The Sophie Coe Prize in Food History 2020
The Sophie Coe Prize is awarded each year to an engaging, original piece of writing that delivers new research and/or new insights into any aspect of food history.…
Tag: history
The Social Life of Metrics by Rosario García-Meza
For English click here La vida social de las métricas Guatemala es uno de los países de Centroamérica que ha reportado en la última década uno de los…
What Really Happened at Herculaneum?
The volcanic Mount Vesuvius is visible above the ruins of Pompeii, now an archaeological site in Italy. Marc Proudfoot/Flickr When Mount Vesuvius, on the west coast of Italy,…
Archaeology Is Having a Great Century So Far
Nearly a century ago, the focus of human origins research shifted from Europe to Africa—such as to the Oldupai (Olduvai) Gorge in Tanzania, one of the cradles of…
How to Resurrect Dying Languages
Hawaiian language teacher Nako’olani Warrington instructs 9-year-old Maleka Benjamin at an immersion school in Honolulu. Lucy Pemoni/AP Photo In the 1970s, the Hawaiian language seemed po…
Can This Indigenous Language Thrive in a Digital Age?
On any given day, people throng the busy market in Concepción, Paraguay. Shoppers peruse the multicolored array of fruits and vegetables and occasionally pause to chat with the…
Why Did Chinese Farmers Switch to Wheat?
Wheat is now a favored crop in many parts of China. Jie Zhao/Getty Images Today China is the world’s biggest consumer of wheat, which the country uses to…
“I Remember the Day I said ‘Okay, I’ve Read Everything,’” an Interview with Carole Counihan
David Sutton Here is the second in my series of video interviews with food anthropologists. This one is with Dr. Carole Counihan, who probably needs no introduction. In…
Digging Up Woodstock
The 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair left behind garbage and other materials that can be traced by archaeologists. Bettmann /Getty Images On a cloudy morning in October 2017,…
Pearls before Swine
Pearls, in the Parish of St. Andrew’s, Grenada, just up the road from the main town of Grenville, is a unique place that sits at the intersection of two…
Stringing Together an Ancient Empire’s Stories
For centuries, Andean people encoded messages in intricate patterns of knotted and colored strings known as khipus. Thanks to the collaborative approach of anthropologist Sabine Hyland and others,…
Should the Story of Homo’s Dispersal Out of Africa Be Rewritten?
Researchers excavate in Jordan’s Zarqa Valley. Fabio Parenti Giancarlo Scardia was in Jordan in 2013 as the Syrian Civil War ground on. He recalls seeing refugees gathered in…
What Do Monuments Reveal About Their Makers?
Twice a day, on my way to and from work at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS), I walk through a magnificent, monumental stone gate that…
Two Schools at Grand Ronde Indian Reservation, 1863
There are a few reports that open the windows wide to a vision of the reservation, its changes, its struggles, and its peoples. In the 1863 Grand Ronde…
Dos veces víctimas: mujeres negras agredidas no se les reconoce como víctimas
Mujeres activistas, incluida la autora (derecha), marchan en contra de la violencia de género y feminicidios en Lima, Perú, en noviembre de 2016. Fotoholica Press/Getty Images Clara* colg…
Waste is not “matter out of place”
Douglas’ theory of matter out of place is about power. Something in the wrong spot, something poisonous, is not matter out of place. Unless it threatens power.
The Anthropologists Who Undid Sex, Race, and Gender
Anthropologist Margaret Mead—a museum curator, a professor, a popular commentator, and an author, among other roles—was perhaps the most famous student of Franz Boas. Bettmann /Getty Images …
The Knotty Question of When Humans Made the Americas Home
Modern footprints in the sand echo far more ancient ones found on a beach off the coast of Canada. Joanne McSporran/PLOS ONE Humans have long found comfort on…
Archaeology of the 99 Percent
Using a remote-sensing tool called lidar, archaeologists can see what lies hidden underneath dense vegetation. This lidar image reveals the grand plaza of the Maya city of Tikal…
Remembering the Forgotten Chinese Railroad Workers
Chinese workers with the Central Pacific Railroad camped close to Brown’s Station, Nevada, in the 1860s. Alfred A. Hart In 1864, 15-year-old Hung Lai Wah and his older…
The Human Body on the Verge of Collapse by Ketil Slagstad
The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers University of Chicago Press, 2018. 416 pages. 1.…
Web Roundup: Lunar Bodies by Blair Bainbridge
The past month has been a big one for the moon. There was a total solar eclipse across Chile and Argentina on July 2, a partial lunar eclipse…
Can Anthropologists Propel Astronauts Toward Mars?
Jack Stuster poses with a NASA space shuttle. Jack Stuster In the fall of 1957, the Soviet Union satellite Sputnik 1 streaked across the night’s sky. The event kicked off…
The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the commons
A Twitter essay by Matto Mildenberger (@mmildenberger) Something I’ve been meaning to say about The Tragedy of the Commons. Bear with me for a small thread on…