Was Our Skin Meant for the Sun?
An anthropologist examines the history of human skin under the sun, revealing how evolution and culture conspired to shape our outermost organ. This article was originally published at…
Tag: environment
Platypod, Episode Three: Disability, Toxicity, and the Environment
Platypod In this episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Elizabeth Roberts (the University of Michigan) and Sophia Jaworski (the University of Toronto). They discuss the complexities of corp…
Book Review: Tigers are our Brothers: Anthropology of Wildlife Conservation in Northeast India by Ambika Aiyadurai
In Tigers are our Brothers: Anthropology of Wildlife Conservation in Northeast India, Ambika Aiyadurai offers an ethnographic study of wildlife conservation in Northeast India, examining the relations…
Food Sovereignty vs. Food Aid: Why Smallscale Farming Suffers
Traditional farming in al-Ahjur, Central Highlands (photography by Daniel Martin Varisco) The early major civilizations in the Middle East and Asia with their head start several millennia ago…
Book Review: Building on Borrowed Time: Rising Seas and Failing Infrastructure in Semarang by Lukas Ley
In Building on Borrowed Time: Rising Seas and Failing Infrastructure in Semarang, Lukas Ley offers a new ethnography exploring how people in Semarang, Indonesia, deal with the everyday threat of…
What Ended This Hub of Ancient Maya Life?
A bioarchaeologist reflects on how a team of scientists investigated various elements that contributed to the destabilization and ultimate breakdown of Mayapán. This article was originally published …
A Reader’s Question About Surviving the Ice Age
An anthropologist describes the multiple ice ages of the Earth’s past and how our species survived the most recent one. This article was originally published at The Conversation…
We are probably all black centipedes at heart
Dream note: I have to arrange my own boat, a massive crustacean-covered barge rowed with huge crab/octopus like mechanical oars and a front that folds over with a…
Counting on Montane Birds: Biologists, Verticality, and Territorial Defense in Colombia
This piece is about the unforeseen and sometimes overlooked connection between (i) birds living in the forests of Colombia’s high tropical Andes, (ii) local biologists supporting an anti-mining…
Book Review: Remaindered Life by Neferti X. M. Tadiar
In Remaindered Life, Neferti X. M. Tadiar examines ‘remaindered life’ that goes beyond the binary understanding of productive and disposable life propagated under global capitalism. This c…
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…
What Ancient Stone “Swiss Army Knives” Mean
Multipurpose ancient stone tools harbor more clues about human sociality than initially meet the eye. Paloma de la Peñ This article was originally published in The Conversation and…
What Ancient Stone “Swiss Army Knives” Mean
This article was originally published in The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Humans are the only species to live in every environmental niche in the…
Sister Parks: North American Coloniality and the Monarch Butterfly
Monarch migration and the making of North America At the end of each summer, the northern prairies and Great Lakes regions of North America host a new generation…
Techno-geographies of digital phenotyping in mental health research by Jessy Williams
Can your phone keep you mentally well? Developments in digital phenotyping have brought new attention to forms of behavioural data collection that capitalise on the apparent ubiquity of…
Tree Rings Are Evidence of the Megadrought—and Our Doom
I love trees. I also love dendrochronology—literally, “the study of tree time.” This science, which uses data derived from tree growth rings, provides scientists with a wealth of…
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…
Cooking Debris in an Australian Cave Tells a Story of Resilience
Starting around 4,000 years ago, Bininj (Aboriginal people in Australia) adapted their diets to include more freshwater plants from wetlands, such as those in the Kakadu region (shown…
Đồng Tháp poses the urgent questions for today.
Juxtaposing decayed US v Soviet war crap or a flower that blooms in slime. a Huey and a MIG and sundry other remnants from the pond in the…
Indigenous Mapmaking, or Bringing a Dead Map to Life
Two Indigenous Marind clan representatives peruse a map of their customary territories produced by local village members. Sophie Chao Excerpted from In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-…
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…
Multispecies Anarchism in the Postnuclear World
Connect the dots between “state”, “imperialism”, and “war”. Add “leaders”, “testosterone” and “nukes”. Look at the picture and tell me anarchism was a bad idea. In effect, as…
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…