

Talking Heads: Necromancy in Jewish and Christian Accounts from Mesopotamia and beyond (via Academia.edu)

Second Millenium Antecedents to the Hebrew 'Ôḇ (Journal of Biblical Literature)

How to perform necromancy with Irving Finkel (via YouTube)

Fragment of a clay tablet (British Museum)

Necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia (Archiv für Orientforschung)

In case you, like Anna, missed the orb-pondering meme:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pondering-my-orb