• Bernie, let’s chat
Gillian Tett is the Financial Times’ US managing editor and a cultural anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. This week she co-authored an article published in the FT on Bernard Madoff, based on a chat with the swindler himself.

• Friend me
The subject of animal-animal friendships prompted a network television news magazine to seek out William & Mary anthropologist Barbara King to provide context to the phenomenon. She appeared April 10 on a segment of CBS News Sunday Morning. King is the author of a number of books, including Being With Animals, an anthropological exploration of the evolution of humans’ relationship with animals.

• Gay caveman
A team of Czech archaeologists say they have found the remains of a gay man from 2900-2500 BCE, near Prague. Question: What is the evidence of gayness? Answer: Burials during the Copper Age were gender-marked in terms of placement of the body and items interred. The person in question was buried on his left side, head facing east, no weapons, and household jugs at his feet–all characteristic of women’s burials at the time. Archaeologist Katerina Semradova said that this “third gender” discovery mirrors an earlier one in which a female warrior from the Mesolithic period was buried like a man.

• A bigger boat
The Irish Times carried an article about one of Ireland’s great objects: the Lurgan canoe. This massive oak boat resides in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, where it is too large to be photographed as a whole. Dating from around 2200 BCE, the boat is made from an oak tree far bigger than what could grow in Ireland today. It is thus evidence of climate change (the climate was cooler and moister in the past). Check out this link to see a photo taken in 1902 when the boat was brought to Dublin. (Bloggers note: Read latest AW post for more about the Lurgan Canoe).

• Make it with bamboo
An experimental study shows that it is possible to make complex tools, including knives, from bamboo. This research supports the possibility that early ancestors in East Asia used bamboo and wood for tools rather than stone. Findings of the study will be published in the journal, Quarternary International.

• Who looks like who?
Cranial features of contemporary men and women may be more similar than they were in the past. This finding is based on analysis of hundreds of Spanish and Portuguese skulls from the 16th century forward. Ann Ross, associate professor of anthropology at North Carolina State University, notes that the findings have implications for forensic analysis.

• Kudos
Katherine Reedy-Maschner, anthropology professor at Idaho State University, has been appointed to serve on the Scientific and Statistical Committee for the U.S. North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC). The NPFMC is one of eight U.S. regional councils that oversees management of U.S. fisheries.

Herbert Maschner has been appointed as director of the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Maschner has served as the Interim Director since June and is a member of the anthropology faculty at Idaho State University.

• You’re most welcome
Hugh Raffles, cultural anthropology professor at the New School and newly embraced U.S. citizen, published an op-ed in the New York Times–above the crease and with a large color illustration. Congratulations! The gist of the essay is that immigrant humans, like immigrant non-human biological species, do more good than harm by introducing variety and creativity.

• Fog of…what
The question is: can computational science help to prevent or win wars? As covered in an article in Nature, the Pentagon is betting yes (to both preventing and winning, presumably). The U.S. government is moving millions of dollars into computational social science programs within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Nature called on Robert Albro, cultural anthropologist in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the American Anthropological Association’s Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the Security and Intelligence Communities. Albro comments “…voodoo science is all too frequently generated from the work of computational social science.” [Blogger’s note: like you, I wondered what exactly computational social science is. I searched, in Google, and found this definition from a George Mason University website: Computational social science is the interdisciplinary science of complex social systems and their investigation through computational modeling and related techniques].

• Sugar daddies not so sweet
Schools in South China’s Guandong province are launching a crash course for girls about self-respect and how to resist the sweet talk of sugar daddies. The China Daily quotes Li Xia, an anthropologist/women’s studies scholar, who says “Wanting to rely on men is a complicated social phenomenon caused by various factors and it is improper to attribute it to personal immorality.” [Blogger’s note: that would be whose immorality–his or hers?]

• Identifying war criminals in Central Africa
William Samarin, professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Toronto, has testified about the ability of Central Africans to identify Lingala, a Congolese language, as the language spoken by their alleged aggressors from the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC). His views are contested.

• What’s going on? Racial/ethnic shifts in U.S. cities
Newly released census data show that the black population of Detroit and Washington, D.C., has declined in the past ten years. NPR speaks with Roderick Harrison, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Harrison is former chief of racial statistics at the U.S. Census Bureau. [Blogger’s note: around five years ago, I had a conversation with a black taxi driver. in D.C., in which the topic of “race” in D.C. came up. He told me something like this: he had recently driven two white men–maybe businessmen or political people–who discussed how they were going to turn D.C. into a white city. I was appalled. I said: really, they said that? He said, yes, and here I am, a black man, driving this cab, listening to them talk like this.]

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/2/11” →

• Japan has to deal with “nuclear allergy”
Contaminated water, spinach, people and perhaps more. Peter Wynn Kirby writes about concepts of pollution,  contamination, and stigma in Japan. He is a researcher with the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford and a research fellow at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. His latest book is Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan.

