Anthro in the news 3/1/10

• Ethnography of sexual violence in Peru inspires award-winning documentary
Kimberly Theidon, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Harvard University, is an expert on violence in Peru and especially sexual violence against women. Her book of essays on the subject, Entre Prójimos, is the source of inspiration for the documentary, The Milk of Sorrow. It has already won the Berlin International Film Festival’s highest prize, the Golden Bear, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Theidon had no idea that her work was the basis for the film until friends started emailing her to convey their congratulations. While she was not consulted during the production of the film, she has no complaints about it and is considering a trip to Los Angeles for the Oscar party.

• President Obama’s mother recognized for work in economic anthropology
Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama’s late mother, will receive an award from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta in honor of “her tireless efforts in the field of economic anthropology.” Her dissertation, recently published in the U.S., is about microfinance and small crafts businesses in central Java. The award will be presented in October at a conference called “Local Wisdom, Global Solutions” where keynote speakers are expected to be Al Gore and Muhammud Yunus.

• Update on Haitians in Little Miami
An article in the Miami Herald describes the effects of Haiti’s earthquake tragedy on members of the diaspora in Little Miami. The economic downturn in the U.S. is making it extremely difficult to send money to family members in Haiti, and so they have to respond to phone calls from Haiti asking for help by replying that they have little to offer.  Members of the Haitian diaspora also have to deal with the grief caused by the deaths and injuries of loved ones.  Many also face the daily worry of being undocumented. The question of how many Haitians lives in the U.S. is difficult to answer because so many lack documentation, and they don’t show up in census counts. Cultural anthropologist Bryan Page, chair of the anthropology department at the University of Miami, says: “If you have a really dodgy immigration status, you’re not going to be very receptive to people showing up with their clipboards and asking questions.”

• Forensic anthropology in Haiti
The U.S. is deploying multidisciplinary teams to Haiti to identify the 100 or more Americans who died in the earthquake. The American teams are called DMORTs: Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams. Forensic anthropologist Dana Kollman, professor at Towson University, will be studying bones excavated from the ruins along with other team members at a portable morgue at the Port-au-Prince airport.

• Forensic anthropology in Guatemala
Nearly a quarter of a million people, mostly Maya Indians, disappeared during the 36-year civil war in Guatemala. In the latest attempt to identify victims, the exhumation of  a burial site with perhaps 899 bodies has been launched. It may take a year for the DNA testings to be completed.

• Nuclear waste in my backyard?
The possible site of Australia’s first nuclear waste dump has sparked divisive debate in Australia’s  Northern Territory. The debate concerns whether or not the process was carried out in a democratic manner, involving all the traditional owners of the proposed site of Muckaty Station.  Anthropologists Robert Graham, Brendan Corrigan and Kim Barber of Northern Land Council (NLC) did a study for a Land Commission hearing in 1995 to determine who are the traditional owners of Muckaty Station. They concluded that the Ngapa are the dominant group. It is not clear, however, that most of the Ngapa were involved in decision-making. Furthermore, the Northern Territory is not a state and has less voice in resisting the interests of the government in Canberra

• Going to the dogs
Pets in the U.S. are a $45 billion dollar business. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of American homes have at least one pet. According to cultural anthropologist Donald Joralemon, chair of the anthropology department of Smith College, household pets have been neglected by anthropologists as a subject of study. His Colloquium in Anthropology course this semester is focused on one particularly popular type of pet: dogs. He is guiding his students through the new area of anthrozoology which examines the relationship between people and animals.

• Flipper therapy not good for Flipper
Educational anthropologist Betsy Smith of Florida International University is credited with inventing dolphin therapy which is now a booming business. Debates are ongoing as to whether it works or not and whether or not it involves mistreatment of dolphins. Smith has changed from being a promoter to a critic of the practice and says it involves both the “exploitation of vulnerable people and vulnerable dolphins.”  In a telephone interview with the Washington Post, she said: “When I started this whole thing, I had no idea what I was unleashing.”

