Anthropology, Artifacts and Humanities

The Mythological Tapestry of Humanity: Unraveling Ancient Stories through Genes and Geography

Anthropology.net

JANUARY 27, 2025

A Quest for Our Earliest Stories Myths and legends have always been windows into the human psyche, revealing our fears, dreams, and attempts to understand the world. Yet, could these stories also encode the history of humanity’s migrations and interactions?

Humanities

Humanities Geography Artifacts Anthropology

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. Digital artifacts follow the same patterns. When NASAs early satellite data became inaccessible due to obsolete formats , it was not just information that was lost, but a record of human exploration.

Archiving

Archiving Artifacts Anthropology Museum

East Meets West: Avar Society’s Genetic Patchwork in Early Medieval Austria

Anthropology.net

JANUARY 18, 2025

New research, published in Nature 1 by an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, delves into the lives of two neighboring Avar communities in Lower Austria. The graves, filled with artifacts like ornate belt fittings and everyday items, reflected a shared culture. Gretzinger, J.,

Ancestry

Ancestry Archaeology Anthropology Heritage

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

Anthropology.net

APRIL 30, 2025

A new study in Scientific Reports 1 argues that their grammar preserves a faint but measurable imprint of the first humans to populate the continent. Naranjo have identified a gradient in grammatical complexity across the Western Hemisphere that aligns with the likely direction of prehistoric human expansion. link] Reich, D.

Archaeology

Archaeology Ancestry Archiving Artifacts

The Stone Blades of Jebel Faya: Rewriting the Story of Early Humans in Arabia

Anthropology.net

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

A Discovery in the Desert The story of human migration is often told in sweeping arcs—great waves of Homo sapiens leaving Africa, moving into Eurasia, and eventually populating the entire planet. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025). Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025).

Humanities

Humanities Archaeology Anthropology Artifacts

Carving the Mind: Middle Paleolithic Engravings and the Dawn of Symbolic Thought

Anthropology.net

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

The Search for Early Symbolic Expression For decades, archaeologists have debated the origins of symbolic thought in early humans. Was it an innovation exclusive to modern humans, or did our distant relatives also engage in abstract expression? Symbolic behavior in early humans is often difficult to identify with certainty.

Artifacts

Artifacts Archaeology Anthropology Ancestry

Application of Archaeological Anthropology and Cultural Resources Management

Anthropology for Beginners

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

Application of Archaeology Archaeology is the study of human past through material remains. 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.

Archaeology

Archaeology Cultures Anthropology Heritage

Ancient DNA Illuminates South Africa’s Human History

Anthropology.net

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

A groundbreaking study 1 of ancient human DNA from the Oakhurst rock shelter in South Africa is shedding new light on population history in one of the world’s earliest regions of modern human activity. It contained more than 40 human graves and preserved layers of human artifacts, such as stone tools, going back 12,000 years.”

Humanities

Humanities History Archaeology Anthropology

The Evolution of Cooking: A Defining Moment in Human History

Anthropology.net

AUGUST 19, 2024

Cooking is often viewed as a significant turning point in human evolution. It not only provided the extra calories needed to support larger brains 1 but also transformed the way early humans interacted with their environment. Unlike other species, humans are biologically adapted to consume cooked food.

Humanities

Humanities History Archaeology K-12

Learning From Snapshots of Lost Fossils

Sapiens

APRIL 3, 2024

Please note that this article includes images of human remains. This long-lost child, represented only by a lower jaw, was referred to as Ksâr ‘Akil 4 because it was the fourth human fossil discovered at the site of Ksâr ‘Akil in Lebanon, on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. ANOTHER SET OF TEETH “These teeth don’t belong to Egbert!”

Museum

Museum Archival Research Archiving Artifacts

Cultural Relativism

Anthropology for Beginners

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

The idea is predicated on the degree to which human behavior is held to be culturally determined, a basic tenet of American cultural anthropology. Boas criticized the use of EVOLUTIONARY STAGES as the basis for organizing museum displays, arguing that exhibits should display artifacts in the context of specific cultures.

