• Muslim-Hindu punk rock and immigrant identity
“With this music I can express my confusion,” says Marwan Kamel, lead-guitarist in Chicago-based Al Thawra, one of the emerging punk rock groups composed of first generation immigrants of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent. A USA Today article about these groups quotes Alan Waters, anthropology professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, as saying that these bands are “a good opportunity for stereotype smashing.” Most band members have full time jobs and are not as religiously observant as their families would like. Musical style can combine hard-edged punk, ska and funk. Lyrics are sometimes humorous or more seriously satirical.
• San Francisco watch
An article in the San Francisco Chronicle describes Harry Nimmo’s long term observations of change in the Lower Haight neighborhood of San Francisco. Nimmo, a retired anthropology professor, has lived on Potomac Street for 35 years. He provides a portrait of urbanization over the period in his self-published book, Good and Bad Times in San Francisco. When he first moved into the neighborhood, it had the heaviest concentration of heroin pushers in the city. Since then he has seen the incoming waves of gays and then straight single white people when the neighborhood became hip. Then gentrification. Nimmo recalls that the neighborhood was, in some ways, more friendly 35 years ago than it is now.
• Forensic anthropology and the Sundance Kid
Was the famous robber, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh aka The Sundance Kid, buried in a cemetery in Duchesne, Utah, under the name of William Henry Long? The remains were unearthed a year ago but the question is still unanswered. Support for the claim comes from the work of University of Utah anthropology professor, John McCullough. He says there are matches in height, hair color, eye color, and a notch in the ear, a broken nose, and a cleft chin. Even more convincing is that death likely occurred from a .22-caliber bullet that entered his skull in a way that indicates someone shot him (the death certificate for Long states that he committed suicide).
• Hard times at FSU
An article in Science describes the effects of the economic downturn on Florida State University, especially in terms of cuts to science departments including tenured faculty. Anthropology is one of the hardest-hit departments. The Dean of Arts and Sciences says that “Sciences never pay for themselves.”
• Human evolutionary anthropologist comments on diet
The Washington Post Style Section carried a lead article about the recent trend in paleo dieting among some people in the US. It conveys comments sent in by email from Harvard University professor of human evolution, Richard Pilbeam: “I think it’s quite possible there have been at least some genetic changes since the Neolithic…that would modify digestive processes (enzymes, etc.) to adjust to what have been in many cases quite radically transformed diets.” He provides the example that most humans are able to digest milk.
• DNA from prehistoric modern human in Russia
BBC picked up on a new approach to distinguish ancient DNA from modern contamination developed by Svante Pääbo and colleagues of the Max Planck Institute, Leipzig. The technique was used on remains of a male buried in Kostenki, Russia, around 30,000 years ago. Findings are published in Current Biology.
• Bumper year of archaeological finds in Scotland and beyond
An article in The Scotsman dubs 2009 a “year of revelations.” The many finds include, in the Orkney islands, a “Venus,” a “Neolithic cathedral,” and a Neolithic structure that contains ritually deposited cattle skulls built into a wall. Other major finds are the “Stirling Hoard” of gold necklaces and, in England, the “Tamworth Hoard” of Anglo-Saxon gold currently on display in the British Museum.
• Newsweek’s list of memorable dead
Yet another list, this time from Newsweek, names 31 famous people who passed away in 2009. The list includes Claude Lévi-Strauss and describes him as the French intellectual who helped popularize the study of anthropology: “Whether tabulating a trove of native myths from the Americas or lecturing on motifs in the Ring cycle, he did it with a poetry–and an outreach to other disciplines–that eluded most academics.”
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