Pacifica Public Radio [U.S.] aired a piece on the implications of the election of Republican Paul Ryan to speaker of the House of Representatives for U.S. immigration policy. It included commentary by Jason de León, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a long-term anthropological study of clandestine border crossings between Mexico and the United States. León is author of The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. He uses a combination of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to critique “Prevention through Deterrence,” describing the U.S. border enforcement policy as one that steers migrants to cross in extremely harsh environmental conditions with a high risk of death. According to de Léon, this policy has failed to deter border crossers for two decades while turning the rugged terrain of southern Arizona into a killing field.
Do you believe in magic? Surveys not the right tool to find out
Christian cemetery. source: Creative CommonsAn article in the Irish Times about “spooky” phenomena and supernatural beliefs in general quoted Lawrence Taylor, a professor of anthropology at Maynooth University and the author of Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics. He comments that while findings from surveys on supernatural belief are regularly reported, they have little scientific value. The article also mentions the work of archaeologists R. C. Turner and R. G. Scaife who note in the preface to their edited book, Bog Bodies: New Discoveries and New Perspectives, that the discovery of human remains in bogs and marshes has long formed a part of oral history throughout Europe.
The New Zealand Herald carried an article about a recently discovered Soviet era blacklist of “ideologically harmful compositions” including Tina Turner, Madness, and The Village People. The list, which was put together by the Communist Party’s youth wing, was distributed to bureaucrats in January 1985, two months before Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the premiership. Banning the artists only helped to make them more popular in Russia, according to Alexei Yurchak, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, who unearthed the blacklist: “The measures proposed to curb the spread of Western music helped to create the conditions that enabled its further expansion.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news: 6/9/14”→
National Public Radio (U.S.) reported on the role of cultural anthropology in efforts to prevent the spread of Ebola in Guinea.
Specialists at a Guékedou, southern Guinea isolation ward. Seyllou/AFP/Getty
Doctors, nurses and epidemiologists from international organizations are flying in to help, along with cultural anthropologists. Understanding local beliefs can help get communities to trust international health care workers, says Barry Hewlett, a medical anthropologist at Washington State University. Hewlett was invited to join the Doctors Without Borders Ebola team during an outbreak in Uganda in 2000. There are anthropologists on the current team in Guinea as well.
Before the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders started bringing in anthropologists, medical staff had a difficult time convincing families to bring their sick loved ones to clinics and isolation wards. In Uganda, Hewlett remembers, people were afraid of the international health care workers: “The local people thought that the Europeans in control of the isolation units were in a body parts business … Their loved ones would go into the isolation units, and they would never see them come out.”
Health care workers did not always promptly notify relatives of a death because of the need to dispose of the body quickly, Hewlett wrote in a report on his experiences in Uganda: “The anger and bad feelings about not being informed were directed toward health care workers in the isolation unit … This fear could have been averted by allowing family members to see the body in the bag and allowing family members to escort the body to the burial ground.” In addition, Hewlett points out that the large tarps surrounding isolation units were removed so family members could see and talk with a sick relative.
Efforts to contain such outbreaks must be “culturally sensitive and appropriate,” Hewlett says. “Otherwise people are running away from actual care that is intended to help them.” Medical anthropologists can help doctors and other medical experts understand how a local population perceives disease, death, and loss. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/7/14”→
National Geographic news covered the ongoing debate in Britain about the badger situation and whether or not to cull. The article quotes AW’s Sean Carey, a research fellow at the University of Roehampton’s Department of Social Science, said that the debate has some quintessentially British aspects to it. “To some extent, it’s a rerun of the fox-hunting debate, a split between town and country. The townie has a romanticized version of the badger, which has a privileged place in English literature. Mr. Badger in The Wind in the Willows is an outsider but has heroic qualities. The country farmer, on the other hand, prides himself on realism. It’s a case of ‘let’s get rid of the sentiment and get practical,'” he said. In the House of Commons, the Labour Party demand that badger culls be abandoned was rejected by a vote of 299 to 250.
Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer / Louis Sahagun, LA Times
• Paiute massacre site source of new disputes
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Indian oral histories and U.S. Cavalry records offer insights into a horrific massacre in 1863 when thirty-five Paiute Indians were chased into Owens Lake by settlers and soldiers to drown or be gunned down. California DPW (Department of Water and Power) archaeologists discovered the site a year ago, but its existence was not revealed to prevent vandalism. A dispute has arisen between the DWP and air pollution authorities is forcing it into the open. The site is on a section of the lake bed that state air pollution authorities say contributes to dust storms that create a public health hazard. The site also involves Indian heritage protection. Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation is quoted as saying: “Just over there, 150 years ago, our people ran into the water and then were picked off…We take this personally — my grandmother told me about this massacre and she knew the people it happened to…This ground, and the artifacts in it, is who we are.” She wants the land to be left undisturbed.
• Very old canoes
Ancient Britons made hundreds of thousands of dugout canoes, archaeologists now believe. Analysis of a key long-buried ancient river channel in Cambridgeshire suggests that canoes, made of tree trunks, were the basic transport in prehistoric times. Archaeologists and conservators are attempting to save eight of canoes in a specially designed cold store conservation facility at a Bronze Age site and museum at Flag Fen near Peterborough. The boats date from 1600 to 1000 BCE.
• Early immigrants to Bronze Age Britain
According to a report in The Telegraph, archaeologists analyzing findings from burial pits in Suffolk have found that immigrants were settling in Britain as far back as 3,000 years ago. Immigrants at that time came from Scandinavia, the western Mediterranean, and North Africa. Findings are published in British Archaeology. Mike Pitts, the editor, said: “This is the first burial site of its type that we’ve found and it reveals that Britain was always part of a bigger landscape that includes most of Europe.”
• Lost and found: Sunken city in the Mediterranean
The Australian, among other mainstream media outlets, carried an article about an Egyptian city, swallowed by sand and sea more than 1,200 years ago. Elsbeth van der Wilt, a University of Oxford archaeologist working at the site, said the port played an important role in the network of long-distance trade in the Eastern Mediterranean and would have been among the first stops for foreign merchants arriving in Egypt: “Excavations in the harbour basins yielded an interesting group of lead weights, likely to have been used by both temple officials and merchants in the payment of taxes and the purchasing of goods. Among these are an important group of Athenian weights. It is the first time that weights like these have been identified during excavations in Egypt.” The article includes a video.
Scientists have raised concern about the health effects of the smoke released from burning wood. / Wikimedia Commons
• First case of very old case of cancer
The finding of a cancerous tumor in the rib of a Neanderthal specimen predates previous evidence of such a tumor over 100,000 years. Prior to this research, the earliest known bone cancers occurred in samples approximately 1,000-4,000 years old. The cancerous rib, recovered from Krapina in Croatia, is an incomplete specimen, and thus the researchers were unable to comment on the overall health effects the tumor may have had on this individual. Findings are published in PLoS One by David Frayer from the University of Kansas and co-researchers. Science Daily quotes Frayer as saying that “Evidence for cancer is extremely rare in the human fossil record. This case shows that Neandertals, living in an unpolluted environment, were susceptible to the same kind of cancer as living humans.” However, in an interview with CBS news, he clarifies that Neanderthals did not always live in a completely clean air environment: “They didn’t have pesticides, but they probably were sleeping in caves with burning fires…They were probably inhaling a lot of smoke from the caves. So the air was not completely free of pollutants — but certainly, these Neanderthals weren’t smoking cigarettes.”
• Let them eat grass
The Republic and Science Daily discussed a new study showing a major change in the diet of African hominids about 3.5 million years ago when some ancestors added grasses or sedges to their menus. Tests on tooth enamel indicate that prior to about 4 million years ago, Africa’s hominids had a chimpanzee diet that included fruits and some leaves. According to CU-Boulder anthropology professor Matt Sponheimer, lead study author, despite the availability of grasses and sedges, the hominids seem to have ignored them for an extended period: “We don’t know exactly what happened…But we do know that after about 3.5 million years ago, some of these hominids started to eat things that they did not eat before, and it is quite possible that these changes in diet were an important step in becoming human.” Findings are published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences along with three related papers.
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