Cultures

Cultures Anthropology Artifacts Museum

Call for Pitches: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Anthropology News

JANUARY 29, 2024

Issued: January 29, 2024 Response deadline: February 23, 2024 Pitch responses: February 29, 2024 First drafts due: March 27, 2024 For our third issue of 2024, Anthropology News is delving into the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI) and its intricate relationship with human reality. And is humanity shaping AI?

Anthropology

Anthropology Archaeology Artifacts Humanities

A Call for Respect: Rethinking How Museums Care for Animal Remains

Anthropology.net

MARCH 10, 2025

“Even when they pass on, you still respect and honor them as non-human relatives. In archaeology’s early days, animal remains were often ignored, discarded, or treated as unimportant compared to human burials and artifacts. Discusses the ethical treatment of non-human remains in archaeology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00092.x

Museum

Museum Archaeology Artifacts Anthropology

CFP: Treasure: Unearthing Value in Anthropology

Anthropology News

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

Issued: February 5, 2024 Pitches due: March 4, 2024 Decisions: March 22, 2024 First drafts due: April 17, 2024 Anthropology News invites submissions for the fourth issue of 2024, which will explore the multifaceted concept of “treasure” through an anthropological lens. Multimedia works should target approximately 10 minutes in length.

Anthropology

Anthropology Heritage Artifacts Cultures

Reimagining Neanderthals: Ludovic Slimak's Insights into Human Evolution and Coexistence

Anthropology.net

AUGUST 6, 2024

In his groundbreaking book, The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (2024), Slimak delves into the depths of Neanderthal life, challenging preconceived notions and offering a fresh perspective on what it means to be human. Slimak asserts. "We

Humanities

Humanities Artifacts Sociology Anthropology

Echoes of Home: Unearthing the Value of Personal Treasures in Forced Displacement Narratives

Anthropology News

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

We chose to focus on personal objects to highlight the power of objects to capture and evoke universal human experiences— attachment, memory, and loss —that transcend cultural and national boundaries. The post Echoes of Home: Unearthing the Value of Personal Treasures in Forced Displacement Narratives appeared first on Anthropology News.

Cultures

Cultures Artifacts Anthropology Humanities

Discovering a Monumental Megalithic Structure in Northern Peru

Anthropology.net

FEBRUARY 25, 2024

Excavations starting in 2018 unearthed artifacts and charcoal samples, enabling precise radiocarbon dating. As anthropology pioneers, Toohey, Murphy, and their team exemplify the transformative power of research, bridging the past and present to illuminate humanity's rich cultural tapestry. 1 Toohey, J.

Heritage

Heritage Archaeology Artifacts Anthropology

Clovis People and the Ingenious Use of Braced Pikes in Megafauna Hunting

Anthropology.net

AUGUST 23, 2024

This innovation, used during the Late Pleistocene, adds a new dimension to our understanding of early human survival strategies. Thousands of these points have been recovered, providing clues about the technology and skill of early humans. It’s an order of magnitude different.

Archaeology

Archaeology Artifacts Anthropology Humanities

OPINION: Can technology save the liberal arts?

The Hechinger Report

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Related: How to save the humanities? For example, the one archeologist on staff across the five participating campuses developed an anthropology course , delivered as a hybrid seminar in the spring and followed by a summer field school where students excavated indigenous artifacts on Block Island, 13 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.

Artifacts

Artifacts Anthropology Tradition Humanities

The Marsh Ambush: What a 300,000-Year-Old Horse Hunt Reveals About Early Human Cooperation

Anthropology.net

APRIL 18, 2025

The Marsh Ambush: What a 300,000-Year-Old Horse Hunt Reveals About Early Human Cooperation A horse bone bed in northern Germany offers rare insight into the minds and methods of pre-modern humans—and how deep the roots of social intelligence may go. Why do humans hunt cooperatively? Kill zones were selected and prepared.

