anthropology

Emily Meggett, Preserver of Gullah Geechee Foodways of the Coastal South, Dies at 90

Mrs. Meggett cooked for decades for her family and church, and as a domestic worker for white families in South Carolina. Her book represents the work of many women who preserved food traditions passed from Africa through slavery and Jim Crow. 

Racist Interpretations of Human Evolution Remain Prevalent in Popular Culture, Museums, and Textbooks

by Rui Diogo

Science has never been immune from the prejudices and assumptions of the society around it. Much of the received wisdom about human origins and evolution rests on flawed assumptions about group hierarchies. 

Anthropologist on Gathering Family History: Ask Your Elders the Right Questions

University of Texas professor Elizabeth Keating was shocked by how few of her students could discuss their own family's history, and created a guide to investigating. 

A Paris Museum Holds 18,000 Human Skulls, but Won't Say Whose

By identifying the sources of skulls in its collection, France's Museum of Mankind fears it might open itself to demands for restitution. 

Preparing Feasts Helped Make Us Human

Cooking large meals represented a breakthrough in human evolution, both because cooked foods proved easier to digest and support larger brains and because the occasions supported more complex social organization. 

How Did Childhood Folklore Spread Before the Internet?

"Folklore is by its nature not handed down by an authority. It is of the people, by the people—even if those people are children."

Ancient Flood Tales May be More than Myth

The climate crisis is pushing some historians and folklorists to reconsider indigenous societies' origin stories of flooding and geographic cataclysm. Should science take this perspective into account? 

Anthropologists: Heartland Imagery Distorts History of Midwest, Elevates Whites as Real Americans

Heartland imagery depends on images of white individuals and families obscure the forces of migration and industrialization that shaped the region and reinforce an image of rural whites as ideal citizens, argue two anthropologists. 

Harvard Holds Remains of 7,000 Native and Enslaved Persons

by Gillian Brockell

A university task force convened last year to investigate the provenance of human remains in Harvard's museums and collections condemned the leak of the report while defending their committee's work toward returning remains to appropriate tribal authorities and memorializing the deceased. 

Draft Report Says Harvard Holds Remains of 19 Possible Enslaved People and Thousands of Native Americans

"A leaked draft report by a Harvard committee says the university has the remains of at least 19 people who were likely enslaved and nearly 7,000 Native Americans, according to the Harvard Crimson."

Zora Neale Hurston's Complicated Relationship to Black Race Pride

by Lauren Michele Jackson

A new edited collection of the folklorist, anthropologist and novelist reveals the broad, category-defying intellectual life of a "genius of the South."

The Antivax Right is Bringing Human Sacrifice to America

Past debates about closing schools and businesses to control the pandemic at least could claim to be about balancing costs and benefits. The campaign to refuse vaccination will kill people for no purpose whatsoever.

Richard Leakey, Finder of Fossils Key to Story of Human Origins, Dies at 77

Leakey's discoveries were foundational both to the study of human origins and the model of scientific investigation. 

This Paleoanthropologist is Unraveling the Mystery of How Humans Started Eating Meat

"Every time I got to pull a bone out of the ground it literally felt like reaching through time. I was touching a bone that hadn’t been touched for a million and a half years — it was magical" – Briana Pobiner.

Can Skeletons Have Racial Identity?

Forensic anthropologists have largely stuck with techniques for assigning geographic ancestry to skeletal remains. Recently, the origins of those techniques in last century's scientific racism have prompted some in the discipline to call for stopping the practice.

100 Years After the Tulsa Race Massacre, Meet the Forensic Anthropologist Searching for Victims' Remains

Anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield discusses her family’s ties to this history, what the excavation entails, and how the search for the remains of Tulsa Race Massacre victims fits into a long and troubling history of the careless treatment of Black bodies.

Experiments With Reality: New Histories of the Magical

by Ed Simon

A history of magic as a way of seeing the world offers perspective on the urgent need to reconsider humanity's relationship to the natural world.

What Should Museums Do With the Bones of the Enslaved?

The Smithsonian is considering how to deal with its natural history collection of human remains, including those of enslaved people. Secretary Lonnie Bunch III suggests that the museum must be guided by the imperative "to honor and remember."

Marshall D. Sahlins, Groundbreaking Anthropologist, Dies at 90

Marshal Sahlins was an innovator in the practice of campus "teach-ins," developed as a way for he and colleagues to protest the war in Vietnam without disengaging from contact with their students. 

Paleo Con

by Daniel Immerwahr

Why do the lifestyles of paleolithic hunter-gatherers repeatedly pop up as foils for western capitalist modernity?