• Lessons from Chernobyl about radiation pollution
Adriana Petryna, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, was quoted in the New York Times: “Mismanagement of information creates consequences down the line.” Additionally, regarding the post-tsunami/quake/nuclear situation in Japan, the same article quoted Joshua Breslau, medical anthropologist at UC Davis: “We have to be careful that we don’t create a whole class of victims, that we don’t put people in some diagnostic box that makes them permanently dependent.”  Blogger’s note: kind of we-ish, isn’t it?

• Spiritual healing in Cuba
Drug Week picked up on a new publication in Anthropology & Medicine about Cuban scientific spiritists in Havana. The lead author is Santo D. Espirito and colleagues at the University of Lisbon.

• Hot stuff
Louisiana’s Avery Island is the home of the legendary tabasco hot sauce manufactured, since 1868, by the McIlhenny family. The Economist quoted Nick Sitzer, folklorist and professor of anthropology and American studies at Tulane University, in an article about how the McIlhenny family provides for its employees full health, dental and retirement benefits. Blogger’s note: for further reading, enjoy Jeffrey Rothfelder’s McIlhenny’s Gold: How a Louisiana family Built the Tabasco Empire.

• Book launch in Islamabad
A galaxy of diplomats, intellectuals, educationists, students and foreigners at the premises of German Embassy in Islamabad celebrated the publication of At the Shrine of the Red Sufi: Five Days and Nights on Pilgrimage in Pakistan, by German cultural anthropologist, Dr Jürgen Wasim Frembgen.

• Don’t cut anth
Mounting opposition to proposed cuts at Glasgow University includes resistance to cutting anthropology courses.

• Dirty museum exhibition
From Dutch obsession with cleanliness to English chamber pots and more, a new exhibit in London mounted by the Wellcome Collection looks at dirt around the world. “Dirt: the Filthy Reality of Everyday Life” exemplifies the great cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas‘s dictum that dirt is “matter out of place.” Depending on context, dirt can excite disgust, moral outrage or sexual excitement. Blogger’s note: What more can you ask for? The exhibit is free at the Wellcome Collection until August 31.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/28/11” →

• What is the meaning of safe?
Barbara Rose Johnston, cultural anthropologist at UC Santa Cruz, asks what is “safe” in today’s nuclear world?

• The lessons of Fukushima
Hugh Gusterson, cultural anthropologist at George Mason University, discusses the lessons of Fukushima for nuclear energy policy.

• Staying calm when the unthinkable happens
Theories abound as to what makes Japanese people so cooperative, patient, and resilient. “It strikes me as a Buddhist attitude,” says Glenda Roberts, an anthropology professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University.  “Westerners might tend to see it as passivity, but it’s not that. It takes a lot of strength to stay calm in the face of terror.”

• Fire it up
Up for debate is the question of the use of controlled fire by our ancestors. A review of data from over 100 European sites indicates hearths dating to 300-400,000 years ago. Others (notably Richard Wrangham of Harvard University) claim much earlier use of controlled fire by hominins in Africa 1.9 million years ago. A big question is: what is convincing evidence of “controlled use of fire”?

• In memoriam
Donny George, prominent Iraqi archaeologist, died at the age of 60 years following a heart attack. He was director of research for the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage when the United States and its allies invaded Iraq. He replaced a cousin of Saddam Hussein as head of the Iraq National Museum and helped to rebuild the museum, recover stolen objects, and protect Iraq’s many archaeological sites from destruction and looting.

• Regime change is not enough
In an article in the Huffington Post, cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller of West Chester University argues that entrenched poverty in North Africa is the underlying reason for the recent popular protests in several countries and revolution/civil war in Libya. In Egypt, 40 percent of the population live on less than two dollars a day. The same is true, he points out, in other North African and sub-Saharan countries. Stoller says: “When present and future leaders in North and sub-Saharan Africa begin to listen to the poor…when they understand what it means to live on less than two dollars a day, then and only then will the poor begin to see their lives improve.”

• Send UN peacekeepers to Libya
William Beeman, chair of the anthropology department of the University of Minnesota, says that the UN should send peacekeeping forces to Libya to monitor the situation. The presence of UN forces would make US military intervention in Libya unnecessary.

• Another stroll to Tally’s Corner, DC
WaPo readers responded to last Sunday’s “Answer Man” article on the location of Tally’s Corner, the field site of cultural anthropologist Elliot Liebow‘s pioneering study of some low-income, African American men’s street corner life. Local details continue to emerge.

• Is Facebook good for friendship?
The Times (London) carried a yes/no “fight” between Cameron Marlow, data science manager at Facebook, and Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University. Marlow says yes. Dunbar, adhering to Dunbar’s Law, says no.