Humanities

Humanities Archaeology Artifacts Anthropology

Ancient Craftsmanship: How Early North Americans Used Bone Needles to Survive Cold Climates

Anthropology.net

NOVEMBER 30, 2024

Among the latest findings, researchers have uncovered bone needles crafted from the remains of fur-bearing animals, suggesting these ancient humans produced garments that helped them survive cold climates.

Archaeology

Archaeology Artifacts Anthropology Humanities

Ancient Iberian Slate Plaques: Early Genealogical Records?

Anthropology.net

DECEMBER 4, 2024

Found in tombs scattered across the region, these delicately carved, hand-sized artifacts bear geometric designs whose purpose has sparked debate for centuries. Deciphering the Plaques: A History of Theories Since the 1800s, scholars have speculated about the meaning of these artifacts, numbering around 1,626 recovered to date.

Archaeology

Archaeology Artifacts Ancestry Anthropology

Anthropology-Psychology interface

Anthropology for Beginners

AUGUST 17, 2023

It approaches the comparative study of human experience, behavior, facts, and artifacts from a dual sociocultural and psychological most often psychodynamic perspective.

Psychology

Psychology Anthropology Cultures Humanities

Human Bio-Cultural Evolution

Anthropology for Beginners

NOVEMBER 29, 2021

As the anthropological definition of culture especially by scholars like E.B. Tylor includes everything from tools and artifacts to the abstract conceptualization of after-life, there are ample evidences which suggest that human evolution is as much as a social and cultural phenomenon as it is biological.

Humanities

Humanities Cultures Artifacts Anthropology

Seeking Ever-Elusive Treasures: Reflections on Collective Memory and Spectrality of the Past

Anthropology News

SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

Treasure hunting is long associated with endeavors to unearth concealed artifacts, illustrated best by buried troves of gold left behind by past communities. Accidents happen in dangerous sites, the promised artifact eludes hunters, or suspicion and disagreements turn violent. May engagements with the past be a part of the picture?

Artifacts

Artifacts Heritage Archaeology Cultures

Reflections on the “Historicity” of Child Death at Ireland’s Former Mother and Baby Homes

Anthropology News

MARCH 4, 2025

Whether or not this was originally an artifact of technical limitations, an oversight, or an otherwise intentional exclusion, my interlocutors response to the decision prioritized the relational obligations of family and government participation in the present over procedural precedent.

Anthropology

Anthropology History Archaeology Artifacts

Charting Uncharted: A Portrayal of Treasure Hunting

Anthropology News

SEPTEMBER 3, 2024

Nathan’s adventures always end in the destruction of sites and artifacts, a fact that isn’t discussed with the attention it deserves. This serves to both remove them from their real cultural context and also to alienate them from the ‘rational’, ‘scientific’, white humanity. Fictional stories don’t exist in a bubble.

Heritage

Heritage Cultures Anthropology Artifacts

Karen Ito

Anthropology News

JANUARY 16, 2024

1947–2023 Dr. Karen Ito was a dedicated anthropologist, committed to promoting the understanding of the diversity of human cultural experience, with significant and wide-ranging contributions to the field of anthropology. She studied anthropology at UCLA, earning her BA in 1969, MA in 1973, and PhD in 1978.

Anthropology

Anthropology Artifacts Psychology Cultures

Culture and Personality with special emphasis on Margaret Mead

Anthropology for Beginners

MAY 22, 2023

Culture and Personality Culture and personality is the name of a broad unrecognized movement which brings cultural anthropology, psychology and psychiatry together from about 1928 to 1955. After 1960s the field becomes known as psychological anthropology. Approaches: The approaches range from positivism to various hermeneutic humanism.

