How to Write an Essay: A Guide for Anthropologists
[no-caption] FilippoBacci/GettyImages For academics used to the idea of “publish or perish,” writing may seem to be a well-practiced and even perfected skill. But trying out a new…
Tag: Science
A Mammoth Find Near Mexico City
Archaeologists, restorers, and laborers have worked together to uncover thousands of late Pleistocene animal remains. Melitón Tapia, National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico …
When Colorblind Parenting Meets Anti-racism
Author Zeray Alemseged and his daughter attend a Black Lives Matter protest in Chicago. Peter Stamos I watched the uniformed White policeman kneel on the Black man’s neck…
Imagining the Neanderthal’s World
[no-caption] Denis Pobytov Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Bloomsbury Sigma, August (U.K.) & October (U.S.) 2020. Archaeology and genomics k…
Pain-Free Mouse, being ‘human,’ and more-than-human ethics
The Voigt-Kampff test as seen in Blade Runner (1982). All copyrights to film held by Warner Bros. In the opening scene of Blade Runner, a fictional diagnostic called…
Adventures with Peccaries: pt. 1
I am currently in the early stages of designing a multispecies project working with the Cofán, an Indigenous people of Amazonian Ecuador, and two species of peccaries (white-lipped…
Wildfire Archaeology and the Burning American West
As I type, the American West is ablaze with more than 100 devastating wildfires. Many of these are record-setting in both size and intensity. Several, including one in…
Pandemic Bakers Bring the Past to Life
Experimental archaeologist Farrell Monaco re-creates the baking techniques of ancient Romans to produce classic breads such as the panis quadratus. Farrell Monaco Around 2000 B.C., a bake…
Who Gets to Study Whom?
[no-caption] recep-bg/Getty Images About a decade ago, Chisomo Kalinga was in a bind. The medical humanities scholar, then a graduate student at King’s College London, was looking for…
The Problem With Abstract Threats
[no-caption] Angus Greig Everyone seems to have a story about the moment when the novel coronavirus pandemic stopped being an abstract problem “somewhere out there” and started being…
Upcoming Pilot Research
As of today I have submitted all of the required paperwork (IACUC, Occupational Health, Special Use Permit Application) . I will be collecting data on behavior and the…
Can an “Invasive Species” Earn the Right to Stay?
Macaques sit near Florida’s Silver River. Rachel Simmons/Flickr Steve Johnson never thought he’d have to worry about death threats, not in his line of work. Johnson is a…
What Is Anthropology?
The “study of humanity” applies to many fields, but anthropology looks at people in a unique way. Orbon Alija/Getty Images What is anthropology? The word “anthropology” literally means…
Destination Anthropocene: An Interview with Amelia Moore
Destination Anthropocene: Science and Tourism in The Bahamas By Amelia Moore, University of Rhode Island 216pp. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press § Colin Hoag spoke with Prof.…
Now on Youtube
You can visit my YouTube channel: Anthropology 365. I am currently working on content that covers a field examination of the use of anthropogenic (human-made) spaces by reptiles…
Why Social Distancing Feels So Strange
People stand 6 feet apart while waiting in line for a store in Denver, Colorado. Michael Ciaglo/Stringer/Getty Images Around the world, millions of people are now practicing social…
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…
What’s Wrong With “the Chinese Virus”?
Most Americans take it for granted that in the 1960s, more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers died in something called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, however, there is no…
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…
Race Is Real, But It’s Not Genetic
[no-caption] KTS Design/Science Photo Library/Getty Images Please note that this article includes an image of human remains. A friend of mine with Central American, Southern European, and…
Becoming Inia and Dolphin
The Amazon River Basin is one of the richest river systems in the world, covering more than 7-million square kilometers. This system contains more than 5600 species of…
AES 2020 Abstract: Mediating Multispecies Relations Through Western and Indigenous Conservation
Western notions of modernity have situated human society apart from nature, which encompasses those spaces and beings that are unmodified and unsullied by human activity. The Western conception…