• Egypt’s antiquities chief to resign
Zahi Hawass, longtime head of antiquities in Egypt, says he will resign. Hawass asserts that his resignation has to do with the looting of Egyptian archaeological sites. The current security of sites and collections is unclear as is their fate if Hawass resigns.

• PNeolithic sauna in Wiltshire, England
Remains of a 4500-year-old sauna have been excavated at Marden Henge close to the river Avon. English Heritage’s Jim O’Leary said that the building brings to mind sweat lodges of American Indians.

• Awesome in life and death
The Irish Times covered a new exhibit at the National Museum of Ireland of 100 objects associated with the great passage tombs. Archaeologist Alison Sheridan argues that the tombs were designed to be awe-inspiring status statements. Inclusion of beautifully carved mace heads and other objects added to the message of power and conspicuous consumption.

• Ochre mine makes Australia’s National Heritage List
Wilgie Mia, dated to 27,000 years ago, is one of the world’s oldest mines. It has long been a source of high quality ochre that is highly prized by Aboriginal Australians. The region also has the highest known density of pictographic rock art in Southern Western Australia and many sacred sites. The new Heritage site includes the mine, sacred territory, archaeological material, and thousands of examples of rock art.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/7/11” →

• Plaque it: Tally’s Corner, DC
Elliot Liebow bucked the tide in the late 1960s when he decided to do his cultural anthropology dissertation research in a US city. Moreover, he chose to do participant observation with a group of low-income African American men. During his research, Liebow hung out around a street corner in Washington, DC. Forty-four years later, a reader sends this question to Answer Man, aka John Kelly of the Washington Post:  “Where exactly was the street corner that he [Liebow] wrote about?” Kelly got in touch with Harriet Liebow, Elliot’s wife, who survives him. She revealed the heretofore unknown location of Tally’s Corner: it’s the corner of  11th and M streets. Blogger’s note: Tally’s corner should have a cultural heritage plaque, and it should be included in DC tours.

• Here’s looking at anthropology
“National anthropology” in Australia is the study by Australian anthropologists (mainly White) of indigenous/Aboriginal peoples. It is now under attack, from within anthropology itself. Melinda Hickson, senior lecturer in anthropology at the Australian National University, has brought the issues together in an edited book, Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia. She refers to the  “demise of anthropological authority.”

• McDonalds at the sacred-secular divide
Sean Carey of Roehampton University provides an update on the McDonalds controversy in Mauritius.

• Let’s not say goodbye
The Guardian carried an article about disappearing languages and the work of Cambridge University’s World Oral Literature Project led by Mark Turin. The database provides information about endangered languages and audio clips

• American treasures (not)
Kirk French of Penn State University and Jason De León of the University of Michigan are archaeo professors now starring in a new show on the Discovery Channel. French and De León take viewers on the road in America to discover “treasures” (not their preferred word for the title of the show).

• If you dig it…
An amateur archaeologist in Collinstown, Ireland, unearthed human and other remains dating back more than 4,000 years ago when constructing a shed in the back of his house and bad weather created a landslide.

• What child is this?
Announcement of the discovery of the oldest human remains, those of a cremated child, in Alaska, attracted widespread media attention. The child was cremated in the cooking pit of a house which was then abandoned. Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and several colleagues lead the excavation and study. The Washington Post quoted Potter: “This is a child people loved, took care of…the fact that the house was abandoned speaks to that.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/28/11” →

• Social knowledge for good social policy
Sean Carey, cultural anthropologist at Roehampton University and frequent guest blogger at anthropologyworks, published an article in the Guardian on how social anthropology speaks to big social questions such as multiculturalism and public services. The message: find out how communities work before forging policy. He takes you to Brick Lane in London’s East End for an example of successful multicultural policy.

• How is flood insurance working for you?
A Louisiana Sea Grant is supporting a two-year study by anthropology and geography faculty and students from Louisiana State University. The goal is to learn how flood insurance affects residents of SW Louisiana and how people view flood insurance. Findings will lead to improved relationships between people and the federal agencies that administer the National Flood Insurance Program.

• Cruel cuts
In Scotland, following announced plans of cutting anthropology courses at Glasgow University, playwright Sir Tom Stoppard put his name on an open letter against the cuts. The letter was also signed by several hundred academics.

• A smooth stone between the bricks
The Washington Post profiled the research of Mark Leone, archaeology professor at the University of Maryland, on African slaves’ lives in America and their religious beliefs. Leone and his team have been working at the Wye plantation, outside Easton, Maryland, for six years. Findings include West African-style charms buried at the entrance to the slave quarters and a smooth field stone laid within the brickwork of a furnace. The stone may have been related to the Yoruba belief of a connection between the stone and Eshu-Elegba, the deity of fortune.

