Experimental archeology is a field that asks whether the predictions we have about past civilizations actually work. Whether someone's dwelling was livable, how effective their weapons were, how early medicine worked, or the delicacies that fed an empire. Putting these questions to the test is how experimental archeologists have confirmed or denied many theories. Dinner with King Tut is Sam Kean's exploration of the field, walking through eleven different groups over thousands of years of history. His chapters are split between highly-researched fictional narratives and Kean's own travels and interactions with experimental archeologists. The narratives range from people going on hunts, performing religious ceremonies, travelling across the ocean or ice, or participating in military conflict. Kean's research gives deeper insights into the small details that may be overlooked in these narratives and his own struggles and triumphs in trying to replicate parts of these old cultures. The book was a ton of fun, with so many intriguing details from around the world that people may often overlook when thinking about a past civilization. Not every chapter will be as interesting, but there is such a great variety of details that everyone should find something cool to learn about, whether its ancient weapons, medical techniques, transport, or food preparation. And the fictional narratives do a good job of varying the kind of story so it did not feel repetitive. History buffs should enjoy learning new details about periods they have studied before and get enjoyment from hearing about Sam Kean's travels.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for a copy of Dinner with King Tut in exchange for an honest review.

was intrigued by the description of Sam Kean’s latest book. I love learning about history in various new ways! So I was pleased to receive an eARC of Dinner with King Tut from NetGalley and publisher Little, Brown and Company. Indeed, one cannot fault Kean for his scrupulous commitment to embodying experiential archaeology—this book reads like a Discovery channel series, back when Discovey channel was good.

Kean is upfront and warns us that the book is partially fiction. Each chapter is set in a different place and time in human history (or prehistory). He intercuts his modern-day exploits with vignettes about an inhabitant of that time period doing activities that he discusses in the contemporary parts of the chapter: hunting, navigating, tanning hides, going on a daring rescue mission across rotten sea ice—you know, the usual. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting it, and the first few felt jarring. But I warmed to these narratives and the way they reminded me of my connection to these people of the past—our shared humanity. As Kean reminds us, all of these people were anatomically modern humans, identical to me and you in every respect save the time of their birth. Food for thought.

As far as his interviews and experiments go, they’re a mixed bag. Kean positions most of his interviewees as outsiders and mavericks, noting that experimental/experiential archaeologists get a bad rap by the mainstream ones. Some of the stuff he passes on sounds a bit dodgy to me, and it leaves me wondering how accurate (to the best of our current knowledge) is Kean’s depiction of the various cultures he fictionalizes herein.

So I would recommend this book with a grain of salt. While I have no doubt Kean did the research (sometimes to his own detriment!), he is ultimately a writer, not a scientist or an historian. Dinner with King Tut is interesting and occasionally illuminating, as long as you don’t mistake it for a more rigorous text.

Dinner with King Tut should be mandatory reading in all introductory archaeology classes. Each chapter is split between a fictional reconstruction of situations that ancient people would've faced and the journey of the author visiting experimental archaeologists/hobbyists/people carrying on ancestral traditions. He tried a ton of crazy stuff, and is great at relating his personal experiences to the scenarios he creates. I think the most impressive part is how realistic his characters, their motivations, and their actions were. My particular expertise is in Neolithic Anatolia, although I also know a lot about Paleolithic Africa, and he nailed both of those, so I'm confident that the other chapters are equally accurate. My only issue with the book is his repeated disdain for conventional archaeology, which he admits in the conclusion was partially a narrative tool, since "digging in the dirt" is how we get all of the data that experimentalists base their research on.

This is my first 5-star read since December 2024 (also an archaeology book). The long, dark winter is finally over.

