Earworm
A poet-anthropologist listens to an accidental field recording from Kashmir: What might be dismissed as noise becomes a way to unsettle the settled—making audible dispossession and theft, stealth…
A poet-anthropologist listens to an accidental field recording from Kashmir: What might be dismissed as noise becomes a way to unsettle the settled—making audible dispossession and theft, stealth…
After Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win, an anthropologist set out across the U.S. to understand the nation’s deepening divides. In the new book Something Between Us, he…
An archaeologist explains his team’s insights into how Quina scrapers in southwest China overturn long-standing assumptions about the region’s humans more than 50,000 years ago. This article was…
Amid a goddess worship revival, some feminists are revering the mother of Jesus as a deity, defying Christian doctrines and confronting the use of Mary as a handmaiden…
Traveling Treasures is a new project led by a team of anthropologists that puts Liberians directly in touch with their dispersed cultural heritage through immersive technologies designed to…
Facing an increasing aging population and other societal shifts, people are looking beyond traditional family-based mortuary practices. ✽ It’s August in Tokyo—hot and muggy, as usual. So I’ve…
Utterances like “um,” “wow,” and “mm-hmm” aren’t garbage, they keep conversations flowing. This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine and has been republished under Creative Commons. …
Here was a curio – a blogpost filler from September 2005 – a negative review of Critique of Exotica by Narcus Breem in 2001, with my reply at…
History ain’t what it was. Here is the great historian of India, Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, with an amazing caption for an illustration of a water buffalo: “Water-buffalo (p.…
An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical…
For the eighth season of the SAPIENS podcast, we’re meeting at a crossroads of cultures—past and present—in search of humanity’s collective destination. Culture is a force that makes…
An anthropologist reflects on the racist undertones of some U.S. efforts to eradicate the spotted lanternfly, an insect from Asia deemed invasive. ✽ A bright red flash whips…
In two erasure poems, a poet-anthropologist imagines alternative futures using text from the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, through which the British “sold” Kashmir to a despotic Dogra ruler.…
New analyses from Iron Age burials reveal that women remained in their natal communities and provided the key to kinship. The findings offer essential clues about gender roles…
On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history. ✽ GROWING…
It’s so easy to see our enemies as — well, enemies. What does it take to re-see them as human? Late in life, Erika Jacoby and Ursula Martens…
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…
Dow chimicals… grrrr. but there is a backstory to this despicable substance, I cannot yet see a full version of Pantelis Vougaris’ film With Heart and Soul (- yet,…
In a themed collection, poets trace contours of power to critique colonialism, environmental destruction, and social violence while transforming the landscape of possibilities. ✽ A detainee prays in…
In August 2024 representatives from multiple online history projects, universities, and public history institutions met in London to discuss key topics in online knowledge mobilization. Over the next…
In Jewish Odesa, Marina Sapritsky-Nahum explores Jewish identity in Odesa over the course of Soviet history, Ukrainian nation-building and global Jewish revivals. Combining oral histories, anthropolo…
Written by Neil Turner The study of Maroon sites is a rich and virtually untapped area that can advance our …
An anthropologist takes a critical eye to a long-running holiday tradition: a U.S. military mission that drops toys and supplies throughout Micronesia. ✽ On a balmy December morning…
A team of archaeologists working in Southeast Asia is pushing toward a deeper understanding of history that amplifies Indigenous and local perspectives to challenge traditional archaeological timeline…