Anthropology, Archiving and Cultures - Social Studies Network

Spain’s Move to Decolonize Its Museums Must Continue

Sapiens

DECEMBER 4, 2024

In early 2024, Spain’s culture minister announced that the nation would overhaul its state museum collections, igniting a wave of anticipation—and controversy. It is crucial to understand that decolonizing efforts in museums do not equate to an immediate, wholesale return of cultural material. Unlike the U.K.,

Museum

Museum Archaeology Artifacts Heritage

Bits and Bytes Don’t Leave Bones

Anthropology News

MARCH 27, 2025

Cultural artifacts, traditions, and knowledge do not simply move; they shift, adapt, and sometimes disappear in the process. When MySpace lost 50 million songs during a server migration , it wasnt just a glitchit was a reshaping of independent music history, determined by infrastructure choices rather than cultural value.

Archiving

Archiving Artifacts Anthropology Museum

An Ode to Jonathan Marks, or How I Became a Marksist

Anthropology 365

APRIL 23, 2025

I met Jon Marks in 2015, when I enrolled in the Masters program in anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I had just finished a Bachelors degree in anthropology and philosophy at East Carolina University, full of ideas but unsure where they might lead. in Anthropology, and a Ph.D. It wasnt therapy.

Anthropology

Anthropology Humanities Cultures History

Painting Through Change: How Aboriginal Artists Reimagined Animal Life in a Shifting Holocene Landscape

Anthropology.net

APRIL 30, 2025

Animals, Identity, and the Mid-Holocene Turn The simplicity of the LNF style belies a deeper cultural significance. A Living Archive The recognition of the LNF style expands not just the art historical timeline but also challenges archaeological assumptions about simplicity in form implying antiquity. J., & Watchman, A. Travers, M.,

Archaeology

Archaeology Oral History Anthropology Archiving

Application of Archaeological Anthropology and Cultural Resources Management

Anthropology for Beginners

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

archaeologists study past humans and societies primarily through their material remains – the buildings, tools, and other artifacts that constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former societies. Application of Archaeology Archaeology is the study of human past through material remains. How were those pots used?

Archaeology

Archaeology Cultures Anthropology Heritage

Faces from the Deep Past: How Europe's Skulls Record 30,000 Years of Upheaval

Anthropology.net

MAY 1, 2025

The Bone Archive of Human History If genes are blueprints, skulls are blueprints weathered by time. The results hint at a Europe in flux: a continent repeatedly reshaped not just by migration but by the slow churn of diet, disease, and cultural transformation. BC, without cultural affiliation, Věstonice cluster).

Ancestry

Ancestry Archiving Archaeology Anthropology

Echoes of Movement: How the Grammar of Indigenous Languages Maps the Peopling of the Americas

Anthropology.net

APRIL 30, 2025

Linguistic bottlenecks and demographic echoes The study builds on a long-standing hypothesis in historical linguistics and evolutionary anthropology—that migration events, especially those involving small founder populations, reduce linguistic diversity. In this case, however, the origin is likely in the north.

Archaeology

Archaeology Ancestry Archiving Artifacts

AI for Learning: Experiments from Three Anthropology Classrooms

Anthropology News

JUNE 27, 2024

AI is shaping our everyday lives, but as anthropology teaching faculty, most of our recent AI-related conversations have had a singular focus: how to deal with generative AI tools like ChatGPT in the classroom. Below, we present case studies from three anthropology courses using three different sets of AI tools.

Anthropology

Anthropology Archaeology Pedagogy Archiving

Making Anthropological Poetry Reel

Sapiens

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

In featuring three SAPIENS poems, students in a digital anthropology seminar infused video reels for Instagram with vivid history and powerful emotions. ✽ For a digital anthropology seminar at the University of Denver, I asked my students: “Why do the pressures of our lived realities demand a response through poetry?”

Anthropology

Anthropology Archiving History Humanities

Call for Pitches: Care

Anthropology News

JULY 15, 2024

Issued: July 15, 2024 Pitches due: rolling until November 1, 2024 First drafts due: 3 weeks after pitch decision Submit Here Anthropology News invites submissions on the forms of care that permeate human and nonhuman worlds. How do we care for objects, archives, words, history, traditions, animals, plants, ideas, and obligations?

Anthropology

Anthropology Archiving Tradition History

Words in the Snow: What 616 Languages Reveal About the Human Mind

Anthropology.net

APRIL 14, 2025

” That insight—often stated in anthropological circles—is easy to romanticize but hard to quantify. “We wanted to ask not just whether Inuit languages have many words for snow,” said the team, “but whether the same patterns hold across dozens of cultures and environmental niches.”

Humanities

Humanities Anthropology Archiving Cultures

Learning From Snapshots of Lost Fossils

Sapiens

APRIL 3, 2024

In museum archives, researchers found photos of remains from Paleolithic children who had belonged to a group of early Homo sapiens in Eurasia. Here the evidence from the archives is murky, but it appears that only Egbert’s skull and the teeth of Ksâr ‘Akil 4 were successfully extracted. Not all fossil discoveries happen in the field.

