Ancient Pollen Is Hiding in a Surprising Place
A paleoecologist explains what pollen in fossilized mammal urine can reveal about past ecosystems and environmental change. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been repu…
Tag: animals
Spend a Day Tracking Chimpanzees
A series of short videos captures a rare view into the lives of wild chimps through the eyes of a researcher. ✽ Some see chimpanzees as invariably belligerent…
Do Strict Criminal Penalties Protect Animals From Abuse?
In Mexico, a growing animal protection movement often promotes harsh criminal punishment for those who abuse animals. But are these strategies working, or do they lead to further…
Past and Present Approaches to the Management of Red Deer
An archaeologist weighs the pros and cons driving debates around the rising population of Scotland’s renowned animal and explains what historical archaeology could add to the conversation. This…
What Ancient Goat Teeth Reveal About Animal Care
Unraveling a mystery around millennia-old goat bones, an archaeologist reflects on the harm people can cause their most cherished animals. ✽ Animals were harmed in the making of…
Forensic Methods Unveil Clues About Megafauna Extinctions
An archaeologist explains how novel applications of forensic methods—namely, blood residue analyses—have yielded evidence that Paleoindians hunted mastodons, mammoths, and other megafauna in eastern N…
27 words for elephant
In English, an elephant is an elephant. Ok, we have words for a group of elephants (a herd) and baby elephants (a calf), but these are general words…
What Spider Games Say About Arachnophobia
Many people around the world fear spiders. But in the Philippines, the tradition of spider wrestling often brings people and arachnids in close proximity. ✽ A fear of…
Scientists Uplift Indigenous Human-Horse Histories
An archaeologist and Lakota genomics scientist explain how combining archaeology, DNA, and Indigenous knowledge can help revise colonial human-horse narratives largely associated with the western U.S….
Unearthing Culinary Pasts—With Help From Llama Poop
A food archaeologist investigates everyday eating and lean times among the ancient Moche of Peru through a remarkable discovery of thousands of llama “beans.” A DAY IN THE…
Podcast on Gulf Almanac Lore
My podcast with Ahmed AlMaazmi and Tamara Fernando is posted online on the New Books Network.
Twitter’s Blue Tick Is a Fake Signal
Evolutionary theory can help us better understand the recent debacle about social media platforms’ popular symbol as a signaling problem. This article was originally published at The Conversati…
How Gravestones Shaped as Sheep United the Caucasus
An archaeologist fascinated by a centurieslong memorial practice in Georgia considers how these unique gravestones reflect shared values and traditions—yet are sometimes destroyed in nationalist cultu…
Fishing in the Shadow of Oil
In the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, fishing communities have become part of a complex “assemblage” of human and natural worlds shaped by the global fossil fuel…
Do Mountains Have Souls?
An anthropologist explores the resurgence of “new Animism”—interest in spiritual practices that recognize the interrelationships among animals, places, plants, and people. This article was originally…
Alive in the Flapping of Infinite Orange Wings
Monarch butterflies’ epic annual migration from North America to Mexico inspires an anthropologist to reflect on this insect’s precarious life cycles through the lens of “multispecies ethnography.” …
Does “Monkeypox” Give Monkeys a Bad Name?
The debate over naming the virus known as monkeypox says a lot about the close—but fraught—relationships between humans and our fellow primates. ✽ The name of the latest…
The Problems of Evolution as a “March of Progress”
The idea that evolution is a hierarchy of complexity with humans on top lurks in everything from biology classes to politics. It’s time to unlearn this false and…
Looking Into the World of Frog Gigging
Frog hunters, known as “giggers,” search for bullfrogs in southern Indiana. Saish Solankar The moon emerged out of the clouds at a few minutes past midnight, reflecting on…
Looking Into the World of Frog Gigging
The moon emerged out of the clouds at a few minutes past midnight, reflecting on the murky water of a forest pond. I watched as Wyatt*, the organizer…
The Allowable Limit of Disability
This browser does not support HTML5 audio The Allowable Limit of Disability read by the author, Gabrielle Hanley-Mott In February 2022 a court in Norway …
Did Margaret Mead Think a Healed Femur Was the Earliest Sign of Civilization?
According to a commonly shared story, the anthropologist Margaret Mead was supposedly asked by a student what she thought was the earliest sign of a civilized society. There…
Did Margaret Mead Think a Healed Femur Was the Earliest Sign of Civilization?
An anthropologist digs into the origins of a popular story attributed to Margaret Mead about the original sign of civilization. ✽ According to a commonly shared story, the…
Seasonal Knowledge and Arab Gulf Almanacs
I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book: Seasonal Knowledge and the Almanac Tradition of the Arab Gulf. Details about the book, including a free…