• Political dressing
Sarah Brown, wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the U.K., is stepping into the fashion world and putting together an all-British wardrobe that conveys statements about multiculturalism.  Abandoning wool skirts and cardigans, she is currently favoring designs by Osman Yousefzada. The son of Afghan migrants, he was born in Birmingham where his mother ran a dress-making business.  By the age of six years, he was designing dresses for his sister’s Barbie dolls. He studied anthropology at Cambridge and, after pursuing a career in London, moved into fashion and launched his own label in 2005. A rapidly rising star, he is influenced by a range of cultures. Some of his dresses draw on Maasai robes and Algerian chadors. Quoted in the Times, he says: “I’m intrigued by how powerful female figures in different cultures and different periods often use dress as a means of revealing or underlining their strength and presence.” His dresses cost in excess of £1,000.

• Cutting back on anthropology
Brandeis University, in a cost-saving plan, intends to phase out its graduate program in anthropology over the next few years. A few other departments are also affected by loss of faculty lines.

• First Australians were seafarers
Sea levels were much lower 50,000 years ago, and early humans likely took a route to Australia from Africa that followed (now submerged) coastal areas through South Asia to Southeast Asia. But there has never been a land bridge connecting Southeast Asia and Australia. Peter Hiscock, professor of archaeology at Australian National University , says: “The water barrier has always been in excess of 50 kilometres wide” and so the sea crossing is one of the greatest achievements of the period.  No remnants of boats have survived, but archaeologists posit that they were bamboo rafts.

• The writing on the wall
Signs written on cave walls in France during the Ice Age may constitute the earliest beginning of written communication.  Two researchers at the University of Victoria, Canada, have compiled cave signs from 150 sites and found striking similarities suggesting a form of written communication. Graduate student in archaeology Genevieve von Petzinger leads the research under the supervision of professor April Howell. The consistency of the signs over space and for 20,000 years attests to abstract thinking and communication about something  important to the people of the time.  Von Petzinger says: “I don’t need to know what it meant to them other than it was important to them…What we’re finding is that the leaps we made back then were just as impressive as the ones we have now in the computer age, if not more impressive.” Their findings are published in the New Scientist.

• Take the high road
Two U.S. scientists argue that the peopling of the Americas may have begun via Canada’s High Arctic Islands and Northwest Passage. This theory places the first arrivals much further north than the usual model and 10,000 years earlier. University of Utah anthropologists Dennis O’Rourke and Jennifer Raff published their findings in Current Biology.

• Ancient wonders of Turkey predate pyramids of Egypt
Newsweek magazine carried a story about an excavation in southeastern Turkey at Gibekli Tepe (“potbelly hill”) where findings  are reshaping the story of the dawn of civilization. Ian Hodder, professor of archaeology at Stanford University and director of its archaeology program, says that Gilbekli Tepe “…is unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date.” Findings include a temple built 11,500 years ago which is 7,000 years before the Great Pyramids of Giza. The finding has sparked the theory that people first came together in permanent settlements for the purpose of worship which then impelled them to seek stable food sources to support the temple. In other words: temples before cities rather than the other way around.

• Wonders of Ur could surpass pyramids of Egypt
The pyramids of Giza are a gold standard in awesomeness when it comes to the remains of early civilizations. Here is our second contender of the week:  archaeologists believe that the antiquities of Ur, in Iraq, could outshine those of ancient Egypt. Excavations at Ur, which have been slowed due to the war are  likely to recommence. Scarcely 20 percent of the site has been excavated. Ur is famous for its well-preserved ziggurat which dates to the third millennium BCE. It may also be the birthplace of Abraham, who is revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

• Underwater archaeology in the Orkneys
A team of archaeologists from a consortium of Scottish and Welsh universities has received funding to study a 12th century community that is currently submerged close to the onshore remains of St. Mary’s Chapel on Damsay. Caroline Wickham-Jones, an archaeology lecturer at Aberdeen University says:  “We have found some intriguing stone remains on the seabed…including walling, a massive tubular structure and a number of small upright sandstone slabs that look just like gravestones.”

• Watch where you walk
Several street collapses in Jerusalem have been blamed on Israeli archaeological excavations around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the most recent of which was reported by BBC.  Tunneling underneath the neighborhood and earth removal are apparently weakening surface structures.