A Dam’s Downstream Consequences
An anthropologist shares his story of the environmental, sociocultural, and political consequences of a hydropower dam in India for communities living downstream. Discussions about the impacts of da…
An anthropologist shares his story of the environmental, sociocultural, and political consequences of a hydropower dam in India for communities living downstream. Discussions about the impacts of da…
A new book chronicles a Palestinian family’s life and connections to their land over decades under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Excerpted from My Brother, My Land: A…
As civil war continues to rip apart and threaten communities and families in Manipur in Northeast India, a poet reflects on those who leave and those who stay…
As increasing numbers of pilgrims walk the Camino, a European network of historic pilgrimage routes, those who journey to “slow down” their lives often don’t recognize the burdens…
On a visit to feline-friendly Turkey, an anthropologist considers what long-standing practices of caring for cats reveal about human societies. ✽ While visiting eastern Turkey to climb Mount…
A poet-historian from Manipur, India, shapes tensions between violence and beauty into an allegory, calling residents and readers alike to stay awake. “Fishing for Dust” is part of…
An archaeologist traces how rubble from World War II bombings helped turn London marshlands into a footballing utopia. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has…
Two scholars discuss the challenges of accurately studying underwater archaeological heritage—among them, unauthorized acquisitions. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has …
Two Indigenous archaeologists from the U.S. Southwest shed light on how “abandonment” and other common archaeological terms continue to cause harm. They offer insights into how to rewrite…
An anthropologist moves from Canada to the U.K. and finds herself reflecting on what home design patterns reveal about a society. Excerpted from Silent but Deadly: The Underlying…
An anthropologist and writer from the Tseltal community speaks back to a colonialist history of suppression—instead claiming his identity, language, and people. “Feeling What We Are/A’yel jtalel…
A filmmaker highlights the work of urban archaeologists digging a woman-owned business opened in the late 1800s. In this short documentary, Wayne State University archaeologist Krysta Ryzewski and…
To learn what conditions are really like for Amazon workers, an anthropologist has joined their ranks. ✽ My first day of work in an Amazon warehouse I was…
A poet-anthropologist from Indian-occupied Kashmir speaks of hope as inherited through memories of resilience in the past and present. “When I See Spring in Your Eyes” is part…
An anthropologist takes readers inside a Hong Kong ecovillage, revealing a small but thriving movement built around food, sustainability, and community. A HONG KONG ECOVILLAGE One January morning,…
An anthropologist and Menominee Indian Nation citizen recounts the story of independent-minded Frank, a man who kept tribal lifeways in the early 20th century. “A Free Man: The…
The James Webb Space Telescope’s stunning photos require extensive image processing—revealing as much about humanity as about the universe. In July 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled “Webb’s…
A poet of the Indigenous Lepcha community of the Eastern Himalayas ponders how to draw maps of the mind, heart, and soul that show her community’s heartland—an “eternal…
The 2020 discovery of an ancient villa in Britain uncovered the most important Roman mosaic found in the last century. An archaeologist explains how the mosaic offers an…
A Tohono O’odham poet and linguist reflects on the stories and wisdom ancestors communicated—how people survived, how they dispersed and differentiated, how they remember. “Rock Drawings” …
Page 99 of my thesis opens with an evocative image: ‘Sleepy Cloncurry, the scene of more unfulfilled promises than any other town in Australia, clung to its horses…
In a new book, Minoritarian Liberalism, an anthropologist explores how favela residents of Rio de Janeiro create their own versions of liberty—even under conditions of violence, poverty, and…
The popular image of the U.S. heartland as only a place of rural, hardworking white farmers has always been a larger-than-life myth. In a new book, Imagining the…
Two Indigenous Marind clan representatives peruse a map of their customary territories produced by local village members. Sophie Chao Excerpted from In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-…