Archival Research

Archival Research Museum Archiving Artifacts

Donald E. Brown

Anthropology News

JULY 27, 2024

After army service, in 1959, Brown returned to El Camino and declared anthropology as his major. He transferred to UCLA to continue his anthropology courses with M. One of his classmates was Carrie Chu, who was from Hong Kong and was studying anthropology and Southeast Asian history. Smith and Hilda Kuper as his advisors.

Anthropology

Anthropology Archiving Humanities Cultures

Deception as Investment: How to Make Digital Ponzi Schemes in China

Anthropology News

APRIL 30, 2024

Archived webpage (ppdai.com) on Aug. Archived webpage (ppdai.com) on March 28, 2015, highlighting the high annual rate, professional services, and safety for investors if using their investment app. The post Deception as Investment: How to Make Digital Ponzi Schemes in China appeared first on Anthropology News.

Archiving

Archiving Anthropology Social Science Economics

David Cliff Grove

Anthropology News

JUNE 27, 2024

Grove, Jubilee Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Courtesy Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida, passed away on May 24, 2023, at the age of 87 after a long illness. Grove Faculty Papers collection at the University of Florida Archive. 1935-2023 David C.

Archaeology

Archaeology Anthropology Archiving Artifacts

The skull maps that quantified racism

Strange Maps

AUGUST 12, 2023

The divisions they display for the most part don’t correspond to any familiar type of boundaries — political, natural, or cultural. His book, The Races of Europe (1899), is a prime example of this pseudoscientific approach to anthropology, but it was relatively non-controversial at the time. So what do they denote? railway policy.

Archiving

Archiving Sociology Humanities Anthropology

???“Å falle mellom to stoler”: Africans in Norway

Anthropology News

JANUARY 24, 2024

How do you write about Blackness while trying to resist the insidious pull of cultural and racial assimilation? As Black Nordics, we live in countries that top “Happiest Nation in the World” lists yearly, lists that often make cursory mention of racial-cultural homogeneity as a key contributor to national happiness.

Heritage

Heritage Cultures History Archiving

A Poetics of Liberation: An Imagined Archive

Sapiens

APRIL 2, 2025

A Tanzanian historian and poet conjures alternative engagements with Black African women who were marginalized by violent colonial histories and imprisoned in the archives. My Imagined Archive was where I could envision what conversations with those who do not appear in official records could sound like.

Archiving

Archiving Heritage Museum Anthropology

An Ethnography of Textile Preservation: Caring for the Wardrobe of a Missing Person

Anthropology News

JANUARY 16, 2025

The human urge to collect and preserve objects, what Jacques Derrida calls archive fever , takeson special significance when there is no body to bury, no grave to visit. Anthropologist Christopher Tilley beautifully phrases that often in material culture [t]he thing is the person and the person is the thing.

Archiving

Archiving Anthropology Museum History

Revisiting the Spiritual Violence of BS Jobs

Sapiens

OCTOBER 15, 2024

The late David Graeber was an American professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. Graeber’s book is conversational in style, drawing on history, literature, sociology, anthropology, and pop culture to support his arguments. Read more from the archives: “ The Anthropology Professor in an Amazon Warehouse.”

Anthropology

Anthropology Economics Sociology Archiving

Unraveling a “Ghost” Neanderthal Lineage

Sapiens

OCTOBER 22, 2024

Evolutionary, cultural, and social processes that seem unimaginable if we try to apply them to sapiens populations, as we understand them through cultural anthropology, history, and archaeology. Read more from the archives: “ What’s Behind the Evolution of Neanderthal Portraits.”

Archaeology

Archaeology Archiving Anthropology History

Jorge Luiz da Cunha

Anthropology News

JANUARY 23, 2025

His life and work were dedicated to studying migration processes and their influence on the construction of cultural identity in Rio Grande do Sul. Luciana Sanguin, Pontifcia Universidade Catlica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) The post Jorge Luiz da Cunha appeared first on Anthropology News.

Archiving

Archiving Anthropology Library History

David Graeber’s Lasting Influence on Anthropology and Activism

Sapiens

FEBRUARY 19, 2025

Outside of anthropology, he became known for his popular salvos on work and democracyincluding the breakthrough publication Debt: The First 5,000 Years and his activism within the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. Read more from the SAPIENS archives: Do Things Have to Be This Way?

Anthropology

Anthropology Archiving History Cultures

How Do We Listen to the Dead?

Anthropology News

JANUARY 11, 2024

Credit: Nikada/iStock (184617058) Files in a archive. emphasis added) Johnnie Mae Warren was much harder to uncover in the archive. Johnnie Mae was not the only Black woman I stumbled upon in the Afro-American Newspaper archive who would lose their life to self-power. Both were pronounced dead later at the hospital.

Archiving

Archiving Anthropology Economics Humanities

Envisioning a More Empathetic Treatment of Great Ape Remains

Sapiens

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

Many museums are reckoning with the colonial legacies of the human remains and cultural objects in their collections. They face scrutiny from the public and researchers on how to best curate, research, and pay respects to cultural objects and, especially, human remains. HIS SKULL WAS FREE of visible trauma. No bullet holes.

