Venice’s Black Death and the Dawn of Quarantine
The island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, shown here, was one of the isles where the city of Venice quarantined plague-stricken individuals. Archeoclub d’Italia Sede di Venezia Just beyond th…
Tag: history
“The Measles from the Time of My Grandfather”: Amazonian Ethnocide Memories in Times of Covid-19 by Carlos Fausto
“Kanari Kuikuro shows me a pot full of winged leafcutter ants he has just collected”. November, 2002. Xingu Indigenous Land, Brazil. Photo by Carlos Fausto Two weeks ago,…
Will Asia Rewrite Human History?
Archaeologists dig at a site called Al Wusta in Saudi Arabia. Klint Janulis Please note that this article includes images of human remains. The Nefud Desert is a…
Holocaust Archaeology Proves Deniers Wrong
At the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland, an estimated 800,000 Jews were murdered by Nazis and their collaborators. Richard Radford/Getty Images This article was originally published…
What Will Italy Become Without Its Elders?
The author’s first daughter shares time with her great-grandfather Giuseppe, born in 1925 and recently deceased. Daniela Valsecchi Our elders are dying one by one, oak trees struck…
The National Lynching Memorial Speaks to My Black ’Bama Body OR Imma Be Here Forever, You Gon’ Remember This
A young African American man visits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Bob Miller/Getty Images There was a pulsing I felt, a pulsing I…
“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…
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,…