Adventures in Experimental Archeology
Sam Kean, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations (New York: Little, Brown and Company, July 1, 2025). Softcover: $16.99: 464pp. ISBN: 978-0-316496-55-1.
***
“…An archaeological romp through the entire history of humankind—and through all five senses—from tropical Polynesian islands to forbidding arctic ice floes, and everywhere in between. Whether it’s the mighty pyramids of Egypt or the majestic temples of Mexico, we have a good idea of what the past looked like. But what about our other senses: The tang of Roman fish sauce and the springy crust of Egyptian sourdough?” On first-reading, it seems that this summary is all that can be said about how sourdough smells. I looked inside and found clarification in the “Introduction”. Experimental archaeologists have applied what is known based on archeological evidence to testing what these things would have been truly like in the lab. They “drive chariots, play Aztec ballgames, revive ancient yeast and bake the tangy sourdough that King Tut ate.” In the chapter on “Egypt—2000s BC”, there are BW photographs on some of these experiments, and materials. One image is of a “model bakery and brewery from an ancient Egyptian tomb. The workers are grinding grain, preparing mash, and filling beer jars.” This model was made by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to show visitors how this process was executed. The section on sourdough is illustrated with “A loaf of ancient Egyptian-style bread baked inside a replica mold”. The cook apparently apologized for failing to make “toppings for the bread, like leeks in beef tallow, which he says was an Egyptian favorite.” It is still delicious: “spongy and chewy and has a scrumptious sourdough tang”. Egyptian laborers were paid in this bread, as well as with “1 1/3 gallons daily” of beer” to work in “130’F” temperatures. These are pretty interesting explanations. But preceding sections are lacking in detail, and are too conversational. For example, there’s a description of an experiment’s mind “churning” and digressive questions without immediate answers.
“The boom of medieval cannons and the clash of Viking swords? The frenzied plays of an Aztec ballgame… and the chilling reality that the losers might also lose their lives? History often neglects the tastes, textures, sounds, and smells that were an intimate part of our ancestors’ lives, but a new generation of researchers is resurrecting those hidden details, pioneering an exciting new discipline called experimental archaeology. These are scientists gone rogue: They make human mummies. They investigate the unsolved murders of ancient bog bodies. They carve primitive spears and go hunting, then knap their own obsidian blades to skin the game. They build perilous boats and plunge out onto the open sea—all in the name of experiencing history as it was, with all its dangers, disappointments, and unexpected delights… Sam Kean joins these experimental archaeologists on their adventures across the globe, from the Andes to the South Seas. He fires medieval catapults, tries his hand at ancient surgery and tattooing, builds Roman-style roads—and, in novelistic interludes, spins gripping tales about the lives of our ancestors…”
This is a pretty good book, but it would have been better if it was presented from a third-person perspective or by explaining more about how findings are arrived at, what they are based on, and what precisely they prove. Those who have the time for a bit of digression in their reading-materials would enjoy reading further. This book is intended for the public, as opposed to for scholars of these subjects.
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-summer-2025/

I'm honestly not sure what exactly I was expecting from this book [my first Sam Kean, though I own several of his other books that are currently languishing on my TBR shelves], but what I got was not it. NOT that that is a bad thing - indeed, it was rather a great way to read this book as there is a lot of a lot going on here and not knowing what was coming next just made the book even better.

Filled with some of the most interesting history I'd never heard of [and I read a LOT of history], as well as some seriously gruesome events [the "making of" eunuchs was particularly...ummm...icky, and my whole body clenched during that particular passage, and I do not even have those parts], this book kept me fully engaged [with the exception of one chapter that bored me to tears. No, I am not sharing which one] from page one and I am still thinking about it days after finishing it. Guess that means its time to finally dust off the other books I have from this author and dive in. :-)

Thank you to NetGalley, Sam Kean, and Little, Brown, and Company for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This wasn’t really what I was looking for. It is a somewhat awkward hybrid of history, instruction from archeologists, experiments by the author (like tanning leather and tattooing) and fictional interludes as imagined by the author. I still don’t know what King Tut ate,but there was a lot of bread n Egypt,

A lot of the things that the experimental archeologists are studying in this book just don’t seem that useful to me (like eunuchs in China or grueling Aztec games). However, there is some interesting information here. 3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Archaeology always fascinates- this is a fun one. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC. I can only imagine what the archaeologists and anthropologists of the future are going to deduce about how we live today.

