Anthropology for Beginners

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

Application of Archaeology Archaeology is the study of human past through material remains. Archaeology, then, is both a physical activity out in the field, and an intellectual pursuit in the study or laboratory. Here the methods of archaeology and ethnography overlap. How were those pots used?

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Anthropology.net

MARCH 14, 2025

Genomic Clues: Tracing Language Through Population Splits Unlike previous studies that relied on archaeology or comparative anatomy, this research examines how human populations began to branch off from one another. What Came First: Language or Symbolic Thought? This challenges the long-held view that language and symbolism arose in tandem.

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Teaching Anthropology

APRIL 13, 2024

The VMP content spans the subfields of biological anthropology (evolutionary, primatology), and archaeology. In the introductory course in biological anthropology and archaeology, “92% of students agreed that the Virtual Mystery web-tool helped them understand what a professional anthropologist does; 88.3% Smithsonian Institute).

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Anthropology.net

MAY 1, 2025

.” The Collapse That Wasn’t Archaeological theories have long held that Chaco Canyon’s abandonment around 1150 CE led to the region being vacated. Pueblo Bonito, the largest archaeological site at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, is seen in northwestern New Mexico, on Aug. Archaeology of Native North America.

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Anthropology.net

JANUARY 16, 2025

Anthropologist Dr. Martin Smith describes how these findings add depth to archaeological interpretations: “Rather than simply seeing a set of skeletons, hidden aspects of these people’s lives and identities come into view as mothers, husbands, and daughters.”

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Anthropology.net

APRIL 4, 2025

In a new study published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1 , researchers from institutions across Europe compiled the most comprehensive cross-cultural knot database to date. By analyzing 338 distinct knots from archaeological archives and museum collections, they discovered a surprisingly stable repertoire. Eronen, J.

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Anthropology.net

APRIL 14, 2025

A sweeping archaeological analysis 1 led by Gary Feinman of the Field Museum of Natural History offers a strikingly different view. “The idea that big populations or new technologies automatically lead to widening inequality simply doesn’t hold up in the archaeological record.” 1–28). link] Flannery, K.

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Anthropology.net

MAY 9, 2025

Houston Museum of Natural Science. Credit: Daderot / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons The discovery, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 1 , centers on two small, sharp flakes of chert recovered from Actun Uayazba Kab—“Handprint Cave”—in the Roaring Creek Valley of central Belize.

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Anthropology.net

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

Credit: Boglárka Mészáros, BHM Aquincum Museum A team of geneticists, archaeologists, and historians from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the HistoGenes project examined the DNA of 370 individuals dating from the 2nd century BCE to the 6th century CE, spanning sites from Mongolia to Central Europe.

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Anthropology.net

MARCH 13, 2025

A new genetic and archaeological study 1 has revealed that leopard cats ( Prionailurus bengalensis ), small wild felines native to East Asia, lived alongside people in China’s early agrarian societies for at least 3,500 years—only to disappear from human settlements centuries before the arrival of domestic cats via the Silk Road.

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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. In a museum basement, we huddled over a black-and-white photograph showing pieces of a lower jawbone and its loose teeth. Not all fossil discoveries happen in the field.

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The Hechinger Report

JUNE 17, 2021

Pandemic closures prompted hundreds of museums, art galleries and zoos around the world to launch virtual field trips in the last year. But a program offered through a museum in Utah sought to offer a different kind of virtual science field trip. Subscribe today! They see that this is a real place,” said Larson.

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Anthropology.net

MARCH 26, 2024

© South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Eurac/Samadelli/Staschitz. Reproduced by permission of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. Details of the Iceman's sixty-one carbon pigment tattoos (after Samadelli et al., 2015: fig.

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Sapiens

MARCH 5, 2024

When skeletal remains are found, there are often questions over their precise relationship to other archaeological remains at the same site—such as stone and bone tools, animal remains, and other finds. Using a method called proteomics, researchers determined this nondescript bone fragment from Ilsenhöhle Cave belonged to a human.

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Anthropology.net

SEPTEMBER 21, 2024

Hosek said, “In archaeology, there are vanishingly few instances in which we can tie a particular activity unequivocally to skeletal changes.” The researchers call for a more holistic approach to the study of early horse domestication, integrating genetic data and archaeological evidence from horse remains.

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World History Teachers Blog

JUNE 14, 2022

Two projects from Asia include the discovery of a Tang shipwreck, which takes you to an exhibit at the Singapore Museum , and a Story Map follows the early thirteenth-century travels of Yelu Chucai and Wugusun Zhongduan, who travel from north China to Central Asia after the Mongol empire's first conquests under Chinggis Khan.

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Anthropology.net

OCTOBER 16, 2024

Archaeologists from the Lolland-Falster Museum, in collaboration with Aarhus University, have analyzed the site and published their findings in Radiocarbon 1. Such findings highlight the significance of ongoing archaeological research in uncovering the complexities of early human societies. Image Credit: *Radiocarbon* (2024).

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Teaching Anthropology

MAY 8, 2023

Marilou Polymeropoulou, University of Oxford, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography Active learning is a well-established pedagogical strategy in secondary and tertiary education where independent learning and critical thinking are nurtured.

