Learning From Handy Primates
A researcher who studies animal behavior looks at tool use in nonhuman primates to better illuminate tool use in humans. Many of our primate relatives use tools. How…
Tag: methods
Untangling the World’s First-Known String
Neanderthals made the oldest string ever found, providing new insights into the technology and culture of our hominin cousins. At the Abri du Maras site in southern France,…
Multimodal Digital Curating as (anthropological) research, collaboration, and engagement
Introduction Curating has become a popular concept in anthropology in recent years, extending beyond traditional museum and gallery contexts to encompass social media profiles, feeds, websites, and al…
The Many Modes of Ethnography
Download the transcript for this episode. This podcast episode talks to three anthropologists, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Rine Vieth, and Kara White, scholars working in three different parts of the…
Against making sense: Appreciating absurd roundabouts in Malaysian Borneo
In Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, I found a musical roundabout. Large loudspeakers turn this otherwise innocuous infrastructure into an absurdist mashup of techno…
Learning From Snapshots of Lost Fossils
Not all fossil discoveries happen in the field. In museum archives, researchers found photos of remains from Paleolithic children who had belonged to a group of early Homo…
30 Minute Methods – Ned Rossiter
Tuesday 23 January 2024 at 4pm HCMC time: online – all welcome Topic: 30 Minute Methods TDTU – Title: Reflections on Organized Networks and Collective Research Methods Join Zoom…
Can We Understand One Another?
The Mead-Freeman controversy draws to a close, with some answers to who was right and who was wrong. But, in the end, can anyone ever really understand cultures…
The Vibrant Worlds of Batuan Paintings in Bali
A new multimedia project connects the development of a Balinese regional painting style with anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who began commissioning art in the region in…
Ancient Pollen Is Hiding in a Surprising Place
A paleoecologist explains what pollen in fossilized mammal urine can reveal about past ecosystems and environmental change. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been repu…
Flapper of the South Seas
A young anthropologist named Margaret Mead journeyed to American Samoa in 1925 and claimed she found a culture where teenagers were sexually free. Fame and controversy followed. In…
Ordinary Treasures: Objects from Home
I am going to start with breathing what I push out of me and what you push out of you and what we push out of each…
Decoding Diversity and Power at Machu Picchu
New DNA analysis has revealed surprising diversity among remains from burial sites in Peru. A genetic anthropologist explains what this suggests about the 15th century Inca palace. This…
The Hidden Ancestry Extracted From an Ancient Pendant
An anthropologist explains how new forensics tools offer unprecedented answers to questions about who likely held or wore Stone Age objects. This article was originally published at The Conversation …
Forensic Methods Unveil Clues About Megafauna Extinctions
An archaeologist explains how novel applications of forensic methods—namely, blood residue analyses—have yielded evidence that Paleoindians hunted mastodons, mammoths, and other megafauna in eastern N…
Cards Against Digital Anthropology
Suzana Jovicic*, Simone Pfeifer** In 2014, US-based associate anthropology professor Matthew Durington held a class on game design. One of the anthropology games developed by his students was…
Bringing Nhakpoti, the Kayapó Story of Star Girl, to the Screen
Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how agriculture came to Kayapó communities, Indigenous peoples in…
Dating the Arrival of Modern Humans in Asia
A team of researchers explains how the discovery of a human skull and jawbone helps push back the timing of modern humans’ migration into Southeast Asia. This article…
What Pots Say—and Don’t Say—About People
Archaeologists long abandoned the simple notion that “pots are people”—that people’s identities directly correspond with the pottery they made and used. What, then, can ceramics reveal about past…
On the Quandaries of Aquatic Forensics
A team of scientists, including an anthropologist, explains the challenges and methods for locating, identifying, and retrieving human remains from underwater. This article was originally published a…
Extinguishing the Idea That Hobbits Had Fire
Research has overturned earlier claims that a diminutive human relative, Homo floresiensis, lit fires—but big stories die hard. SMOKING HOT HOBBITS When you think “the hobbit,” a certain…
Piecing Together the Puzzle of Oman’s Ancient Towers
In recent years, the Omani government has invested in archaeology and heritage tourism to boost its economy—renewing interest in mysterious 4,000-year-old stone towers that dot the Southeastern Arabia…
A New Take on an Old Fossil Hints at Ancient Migrations
Two anthropologists explain how an enigmatic human fossil jawbone—and its 3D-printed reconstruction—may evidence an early Homo sapiens presence in Europe and shed new light on evolutionary diversity a…
Why Store 41,000 Bison Bones?
An archaeologist explains why a museum keeps so many bones from the Jones-Miller site, an ice age bison kill on the North American plains. In the 1970s, archaeologists…