Cultures

Cultures Anthropology Psychology Artifacts

Climate, Chaos, and Cooperation: How Shifting Environments May Have Forged Early Human Solidarity

Anthropology.net

APRIL 19, 2025

In the vast timeline of human evolution, one question has nagged at researchers more than most: how did cooperation, a risky and often costly behavior, come to define Homo sapiens ? In periods of environmental stress, humans didn’t just react—they adapted socially.

Humanities

Humanities Archaeology Artifacts Anthropology

Making Beauty as Craft of Care

Anthropology News

JANUARY 31, 2025

Finally, when flowers arrive at the florists shop, the care to transform natural beauty into cultural artifact iscarried out throughprecise physical techniques. This exploration of flowerscreatures we often take as symbols of pure, natural beautyreveals something profound about human aesthetic experience.

Artifacts

Artifacts Anthropology Humanities Cultures

The Demystification of AI: An Industry Perspective

Anthropology News

JUNE 27, 2024

They feared that human labor would be valued less and were apprehensive about the long-term consequences on their careers and lives. They imagined GenAI as sentient, but not “human,” and non-human sentience was seen as a threat. The post The Demystification of AI: An Industry Perspective appeared first on Anthropology News.

Humanities

Humanities Artifacts Anthropology Research

A Face in the Rock: Tracing Early Human Symbolism in the South Caucasus

Anthropology.net

APRIL 19, 2025

Found amid layers of Mesolithic debris in Damjili Cave, Azerbaijan, this human figurine—crafted from sandstone with a striped belt and stylized coiffure—offers a rare glimpse into the symbolic world of hunter-gatherers teetering on the cusp of the Neolithic. Climate shifts at the end of the Pleistocene transformed ecosystems.

Humanities

Humanities Archaeology Artifacts Anthropology

Social Studies Network

The Mythological Tapestry of Humanity: Unraveling Ancient Stories through Genes and Geography

Bits and Bytes Don’t Leave Bones

Trending Sources

East Meets West: Avar Society’s Genetic Patchwork in Early Medieval Austria

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

The Stone Blades of Jebel Faya: Rewriting the Story of Early Humans in Arabia

Carving the Mind: Middle Paleolithic Engravings and the Dawn of Symbolic Thought

Application of Archaeological Anthropology and Cultural Resources Management

Ancient DNA Illuminates South Africa’s Human History

The Evolution of Cooking: A Defining Moment in Human History

Learning From Snapshots of Lost Fossils

Cultural Relativism

Call for Pitches: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A Call for Respect: Rethinking How Museums Care for Animal Remains

CFP: Treasure: Unearthing Value in Anthropology

Reimagining Neanderthals: Ludovic Slimak's Insights into Human Evolution and Coexistence

Echoes of Home: Unearthing the Value of Personal Treasures in Forced Displacement Narratives

Discovering a Monumental Megalithic Structure in Northern Peru

Clovis People and the Ingenious Use of Braced Pikes in Megafauna Hunting

OPINION: Can technology save the liberal arts?

The Marsh Ambush: What a 300,000-Year-Old Horse Hunt Reveals About Early Human Cooperation

Ancient Craftsmanship: How Early North Americans Used Bone Needles to Survive Cold Climates

Ancient Iberian Slate Plaques: Early Genealogical Records?

Anthropology-Psychology interface

Human Bio-Cultural Evolution

Seeking Ever-Elusive Treasures: Reflections on Collective Memory and Spectrality of the Past

Reflections on the “Historicity” of Child Death at Ireland’s Former Mother and Baby Homes

Charting Uncharted: A Portrayal of Treasure Hunting

Karen Ito

Culture and Personality with special emphasis on Margaret Mead

Climate, Chaos, and Cooperation: How Shifting Environments May Have Forged Early Human Solidarity

Making Beauty as Craft of Care

The Demystification of AI: An Industry Perspective

A Face in the Rock: Tracing Early Human Symbolism in the South Caucasus

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