We can learn a lot from what civilizations leave behind, but there are still gaps. What did they eat? What did they see and smell when they opened their eyes each morning? This is what experimental archeology hopes to find out. Kean takes readers to eleven eras of human history (and around the globe) and introduces them to people trying to peek into the daily lives of people in the past.
Dinner with King Tut is an engaging read, and I appreciate that Kean's focus was worldwide and included the world of degreed scientists and passionate amateurs. I personally found the fictional stories woven throughout each chapter annoying and unnecessary, detracting from the rest of the book.
One thing that left me a little concerned was the study of human remains in chapter 2. In the US, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act has museums removing human remains and funerary objects from display and returning them to descendants and tribes. I am unfamiliar with legislation in South American countries, but I'd imagine feelings towards the procession and study of remains are similar. This chapter treats the huntress as an exciting discovery and not the remains of an individual whose burial was disturbed in the name of science.

Sam Kean is so good at blending information and entertainment. He’s probably better at it than anyone else who writes about science.

This wasn’t my favorite Kean book because there’s just way too much gross medical stuff for my taste, but no one can deny that the man is a tremendous researcher and exceptionally good at distilling that research into something that is both fun to read and informative.

I wish there hadn’t been so much focus on all the medical stuff, but perhaps that will be more enjoyable for other readers than it was for me. There’s still plenty of fascinating content here. The trebuchets! The Roman hairstyles! I enjoyed the way Kean blended his invented tales of historical characters with his experiences with current experts on the topics at hand.

Nothing will ever beat The Disappearing Spoon for me, but Kean is always a delight to read.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for an ARC of this book!

Sam Keane has created an experimental archeology artifact in literature form. Did this book just make me interested in history for the first time??!! I hope not because I have no available space on my TBR, but I fear it’s true! 😅

I’ve always been a fan of hands-on work when it comes to education; though the budgeting is inevitably higher, having experiences outside the classroom often trumps anything that a student could read about in a book. For instance, even in college I was given the opportunity to throw clay pottery on a wheel to make my own authentic kylix, and it’s given me a deeper appreciation for the craft than any visit to a museum. The larger field of frontline research that makes these opportunities possible is called “experimental archeology.” Though some individual cultures have maintained ancient practices as ritual across the ages, an academic appreciation for this approach has only come into being over the last century or so. In Dinner with King Tut, Sam Kean has detailed a handful of ongoing research in the field taking place across many different continents to give the reader a fuller perspective into the state of the study as a whole.

For those who remember my review of Gareth Harney’s A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins, the overall structure of this work will be familiar. Both books split their chapters into three parts: the first half acts as a narrativization of historical events, then a second half combines the scientific inquiry and personal experiences with those involved in the field in order to back up why that narrative reflects a truth about the ancient world. That book chiefly separated the fictional parts from the research in two different sections per chapter, but Kean intertwines new information about artifacts in the stories as they arise in his own discussions with experts. I made note of how much I enjoyed this framing in the earlier review, and this iteration only improved upon the formula. The stories are very cut-and-dry from beginning to end. The plots are simple, the characters are realistic, and the elements from the research are well-integrated into the world. Nothing feels forced or out of place at all, and jumping from reality to fiction more often gives the book its own kind of pace.

I was elated to find mention of Salima Ikram’s work in the chapters on mummification. Her advice was cited prominently in a YouTube video about recreating the process on a chicken I watched a few months ago, and being able to recognize an expert in the field in that fashion helped to build my trust with the author. Every chapter presents its theories as very promising hypotheses rather than a settled matter of scientific debate, so I never truly felt the urge to investigate any outlandish claims because there was no true effort to sway me into believing them. That being said, having this one connection to proper academia did bolster my trust in everything Kean wrote about.

Along that same line, this whole project acts as a decent rebuttal to Graham Hancock’s whole schtick whether or not the author recognizes it. That fraud claims that there’s no way to make a name for oneself in the archeological world without the express approval of the ivory towers of academia. True, some of the names featured in Kean’s book come from a scholarly background, but many others are happy to operate on the fringes. They face a somewhat uphill battle towards publication in proper academic journals, but they do research in order to find the truth and keep knowledge alive, not for some credit on a piece of paper. Some of the theories about cultural practices, like sleeping arrangements in caves, unfortunately do border on the unprovable even if they do reflect a truth about the ancient world, but that doesn’t mean there’s a vast conspiracy working against anyone going against the mainstream. It’s also worth pointing out how all these figures in experimental archeology operate on a budget much smaller than Hancock’s awful tv show and have made less than his trashy books, which begs the question why they’ve found so much more verifiable information than he has.

