Decoding Diversity and Power at Machu Picchu
New DNA analysis has revealed surprising diversity among remains from burial sites in Peru. A genetic anthropologist explains what this suggests about the 15th century Inca palace. This…
Tag: Death
Giving Winter a Funeral in Transylvania
In a village in Romania, residents maintain a centuries-old carnival tradition called farsang to mark winter’s death. ✽ As the morning sun ambles over blunted cliffs, whips break…
Finding Mrs. Jackson
From your backyard to a hill by the ocean, you can come upon an archaeological find just about anywhere. But what happens when that object was a keepsake…
I Do This for You, Mom
One day, a woman in Baltimore received a text message from her mother wishing her a happy holiday. But something didn’t feel quite right. Jeri Hutton Green is…
Can Digitizing Gravestones Save History?
An anthropologist is digitizing gravestones at Burial Hill, a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that holds the remains of some of the first Pilgrims. Documenting these unique records…
Centering Black Lives in the Study of Human Remains
A contributor to a special series on decolonizing anthropology reckons with bioarchaeology’s racist past by focusing on Black women’s creativity and everyday lives in her work. This contribution…
Aztec Antichrist: A Performance of the Apocalypse
A 16th-century play written by the descendants of the Aztecs after the Spanish conquest dramatically reveals Indigenous people’s responses to their religious conversion. Excerpted from Aztec Antichri…
Misperceiving Life Expectancy in the Deep Past
An archaeologist explains that most people do not calculate life expectancy correctly. This leads to misunderstandings. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republis…
Archaeology at the Borders of the Refugee Crisis
Archaeological methods, which are typically used to study the past, can also illuminate the experiences of today’s displaced people. This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine and…
Excavating My Dad’s Life
An archaeologist navigates her dad’s passing by using the methods of her discipline to preserve his office and gain insight into the mysteries of his personality. ✽ In…
Living With the Prospect of Assisted Dying
[no-caption] The Real Tokyo Life/Getty Images Excerpted from The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America by Anita Hannig. © 2022 by Anita Hannig.…
Living With the Prospect of Assisted Dying
Excerpted from The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America by Anita Hannig. © 2022 by Anita Hannig. Used with permission of the publisher,…
Haunted by a Secret War
In Old Sepon in Savannakhet province, Laos, a temple wall riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel scars hints at war’s remains. Leah Zani Excerpted from Strike Patterns: Notes…
Reinterpreting Life and Death in Ancient Nubia
Research team members excavate a tumulus burial structure. Michele R. Buzon This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished with Creative Commons. Circu…
Memorializing Death in an Age of Mass Mortality: Keywords of Covid-19 by Richard C. Keller
How do we remember death when it constitutes our landscape? In an age of ubiquitous mortality—not only pandemic deaths, but also deaths from meteorological disasters, deaths of migrants…
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…
I Carry My Grief With Me, but I Also Carry My Joy
When you lose someone the future dies. Or, at least, the one with them, that you thought about with them, in it. I imagine any relationship that ends…
Mourning Kin After the End of Cannibalism
Clockwise from top left: (1) Indigenous Wari’ dwellings in Amazonia, Brazil. (2) The author (middle) with her adopted father, Paletó (right), in 2012. (3) The author interviewing Wari’…
Archaeology’s Role in Finding Missing Indigenous Children in Canada
A memorial of 104 orange hearts, created by the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation’s Tiwahe (family) Services, stands in honor of missing children from the Brandon Indian Residential School…
Why Couldn’t Iron Age People Throw Some Stuff Away?
It is often hard to part with the objects left behind by loved ones—even everyday things. Ashton/Flickr I have been told many stories by people who found it…
Anthony Stavrianakis’s Leaving: A Narrative of Assisted Suicide by Ari Gandsman
Leaving: A Narrative of Assisted Suicide Anthony Stavrianakis University of California Press, 2000. 248 pages. Everyone discovers an academic doppelgänger at some point. We invest ti…
Stepping into the hospital side room: a place for death in England by Erica Borgstrom
I hovered in the doorway as the palliative care nurse who I was shadowing that day indicated I should. She entered the darkened side room to check on…
#Bookreview: Dying to Eat
Dying to Eat: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death, and the Afterlife (2018), edited by Candi K. Cann, is an interdisciplinary study that cuts across various approaches, including the…
Reading Lists: Residential Schools and Canadian Colonialism
Content warning: this article covers topics of colonialism and genocide in Canada. In early June of 2021 news reports emerged about the remains of Indigenous children buried in…