Excavating the Traces of Ice Age Foragers
A filmmaker showcases archaeologists unearthing tiny lithics that evidence the presence of hunters from 13,000 years ago in what is today Michigan. ✽ Brendan Nash, a doctoral candidate…
Tag: conservation
Who Will Protect Andean Potatoes in the Near Future? Uncertainties About the Next Generation of Native Potato Conservationists
Rene Gomez was one of the most renowned potato curators at the International Potato Center (CIP, Centro Internacional de la Papa in Spanish). [1] Potato curators provide reliable…
Cementing the Past
An anthropologist investigates the ongoing impacts of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company’s fraught 1940s preservation of an ancient Maya site in Guatemala. The United Fruit Company was a…
Pequi Winds
A poet-anthropologist reflects on the resistance of rural women in the Brazilian Cerrado whose wisdom and knowledge help cultivate life amid the devastation of large-scale plantations. “Pequi Winds”…
The Vanishing Traces of Our Earliest Ancestors in Indonesia
A paleontologist journeys through Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago in search of Homo erectus remains, but uncovers how environmental devastation has erased much of the region’s history. ✽ FROM THE…
The Battle to Protect Archaeological Sites in the West Bank
An archaeologist from Palestine is urgently working to assess archaeological sites in the West Bank devastated by destruction and looting amid Israel’s ongoing war in the region. ✽…
Maintenance of Forest Restoration: The Fragility of Promised Futures
As a growing area of inquiry in STS, maintenance studies brings two critical insights to the post-Actor Network Theory (ANT) landscape. First, relations are not a state of…
Do Moose “Belong” in Colorado?
As moose populations multiply in the Southern Rocky Mountains, decision-makers are questioning whether the animals are endemic or invaders. Archaeology can offer answers—and potential solutions. ✽ Alo…
Gathering Firewood—and Redefining Land Stewardship—at Bears Ears
At Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, a new co-management plan brings together federal agencies and a consortium of Native American tribes—revealing deep tensions over land rights and…
The hunter-gatherer society that shows us that sharing is the key to forest protection – our article!
Co-authored by my friend from the village, Felix Mangombe, our new article has just been published in the journal People and Nature after quite full on period of…
Protecting Ancestral Waters Through Collaborative Stewardship
The proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, along California’s Central Coast, would be the first of its kind in the U.S. to be nominated by Native peoples. ✽…
Don’t trust science? Citizen science offers the chance to do it yourself
“People around the world have high levels of trust in scientists, but are concerned about governments interfering in research” states a news article in the journal Nature. Another…
From Foraging to Keeping Bees in Northeast Brazil
“This,” explained Chico Filho, gesturing to the lush, flowering Caatinga shrubland surrounding us, “is the bees’ pasture.” Chico Filho, a state extension officer and avid beekeeper, was reflecting…
Bringing Back the World’s Most Endangered Cat
A social scientist goes behind the scenes at a breeding center in Portugal to explore the challenges and ethical dilemmas of reintroducing the Iberian lynx. ✽ Soon after…
PhD done – read it here!
That’s right, after six and a half years of toil (and fun) spread between a rainforest in Cameroon and a library and office in London, the thing is…
Unearthing the Origins of Plantation Slavery on São Tomé
The African island nation played a central—but little-known—role in the rise of the global sugar trade based on enslaved labor. To uncover this past, a team launched the…
Tigers, Animality, and Dignity: A Journey Through the Central Indian Landscape
Amit Kaushik, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia In 2008, a somber event unfolded in the heart of India as the local tiger population faced extinction in the…
Treasure Hunters Pose Problems for Archaeologists
Two scholars discuss the challenges of accurately studying underwater archaeological heritage—among them, unauthorized acquisitions. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has …
Can Archaeology Help Restore the Oceans?
On the Channel Islands, archaeologists draw lessons in sustainability from historic Chumash fishing practices. USING THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE Off the southern California coast lies a little-known…
Colonizing Mars or Colonizing the Earth? A Reflection on Landscape and SpaceX in Texas
By Robert Kopack, University of South Carolina § I was startled awake by a faint voice announcing something across the humid, coastal air. Maybe it was a shift…
Why Nahua Pilgrims Carry Thousands of Papers Up Sacred Peaks
Along mountain pilgrimages, two anthropologists learn how an Indigenous Mesoamerican religion helps people practice a reciprocal relationship with the Earth. Based on Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: Na…
Aného’s Disappearing Coast
How do people adapt when the ground beneath their feet starts to wash away? All over the world, coastal communities are facing the same challenges: rising sea levels…
The Conversion of Julio Tiwiram
What is shamanic power? And how does it affect modern politics in Indigenous Amazonia? In this episode, we follow the life of a young Indigenous activist fighting for…
The Mexican River Defenders Fighting for the San Pedro
Nature-loving volunteers in the Mexican state of Chihuahua gather weekly on the banks of the San Pedro River to collect trash. But their aims are bigger. ✽ If…