Fans of archeology will naturally enjoy this book on its own merits, but it may find a secondary audience in a strange place. As I came to the last chapters, the structure of the nonfiction sections further reminded me of Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Both works are incredibly good at taking rather mundane scenarios about real-life experiences and injecting a dose of magical thinking into them so that they feel more like fiction. Those outside the field of the classics but who also enjoyed that book would certainly find their interest piqued by Kean’s work here. I give this book 2 stars. Pick up a copy when it releases on July 8th.

Who knew experimental archaeology could be this fun? Sam Kean brings ancient history to life with humor, hands-on adventures, and vivid storytelling. Dinner with King Tut is a wild, fascinating ride through the senses of the past.

Traditional archaeology can give us a glimpse of what life was like for various civilizations of the past, but it's never the full story. This is where experimental archaeology comes in, people who are attempting to re-create the processes of past lives by attempting to cook, carve, and recreate food, weapons, and clothes among other things that you need to survive. Sam Kean does a bunch of experimental archaeology himself and intersperses these experiments with fictional stories of what the life of a person in the time period would be like if they were creating leather, cooking pots, or knapping stone tools. A very engaging read, both the practical, if sometimes gross (pre-modern living was hard and bloody) and the fictional sections. Kean has an easy way of writing while still being informative.

Sam Kean is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, and his newest work, Dinner with King Tut, doesn’t disappoint. An exploration of “experimental” or “experiential” archaeology, a field that “puts ideas about the past to the test … to replicate different aspects of our ancestors’ lives … [and] actively recreate the past.” This might mean reconstructing trebuchets to hurl stones at a target, brewing Egyptian beer, or self-medicating with a medieval salve. Kean does all this and more in collaboration with a number of “hardcore lab geeks … traditional archaeologists … grouchy, live off the land survivalists … and screwball enthusiasts.” It’s all both informative and wonderfully entertaining.

Kean divides each chapter into several elements. Formally separated within the chapters are a series of fictional narratives that bring the chapter’s time period/society vividly to life by focusing on a day for of a character/characters who lived at that time. These scenes are well written, vivid as noted, and do an excellent job of connecting the more informational activities and artifacts to embodied people with a full panoply of emotions and desires, while also bringing to life their environment — its sound, smell, feel, and taste — senses typically left behind in traditional archaeological findings. The rest of the chapter, beyond the fictional interludes, is made up of some discussion of the time and culture/society, a specific focus on a particular tool/food/task, etc., and Kean’s hands-on attempts, with help, to resurrect those tools, foods, tasks. It’s all done quite seamlessly, and the fiction and non-fiction elements nicely complement each other.

The included settings/time periods are:
• Africa: 75,000 years ago
• S. America: 7500 years ago
• Turkey: 6500s BC
• Egypt: 2000s BC
• Polynesia: 1000s BC
• California: AD 500s
• Viking Europe: AD 900s
• Northern Alaska: AD 1000s
• China: AD 1200s
• Mexico: AD 1500s

Kean does too much too list all of his activities here, but a few representative examples”
Making an Alaskan cooking pot
Making leather
Firing a trebuchet
Firing a medieval cannon
Mummifying a salmon using urine
Getting and giving tattoos
Knapping stone tools
Firing darts with an atlatl
Helping students build a Roman road
Opening coconuts
Making (and using) a medieval salve
Trepanning a pig skull
Playing an Aztec ballgame
And eating. Lots of eating. Bugs. Blubber. Ancient Roman dishes. More bugs. Lots of bugs.

Kean goes all in and one of the main things he learns (and vividly conveys) is just how hard the past was. What we take for granted — getting food, wearing clothes, picking up meds — was incredibly laborious and time-consuming. Despite that, you never feel Kean isn’t having fun doing all this, even if that isn’t true at any given moment. Nor do you ever feel he is ever less than fully honest. Some of my favorite personalized moments in the book are when he panics over a tattoo artist trying to convince him to get a large shaman tattoo — “I’m one of those people who can’t even tell a barber when I don’t like a haircut — (he gets a small asterisk instead); when he admits to stupidly carrying two buckets of rocks in each loading trip when making the Roman road and then confesses he couldn’t stop carrying two because he didn’t want to look bad in front of middle schoolers; and — my favorite moment — when he spent much of the time during the Aztec ballgame hiding behind an 11-year-old girl and “let[ting] her return shots meant for me” because it hurt too much to play.