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Anthropology.net

MAY 15, 2024

Nestled near the tumultuous borders of present-day Ukraine and Russia lies Mykhailivka, a village with archaeological significance dating back millennia. Here, seventy years ago, Ukrainian researchers excavated pivotal insights into the enigmatic Yamnaya culture—a nomadic pastoralist society that emerged approximately 5,000 years ago.

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Anthropology.net

JUNE 28, 2024

An artist’s impression of a Neanderthal family on display at the Neanderthal Museum in Croatia. Photograph: Nikola Solic/Reuters Discovery and Significance The fossil in question was excavated in 1989 at the Cova Negra archaeological site in Valencia, Spain.

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NCHE

MAY 1, 2023

Army Heritage and Education Center (4 times) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and the Museum of History and Innovation in Seattle, Washington have made these colloquia special.

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Anthropology.net

JULY 15, 2024

Field Museum scientist Luis Muro Ynoñán with the carving of a mythological bird creature in La Otra Banda, Cerro Las Animas. This finding promises to significantly enhance our understanding of ancient religious practices and social structures in the Andes.

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Anthropology.net

MAY 11, 2024

Archaeologists from the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence , in collaboration with partners from Serbian museums, have unearthed a remarkable discovery: a previously unknown Late Neolithic settlement nestled near the Tamiš River in Northeast Serbia. The deep black angular anomalies indicate a large number of burnt houses.

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Anthropology.net

MAY 27, 2024

Recently published in PLOS ONE 1 , research by scientists from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology (LDA) of Saxony-Anhalt explores the rich tapestry of culinary traditions spanning from the Early Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age.

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Anthropology.net

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Led by Patrick Schmidt and Ewa Dutkiewicz, an interdisciplinary team of scientists from New York University, the University of Tübingen, and the National Museums in Berlin embarked on a groundbreaking study, published in Science Advances. Their focus?

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Society for Classical Studies

AUGUST 9, 2024

In what artistic, historical, archaeological, spatial, or cultural contexts do we see the deployment of narratives of violence, and what functions do such deployments serve? Also welcome are pedagogical approaches to studying these sensitive topics (both in the classroom and in public-facing spaces such as museums). Keywords: 1.

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Anthropology.net

DECEMBER 24, 2023

Led by the Nagoya University Museum and Graduate School of Environmental Studies in Japan, a study has shed light on how early humans in the Middle East might have purposefully chosen specific rocks for their stone tools based on rock properties, not just ease of fragmentation. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology , 6 (1).

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Society for Classical Studies

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

IMPORTANT: The application deadline has been extended! **The The new deadline is February 23, 2024.** COST and SCHOLARSHIP FUNDING The program fee of $5,000 includes tuition, housing, some meals and the cost of trips to sites in and around Rome.

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Anthropology.net

MAY 10, 2025

These wooden spears, seen here at the Schöningen Research Museum, have now been dated to between 200,000 and 300,000 years old.JULIAN STRATENSCHULTE/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES This subtle shift in chronology has profound consequences. . Those techniques top out around 60,000 years.

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Anthropology.net

JUNE 23, 2024

Source: Natural History Museum, London Rajiv McCoy, a computational geneticist at Johns Hopkins University, remarks, "It’s probably the most comprehensive picture we have to date of Neanderthal gene flow into modern human populations." Neanderthal and Homo sapiens reconstruction.

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Anthropology News

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

Jasmin interned at the NHHC’s Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) and assisted in updating the UAB’s public outreach on the Navy Yard by creating posters to highlight ongoing and recent projects, specifically on the shipwreck sites of the Revolutionary War gunboat USS Spitfire and War of 1812 commodore Joshua Barney’s flagship Scorpion.

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Studies Weekly

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Parker’s uncle by marriage was Mark Raymond Harrington, director of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, California. He hired Parker as a secretary and cook for the museum’s excavations of Pueblo Indian sites. Parker learned quickly on the job and was willing to go where other scientists feared.

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Sapiens

APRIL 23, 2025

The demonstration workshop was part of a pilot study for the Traveling Treasures project, a transnational collaboration between the National Museum of Liberia (NMOL) and the Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology Project (BAHA). He later joined the Brooklyn Museum and amassed over 1,600 West African artworks.

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Sapiens

MARCH 26, 2025

It was employed to animate the Mesolithic period (from about 9,000 to 4,300 years ago) in a museum. TikTok users have adopted it to make realistic short videos about archaeology and history. But others are more specific to archaeology. The stakes of representation in archaeology are high.

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Sapiens

APRIL 16, 2024

ENTERING THE FRAY I agreed to discuss archaeology with pseudoarchaeologist Graham Hancock on the mega-popular but controversial podcast the Joe Rogan Experience. But reaching those outside my echo chamber demands more than my archaeological expertise. I’m distinguishing archaeology from mythology. Many people buy it.

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Anthropology.net

APRIL 17, 2025

In the archaeological layers of Taforalt, also known as Grotte des Pigeons, researchers have unearthed not only bustard bones, but strong evidence of their ritual use. “It wasn’t casual consumption.

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Sapiens

OCTOBER 9, 2024

In the early 2000s, we started to look again at supposed Altar Stone fragments in museum collections. But without directly sampling the Altar Stone, how could we be sure that the museum fragments were genuine? The suggestion stuck, and for 80 years, it went unchallenged.

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