Museum

Museum Archiving Anthropology History

The Mississippi Delta Chinese 100 Years Ago

Anthropology News

APRIL 25, 2025

Lessons on Race, the Supreme Court, and the Legacy of Franz Boas Credit: National Archives at San Francisco Hin Lun Jow, Certificate of Identity 43195, issued after he entered the U.S., Racial segregation and immigration were intertwined political issues, and the discipline of anthropology was thick in the middle.

Anthropology

Anthropology Archiving Public School Humanities

Material Fragility: A Rubric of Care

Anthropology News

DECEMBER 18, 2024

The limits of collections research and digital access flashed like a neon sign when we first partnered as graduate students for an undergraduate course on museum anthropology and community collaboration. Caring by Museums Museum stewardship has established boundaries care for collections.

Museum

Museum Anthropology Archiving Cultures

How Cosmic Explorations Are Reshaping Life on Earth

Sapiens

FEBRUARY 11, 2025

This series brings together writing from several members of a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project called ARIES (Anthropological Research into the Imaginaries and Exploration of Space). Read more from the SAPIENS archive: Lessons From Marsand Jamaicaon Sovereignty.

Archiving

Archiving Anthropology Government Humanities

Ira Jacknis

Anthropology News

DECEMBER 3, 2024

Hearst Museum of Anthropology taken by colleague Linda Waterfield. Born and educated in New York City, he matriculated at Yale University in 1970, graduating in 1974 with a dual degree in art history and anthropology and a senior thesis on the Japanese tea ceremony. enthusiasm for the scholarship and artworks he loved so well.

Museum

Museum Anthropology Archiving Tradition

How a Megadam Disrupts the Flow of Water—and Money

Sapiens

JANUARY 30, 2025

candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, my dissertation research brought me there to study how a hydroelectric dam, under construction since 2005, will impact the river and local residents in Assam and the neighboring state of Arunachal Pradesh. Tamul is addictive and well-known for its narcotic effects.

Government

Government Economics Archiving Anthropology

The Integration of Family Bedside Care in Zambian Public Hospitals

Anthropology News

DECEMBER 27, 2024

Through archival research at the Melville J. Jean Hunleth and Samar Al-Bulushi are the section contributing editors for the Association for Africanist Anthropology. The post The Integration of Family Bedside Care in Zambian Public Hospitals appeared first on Anthropology News.

Anthropology

Anthropology Archival Research Economics Library

Gaza’s Deaf Community in the Face of Genocide

Sapiens

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

In some circles, the use of capitalization for “Deaf” and “Disabled” indicates a cultural identity rather than a medical diagnosis. Read more from the SAPIENS archives: “ Living as Stateless Palestinians in Jordan.” At the time, they did not know the whereabouts of the children and staff. (

Archiving

Archiving Anthropology Psychology Government

As Humanities Fight for Support, New Journal Aims to Celebrate Their Role in Public Life

ED Surge

JANUARY 6, 2025

That includes, the editors note, anthropology, archaeology, classics, cultural studies, disability studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, history, law, linguistics, literary studies, performing arts, religious studies, philosophy, postcolonial studies, queer studies, psychology, sociology, visual arts, and women's studies.

Humanities

Humanities Oral History Archiving Pedagogy

Social Studies Network

Spain’s Move to Decolonize Its Museums Must Continue

Bits and Bytes Don’t Leave Bones

Trending Sources

An Ode to Jonathan Marks, or How I Became a Marksist

Painting Through Change: How Aboriginal Artists Reimagined Animal Life in a Shifting Holocene Landscape

Application of Archaeological Anthropology and Cultural Resources Management

Faces from the Deep Past: How Europe's Skulls Record 30,000 Years of Upheaval

Echoes of Movement: How the Grammar of Indigenous Languages Maps the Peopling of the Americas

AI for Learning: Experiments from Three Anthropology Classrooms

Making Anthropological Poetry Reel

Call for Pitches: Care

Words in the Snow: What 616 Languages Reveal About the Human Mind

Learning From Snapshots of Lost Fossils

Donald E. Brown

Deception as Investment: How to Make Digital Ponzi Schemes in China

David Cliff Grove

The skull maps that quantified racism

???“Å falle mellom to stoler”: Africans in Norway

A Poetics of Liberation: An Imagined Archive

An Ethnography of Textile Preservation: Caring for the Wardrobe of a Missing Person

Revisiting the Spiritual Violence of BS Jobs

Unraveling a “Ghost” Neanderthal Lineage

Jorge Luiz da Cunha

David Graeber’s Lasting Influence on Anthropology and Activism

How Do We Listen to the Dead?

Envisioning a More Empathetic Treatment of Great Ape Remains

The Mississippi Delta Chinese 100 Years Ago

Material Fragility: A Rubric of Care

How Cosmic Explorations Are Reshaping Life on Earth

Ira Jacknis

How a Megadam Disrupts the Flow of Water—and Money

The Integration of Family Bedside Care in Zambian Public Hospitals

Gaza’s Deaf Community in the Face of Genocide

As Humanities Fight for Support, New Journal Aims to Celebrate Their Role in Public Life

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