Beyond the informative nature of his explorations in terms of better understanding our past and the people who lived in it, Kean also makes a strong argument at the end that “we increasingly live in a world of the ghostly: flickering images, information abstracted to bits” and that experiential archaeology can “provide a welcome corrective” by “making the material a little more spiritual,” helping us to realize that the “tool or textile or meal isn’t just something you bought … it’s something crafted, something hewn, something raised from seed” by you or other people. It’s a strong lesson to close on.

Informative, entertaining, compelling in its fictional elements, funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful, and simply fun, this, like all of Kean’s work I’ve read, is highly recommended.

Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean is perfect for those who struggle to relate to "dead people in history". Kean humanizes and contextualizes people and history in a way that is engaging and enlightening for all ages. He uses research, experiments, and fictional stories for each time period.

As a homeschool mom, we will be coming back to Dinner with King Tut to enrich our history curriculum and "bring history alive".

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for the advance copy.

I liked the sections that were pure information. The work of the archeologists and anthropologists was fascinating. However, the sections that were “fictional” were indeed fictional. I liked Sam Kean’s other books, which present real information in a way that is fascinating and fun. This book included sections that didn’t interest me because they weren’t real.

This is a deeply entertaining book about the practical experiences of people in the past. It focuses on experiential archaeology and consults some unusual experts in the technology of our ancestors; it is remarkably hands on (be prepared for descriptions of exactly what deer brains feel like and other detailed sensations). The book covers an intriguing range of civilizations. What surprised me most (and the part of the book that didn't work as well for me) is the choice to include narratives in each chapter so the modern recreations and scientific work is broken up with a short episode following a person in each civilization. Given the number of (justified) questions in the nonfiction sections, the confidence of these stories felt a little false--like looking at outdated dioramas in an aging museum. I enjoyed them, but I enjoyed the nonfiction sections a lot more.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for a free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

Experimental archaeology is a fascinating new field of research, and Sam Kean is a skilled popular science writer. However, I found the recreations of ancient people's lives annoying. While it may be useful for grasping the reality of the past, it's just not for me. I much preferred the parts where the author described the work of archaeologists and the challenges they face.

Overall, it's an interesting and informative book. I just would prefer it without the fictional sections.

Thanks to the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for an Advanced Reader Copy - pub date 7/8/2025. What a wonderful journey of a book, mixing together a wealth of research and practical experience with the delightful vibes of fictional mini-stories, once again proving that history is always about the humans who lived it. Sure, the events are exciting and important but what really makes people care about what happened is, well... The people's stories. Sam Kean first splits the book into time/place zones and then, within those historical goal posts, he gives you an emotional, researched mini-story of the people who lived to really ground the experiences, technology, etc. To be honest, the range of people Kean interviews in his pursuit of are just as colorful and larger-than-life so you get extra bang for your buck - the fictional people of history and the very real and dedicated experimental archaeologist who are busily recreating the past.

Kean explores hunting techniques like the atlatl or faking an ostrich, technology like trepanation and mummification, and just how insanely hard it is to tan leather. He seeks out all sorts of experts, from colleges to museums to random houses where ordinary people are just Really Into Something Obscure. I mean, who hasn't toyed with the idea of building their own trebuchet or mucked around to figure out the most plausible way to build a pyramid without the use of wheels or pulleys? Written in a very approachable way, the book still provides tons of details and research but leaves enough unsaid that you can go ahead and explore on your own.

Definitely a fun read and a rollicking journey into the human aspect of history.

Absolutely and completely fascinating, I love this to pieces. Kean not only did amazing research and interviews, but I loved how he wrote about the different eras. He did his own experiments and really seemed to embody experimental archaeology. So utterly captivating and full of both entertainment and knowledge. 100% recommend to anyone interested in learning.