• From the field: excavating Maya civilization
In its “scientists at work” column, the New York Times blog featured two archaeologists at the Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala: Takeshi Inomata, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, and Daniela Triadan. The site was first excavated in the 1960s. Inomata and Triadan discuss the changes in excavation methods since then and the importance of building relations and working collaboratively with local Maya people.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/21/11” →

• The language(s) of protest in Egypt
“Speaking truth to power” takes on cultural context in the 18 days of the Egypt uprising, so writes Ben Zimmer in “How the War of Words Was Won.” There are parallels to the use of language in other political uprisings. But the Egypt protests are distinct in many ways, such as the uses of “high” and “low” Arabic, and the use of other languages, notably English. Zimmer quotes Niloofar Haeri, professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, on the use of English as a way to “assert that the country is modern and its citizens know the global language.”

• Bt cotton controversy
Cultural anthropologist Glenn Stone, professor at Washington University, is publishing an article on Bt cotton in India in the March issue of World Development. Physorg comments on his study which used a different strategy to assess the performance of Bt seeds. One question is whether or not Bt seeds reduce the need for chemical pesticides.

• Zora Neale Hurston anniversary
2011 marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston is most known as an African-American writer. But she was also a doctoral student of cultural anthropology at Columbia University. Rachel Newcomb, associate professor of anthropology at Rollins College, Florida, writes about how Hurston has been “misunderstood, rejected, neglected, and then embraced…”

• Outrun: one more reason Neanderthals didn’t make it
Study of the performance of heels of modern-day distance runners in comparison to the heels of Neanderthals indicates that Neanderthals were good walkers but not good runners.

• Stone tools out of Africa to Arabia
Coverage by NPR of the discovery of modern stone tools in the Arabian peninsula includes comments by several archaeologists including Alison Brooks, professor of anthropology at George Washington University. She says that “it’s an intriguing find” and it should spur new research in new “places and directions…”

• Lucy: these arches were made for walking
New analyses of the fossilized foot bone of Lucy, the world’s most famous complete hominid fossil skeleton, indicate that she had arches in her feet. That means she had lost grasping ability in her big toe. But she was better able to walk upright.

• Tahrir Square speaks
“What happens there determines what happens in Egypt,” according to cultural anthropologist Farha Ghannam of Swarthmore College who is quoted in the Philadelphia Enquirer. Ghannam has been studying the cultural meaning of public space in Cairo for 17 years and is the author of Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo.

• Yemen: revolution not just a tweet away
CNN called on Daniel Martin Varisco, professor of anthropology at Hofstra University, for commentary about political upheavals in the Middle East and the Maghreb. Varisco points to contrasts between Tunisia and Yemen: Yemen’s population is more rural, Yemen’s literacy rates are lower, and Yemen has the presence al Qaeda. Compared to Egypt, Yemen’s President Salah does not rule by the iron fist but rather by playing off internal rivalries. Blogger’s note: Something to watch out for: Yemen’s per capita gun ownership is second highest in the world after the United States.

• Prisons without walls
In Mexico, some prisons are under control of criminal gangs. Cartel vehicles arrive and load up gang members who walk past guards to freedom, according to the Washington Post. The article quotes prison expert Elena Azaola Garrido, a researcher at Mexico’s Center for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, who comments on a recent prison break-out: “It seems like an extreme, shocking incident, but to a lesser extent it’s happening all around the country.”

• Where’s mummy?
Secrets of the Silk Road, a much anticipated exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Archaeology, opened Saturday with many people in attendance in spite of the absence of the centerpieces: two mummies from China. The Museum had to resort to a fall-back plan. It created two dummy mummies for display in lieu of the real mummies. The media is not saying why China banned the display of the mummies after many months of negotiation with the Museum. An article in the Washington Post points out that the mummies are from China’s Xinjiang province, with its large Uighur population, and the mummies exhibit Caucasian features. The silent message of the mummies is that they may not be sufficiently “Chinese.”

• Reburial of human remains in question
Many archaeologists in the UK are concerned about the implications of 2008 legislation introduced by the Ministry of Justice requiring all human remains excavated in England and Wales to be reburied within two years of recovery. Archaeologists say that two years does not give them enough time for study. An extension has been granted. The Ministry has no guidelines about where or how remains should be reburied, or what records should be kept.

• Our shrinking brains
Human brains have been shrinking over the past 30,000 years. Brian Hare, assistant professor of biological anthropology at Duke University, says that shrinking size does not mean that intelligence is declining. Instead it may be that intelligence and skills are developing in more sophisticated dimensions. Further, if even less comforting, studies of brain size of other domesticated animals show similar decreases. Blogger’s note: in the hominid fossil record, Neanderthals have the largest brains. Just imagine Neanderthal Jeopardy.