“Make Space Great Again”
Nostalgic Amnesia on the Final Frontier (Center) Kanye West meeting with Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner, (Ends) Logos for Starfleet Command and the Space Force While delivering a…
Tag: history
The Scientific Sorcery of Radiocarbon Dating
Several years ago, I went back to Chicago to see some old friends: artifacts, really—ancient sandals to be precise. The sandals were at the Field Museum of Natural…
Big Bend: Narratives of Isolation
“Splendid Isolation, the Big Bend…” is how the National Parks Services introduces Big Bend National Park on its website. My partner and I recently took a several day…
When Marine Mammals Clash With Archaeological Heritage
Sea lion populations off the California coast bounced back after the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. NOAA/NOS/NMS/CINMS; National Marine Sanctuaries Media Library Off the southern C…
Native American Children’s Historic Forced Assimilation
Children arrived at school at different points in the assimilation process. Many still openly embraced their traditional cultures, including some of these Lakota children on the Rosebud Indian…
Gloves, embryos, and DDT: thinking with surfaces on toxicity in South Africa by Tessa Moll
In the early 1980s, researchers at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa were confounded by the persistent failure of their experimental mice embryos. The researchers had hoped…
Spy Plane Photos Open Windows Into Ancient Worlds
NASA painted this U-2 plane to cover up its real purpose: espionage. Armstrong Flight Research Center/NASA In a darkened room of the U.S. National Archives, we stood over…
The Life and Meaning of Margaret Mead
Anthropologist Margaret Mead immerses herself in the community on a field trip to Bali, Indonesia, in 1957. AP Photo This article was originally published at Aeon. In 1978, after…
Land, Labour, and Power in a Colonial Catholic Mission in Trinidad
Colonial propaganda that masks “humanitarianism” behind self-interest, and breeds euphemisms that are inversions of reality, constitute the recurring subjects of the critiques produced on Zero Anthrop…
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.…
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…