SAPIENS Podcast Season 4 Reflections and Celebrations
In this live event, a panel of archaeologists and podcasters celebrates the completion of SAPIENS Podcast Season 4 and RadioCIAMS’ SAPIENS Talk Back series. Meet the amazing people…
Tag: Archaeology
The Yaghan Rise Again
Archaeologist Atilio Francisco Zangrando, foreground, has excavated along the Beagle Channel, or Onashaga in the Yaghan language, since 1998. Katrina Pyne This article was originally publ…
Repatriation Is Our Future
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, or NAGPRA, is supposed to curb the illegal possession of ancestral Native American remains and cultural items. But…
What Ancient DNA Reveals About Life in Africa 20,000 Years Ago
Kondoa Irangi rock art in present-day Tanzania features the cultural expressions of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists over a 2,000-year span. Nina R/Wikimedia Commons This article was ori…
Was the Acropolis a Harem? A Myth of Orientalism
The Acropolis of Athens has birthed countless tales, some of which appear to be more based on fiction than fact. Oleksandr Troitskyi/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally publishe…
Slavery, Sustenance, and Resistance
Archaeology helps re-imagine a fuller range of experiences, including how people ate, innovated, and rebelled. In this episode, “slave cuisine” opens a window to honor the legacy of…
Two Pioneering Female Archaeologists
Precocious. Prolific. Audacious. Magnanimous. Each of these terms describes archaeologist Hannah Marie Wormington and her protégé Cynthia Irwin-Williams.* As pioneering female archaeologists in an are…
More Than a Mountain
The sky island of Dzil Nchaa Si’an is more than a mountain. It is a significant landmark in Arizona for Apache tribal members to collect medicinal plants, perform…
Revealing an Ice Age Route for Indigenous Peoples
Research at British Columbia’s Topknot Lake and Little Woss Lake shows what the environment might have been like during the last ice age. Shanna Baker This article was…
Curating as Caretaking
History is taught in all kinds of ways—through textbooks, movies, and … museums. In this episode, museum curators challenge the status quo and connect their ancestry to advance…
Reviving Huaycán—and the Community That Surrounds It
Aracely Solano, a youth volunteer and member of the Huaycán Cultural collective, welcomes visitors to the archaeological site outside of Lima, Peru. Daniel Meza Just an hour’s drive…
At the Heart of It All
For its practitioners, archaeology can feel like it is unearthing events deep in the past … until it doesn’t. What is the experience of researchers who discover their…
A Genetic Chronicle of the First Peoples in the Americas
Beringia National Park in present-day Russia is part of what was once a vast refuge that allowed ancestors of Native Americans to cross into North America and survive…
Redrawing the Boundaries
For many, archaeology means digging up historical artifacts from beneath the ground. But to some, that framework is also violent and colonialist. What would it mean to leave…
What Egyptian Pharaohs Can Tell Us About Modern Tyrants
Using religion to justify his rule, King Taharqa is shown nestled protectively between the legs of the god Amen in his animal form, implying the king knew the…
Raiding Graves—Not to Rob but to Remember
Reconstruction of a chamber grave from eastern France. B. Clarys/PCR espaces et pratiques funéraires en Alsace aux époques mérovingienne et carolingienne This article was originally publ…
A Hidden Figure in North American Archaeology
As a historian of science, I am interested in determining who gets credit for scientific discoveries and why. Sadly, credit often goes to the powerful and connected, not…
Meet the Ancient Technologists Who Changed Everything
The idea of crafting and using beads as ornamentation may have spread from North Africa outward to other parts of the African continent and to Europe. Nicholas R.…
My Tribute to Richard Leakey
Richard Leakey and his teams’ fossil discoveries profoundly shaped our knowledge of human origins. Keith Beaty/Toronto Star/Getty Images On January 2, paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey d…
What a Shipwreck’s Tree Rings Reveal
Tree rings in a cross section of an oak hull plank from the ship Batavia, which sank in 1629, hold clues to the 17th-century timber trade in Europe.…
The Last Wild Lions of Europe
In this ornament found in Mycenae, Greece, lions leap upon their prey. Nancy Thomas Once upon a time, people near the valley of Nemea in southern Greece lived…
Screen Memory, Social Distancing & Speculative Fiction: The Geek Anthropologist 2021 in Review
2021 wasn’t quite the year we anticipated, nor does the conclusion of the year feel like it does justice to the warped sense of time, distance, and stasis…
When Biblically Inspired Pseudoscience and Clickbait Cause Looting
Archaeologist and co-author Morag M. Kersel stands in one of thousands of looters’ pits at the Early Bronze Age cemetery of Bâb adh-Dhrâʿ in Jordan. Yorke M. Rowan…
You Won’t Survive the Apocalypse Alone
Cooperation and kindness are key qualities necessary for surviving disasters, as demonstrated by the volunteers who distributed donated supplies after Superstorm Sandy hit New York City. Robe…