Waste colonialism
Waste colonialism refers to how waste and pollution are part of the domination of one group in their homeland by another group. The concept has been gaining traction…
Tag: history
The Skeletons in the Museum Closet
Museums are full of wonderful things. From the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Institution’s natural history museum to the Folsom point at the Denver Museum of Nature &…
From Crystal Skulls to the Caste War
Intersections of Tourism, Archaeology and Heritage in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico Figure 1. Tourists admire the “El Castillo” pyramid at the site of Chichen Itza in Yucatán,…
Review: Making Milk
Cohen, Mathilde, and Yoriko Otomo. Making Milk: The Past, Present, and Future of Our Primary Food. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. ISBN: 9781350029965 Kerri Lesh Center for Basque Studies…
How Men Stole Civilization
Museum objects such as this painting—Frieze of Dancers, by Edgar Degas—are often impressive and beautiful. But what do they tell us about the cultures that created them? Andrew…
The Oldest True Stories in the World
Australia’s iconic Opera House is lit up with an art installation called Songlines during a festival in 2016. For Aboriginal Australians, songlines are memories of routes through landscapes—which…
Revisiting Geno-colonization: Senator Warren and “Native DNA”
I woke up this morning to the news that Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test “providing strong evidence” that she has a Native American ancestor 6-10…
Patient Zero and the Making of a Myth: History as an Archaeology of the Present by Ketil Slagstad
Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic Richard A. McKay University of Chicago Press, 2017, 400 pages “An innocent he was not. He eventually told…
In Spain’s Silence, Francisco Franco’s Memory Echoes
People make the fascist salute on November 20, 2011, at the Valley of the Fallen—the basilica near Madrid, Spain, where the country’s former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco is…
Why Can’t Most Humans Drink Milk?
[no-caption] Axel Schmidt/Getty Images This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. A solid white mass found in a broken jar …
The Mastodon in the Room
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Humans may have been in North America much earlier than previously thought. Here’s the evidence: chipped rocks, crushed mastodon bones, and reliable da…
Truth of History
This title is nearly an oxymoron. There are historic truths, but what we known of history is an invention of mostly people who did not personally experience that…
How Do We Know Which Historical Accounts Are True?
It all started with a stray goat. On an otherwise nondescript day in the spring of 1947, a young Bedouin boy searched for a goat that had strayed…
The End of the World As We Know It
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Listen to the companion episode of SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human! Back in 2008, Chad Huddleston was driving home from work when he saw a stra…
The what and the why of Discard Studies
We tend to think that we are familiar with waste because we deal with it every day. Yet, this is not the case–most aspects of waste are entirely…
The Hidden Resilience of “Food Desert” Neighborhoods
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Even before Ashanté Reese and I reach the front gate, retired schoolteacher Alice Chandler is standing in the doorway of her brick home in Washington,…
As Seas Rise, Ancient Footprints Are Revealed
Archaeologists are uncovering footprints on beaches from Canada to South Africa. The oldest human footprints, one of which is shown here, were found in Tanzania and date back…
Why Are Some Caves Full of Shoes?
I’ve spent a good chunk of my life hiking the U.S. Southwest, and I’ve kicked my share of sharp rocks and prickly cactuses as I’ve walked across hot…
Meal Kits: Our Culinary Future?
Amy B. Trubek, University of Vermont Americans spend more and more money on food prepared outside the home, and every day cooking becomes more episodic and less…
The Incas’ Knotty History
Khipu in the Museo Machu Picchu, Casa Concha, Cusco. Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at Aeon. The Inca Empire (1400–1532) is one of few ancient civilizations that …
Politics by Other Means: Health in Việt Nam by Martha Lincoln
My research in Việt Nam addresses how medicine, health, and disease function as political and cultural signifiers as well as telegraphing – in the form of epidemiological data…
Biology, Race, and “Orientalism”
Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978 and is highly influential, both in post-colonial studies and social theory. Said argues that through the construction of the ‘Orient’ (the East) a…
How Cutting-Edge Archaeology Can Improve Public Health
[no-caption] Megan Brickley Twenty years ago, I held in my hands the leg bones of a 2-year-old child who had died in Birmingham in the early 1800s. They…
The Myth of Racial Purity in Roman Britain
This model at the Museum of London depicts the first bridge over the River Thames, which was built by the Romans in the first century. Steven G. Johnson/Wikimedia…