Gathering the Genetic Testimony of Spain’s Civil War Dead
The remains of many soldiers and citizens who died during the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, have never been recovered. The development of genetic…
Tag: history
Valuing Aboriginal cultural knowledge in Western science
The relationship between Western science (scientists, government officials, etc.) and Aboriginal knowledge has often been rocky, with Westerners often only acknowledging the value of local indigenous …
Let’s Keep Arguing About Flags and Statues
The Confederate flag, which many people see as a symbol of America’s racist past, continues to spark debate. fauxto_digit/Flickr Last summer, the Confederate flag was finally taken down…
Canberra’s loss is Mānoa’s gain as the ANU walks away from decades of excellence
I do not normally write about my duties as a professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa on this blog, since the blog isn’t associated with UHM…
Lao Camp Food (Part 1)
I recently spent several days camping with a bomb clearance team in southern Laos. Quick history: Laos, per capita, is the most heavily bombed country on Earth. Between…
Rules of the Underworld
Since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war in 2006, approximately 80,000 people have been killed in organized crime–related incidents. More than 26,000 others are still missing. Despite attempts to…
Photography: Between Anthropology and History
Photography: Between Anthropology and History Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK 20-21 June 2016 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @PHRC_DeMontfort Conference …
Stone Points to a Connected World
I was sitting in the brightly lit workroom at the Pitt Rivers Museum on a frigid day in November 2010, when I opened one of the bags that…
Reconciliation’s Waste: heritage and waste in post-apartheid South Africa
Portable toilets and urine on colonial era statues are reconciliations ruins, the things leftover that heritage helps to frame but yet cannot fully explain. As matter that remains…
Thompson on Sills, ‘Toxic War: The Story of Agent Orange’
The use of the defoliant Agent Orange by the United States is one of the most controversial actions of the Vietnam War. InToxic War: The Story of Agent…
Environmental historians get wasted: ASEH conference report
What’s my take on this torrent of waste at ASEH? I think it really signals a maturation of a second generation of waste scholarship in environmental history that…
The state of indigenous language and culture in Canada
The Canadian government’s program of cultural genocide in residential schools included the erasure of aboriginal languages. In Undoing Linguicide (an hour long audio documentary for CBC Radio’s Ideas…
Skeleton Sex Pots
The Moche, one of the world’s great ancient civilizations, occupied the northern coast of Peru from roughly A.D. 100 to A.D. 800. They produced beautiful ceramic vessels; hundreds…
The Great Chocolate Migration
Last fall, I was sipping Mexican chocolate at a chic little Singapore café. It was a local branch of a New York–based chain, which was started in Israel…
The Mystery of the Corpse in the Burlap Sack
On July 28, 1889, a couple drove a carriage down a remote road about a dozen miles south of Lyon, France. Michel Eyraud, a middle-aged conman, and his…
Ladders to Other Worlds
As a symbol of cultural continuity, the wooden pueblo ladder connects its users to their ancestors, the universe, their spiritual beliefs, and one another. Pueblo Indian communities in…
History Lost to Sea
On a bright and buggy day in July 2014, Max Friesen, whiskered and encased in denim and Gore-Tex, inched across a stretch of tundra overlooking the East Channel…
Cold Enough for Ya?
Every winter, on either the first or second cold snap, I hear the question “Cold enough for ya?” as I get on the bus, exit the Metro, or…
Parting Words
I was fascinated to learn from an October 2015 article in the Independent newspaper the little-known fact that British “prime ministers leave secret instructions for nuclear missile submarine…
Tim Hannigan’s ‘A Brief History of Indonesia’
I’m in two minds about Tim Hannigan’s A Brief History of Indonesia (2015). Part of my brain is cruelly happy that Hannigan’s book is so deficient in covering…
Tim Hannigan’s ‘A Brief History of Indonesia’
I’m in two minds about Tim Hannigan’s A Brief History of Indonesia (2015). Part of my brain is cruelly happy that Hannigan’s book is so deficient in covering…
Tim Hannigan’s ‘A Brief History of Indonesia’
I’m in two minds about Tim Hannigan’s A Brief History of Indonesia (2015). Part of my brain is cruelly happy that Hannigan’s book is so deficient in covering…
Why We Must Talk About Race
I grew up a black woman in urban Los Angeles during the age of the civil rights movement. “Race” was all around me, woven into the fabric of…
Making Love—and Nations
Staunchly opposed to marriages outside his nation, John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokee from the late 1820s until his death in 1866, helped introduce restrictive laws…