#Anthropology roundup: “The Case for Rethinking the Calendar…”What Did the Voice of Neanderthals Sound Like?

Scholars have made informed, educated guesses at what Shakespeare sounded like in the original pronunciation. The same applies to what Old Norse sounded like from the 9th through the 13th centuries. And even to Beowulf read in Old EnglishHomer’s Odyssey read in the original Ancient Greek, and The Epic of Gilgamesh read in Akkadian.

Cooking up ‘culinary anthropology’
Seacoastonline.com
YORK — Evan Mallett and Kathleen Curtin work together flawlessly in front of an open hearth at Jefferds Tavern, like two hands of the same clock. The wood fire crackles, the embers glow. Mallett, the chef/owner of Black Trumpet Bistro in Portsmouth ..

Anthropology professors bring stories of fieldwork to campus
Mast Media
Students and professors don’t always get the chance to talk and network outside the classroom. The Anthropology Club at Pacific Lutheran University wanted to provide them with the opportunity to do so when it held its annual Faculty Panel. On Feb.

Paleo-anthropology Thriller Makes the Theory of Evolution a Great …
WebWire (press release)
It is the duty of every scientist to share their life’s works and trove of information in ways they can to the masses. For Conrad Quintyn, he chooses quite a creative

Rex Huppke: Readers contribute to workplace anthropology’research’
Defiance Crescent News (subscription)
Around this time last week I was regaling you with my newfound expertise in workplace anthropology, creating some brutally honest categories into which our co-workers can be lumped. Those included: Snack-Nose; The Jerk; and The Hand-Raiser. The basic ..

Love and Anthropology
The Good Men Project (blog)
The San people’s culture was no different in its specifics from other bands of San people that have been studied and written about by anthropologists. The same animal skins, the same small, watermelon like fruit and roots for food, the same “mother in ..

 

Proponents of Family Constellations—a fast-growing therapy around the globe—claim it helps participants find strength, clarity, and peace. David Williams/SAPIENS

It’s a stormy evening in the summer of 2015 in Oaxaca City, Mexico, and I am seated in a small yoga studio with three other women: Flora, a teacher in her 30s; Maritza, a homemaker in her 50s; and Lydia, a Oaxacan woman in her 30s who will act as our facilitator. (Their names have been changed to protect their privacy.) We have braved the flooded streets to arrive, and Lydia leads us in a brief meditation to calm our minds and help us become more present in the space.

Where Journalist and Anthropologists Overlap
The Arkanas Traveller
Journalists go after the what, why, when, who, where and how of anything and everything, just as anthropologists do. One thing they have in common is their insatiable curiosity. The desire for the next story is the same as the desire for the next .

Anthropologists could be key to improving farm safety
Wisconsin State Farmer
Before recommending safety behavior changes to farmers, their families, and their employees, health and safety professionals should first walk in the boots of those who produce our food, say leading anthropologists writing in the current issue of

Human centered design and design thinking are on the up and up. Consultancies, agencies, and industries worldwide are finally understanding the power of a human centered research process. There is no shortage of kitschy case studies that highlight the value of this approach. My favorite is the story of a hospital system that was years behind on converting to a digital system. Programs were put in place to incentivize doctors to adopt the iPad based platform — but nothing worked. It was only when the iPad mini was introduced did the hospital convert to the new and improved way of doing things. Simply because the smaller iPads fit into the front pocket of their white-coats.

Resistance, Hegemony, Violence, Empire: The Next #AnthReadIn on March 24, 2017

By: Paige West and J.C. Salyer

This month the Anthropology Read In (#AnthReadIn) will move our collective focus to the articulation of United States Empire, environmental violence, and the dynamics of resistance. On March 24 (the third Friday of the month) we will come together to read the following pieces: the Introduction to Alyosha Goldstein’s edited volume “Formations of United States Colonialisms” (Duke 2014), the Introduction to Rob Nixon’s “Slow Violence” (Harvard 2011), and an excerpt from “Poor People’s Movements and the Structuring of Protest” by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward.

The Case for Rethinking the Calendar

Arguments against the current calendar and clock—fueled in part by frustrations with daylight saving time—are behind efforts to adopt a standard worldwide date and time system. Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

Pandora’s Brew: The New Ayahuasca

Savage Minds welcomes guest blogger Christina Callicott.

I’m guessing that by now most of my readers will have heard of this stuff called “ayahuasca.” Everyone from Stephen Colbert to the New Yorker is talking about it, some in terms more cringe-inducing than others. A quick primer for those who don’t know: Ayahuasca is a psychoactive (read: psychedelic) brew developed by the peoples of the Amazon for ritual purposes ranging from ethnomedicine to divination. It’s just one in a pantheon of sacred plant and multi-plant concoctions used by Amazonian shamans, but it’s one that has sparked the fascination of peoples everywhere, from the Amazon itself to the distant corners of the urban and industrialized nations.

Tattooed: Inked Women’s History is the Focus of AnthropologyExhibit
CSUF News
Photographs and largely unknown personal histories of women and tattoos before World War II are in the spotlight for “Tattooed and Tenacious: Inked Women in California’s History,” an exhibit of the Anthropology Teaching Museum opening Thursday,

Editing Wikipedia > Writing Letters to the New York Times

Various bits of social media began vibrating rapidly recently when it was discovered that white supremacists had fooled Google into providing inaccurate information about Boas and cultural relativism. The situation is now apparently resolved, but it isn’t a new problem. Old-timey internet veterans will remember that martinlutherking.org has been run by Stormfront for, like, decades. But this latest kerfuffle should give us the opportunity to think about our priorities as anthropologists writing for the general public today. In a previous post, I argued that there is a difference between the older ‘heroic’ public anthropology and ‘new’, more important public anthropology. Today I want to expand on this point and emphasize that we need shift our conception of public anthropology away from older, moribund genres and to newer, more important, but less familiar ways of reaching the public.

Why the “Big, Beautiful Wall” Is Doomed to Fail

The barriers that are already in place along hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico border have done little to stem the flow of migrants into the United States. David Williams/SAPIENS

When Donald Trump announced in June 2015 that he was running for U.S. president, he said, “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” On January 25, 2017, less than a week after taking office, President Trump moved to make good on (at least part of) that promise by signing an executive order for “the immediate construction of a physical wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border. But despite months of media coverage about Trump’s plan to build his “big, beautiful wall,” little news has focused on the fact that the U.S. has already walled hundreds of miles of the border, an effort that has accomplished virtually none of its stated goals.

presentation explores dangers of crossing the border

A young Mexican national climbs on a section of old pedestrian barrier fencing on the U.S. and Mexico border near Rancho Anapra, Chihuahua Mexico Tuesday, May 6, 2008. The young woman was climbing the fence to get a better look at US Porder Patrol agents working the other side. (Tom Pennington/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT)
Dr. Ippolytos Kalofonos Source: Peggy McInerny/UCLA

As a pre-med major at UC San Diego studying biochemistry, Ippolytos Kalofonos discovered his future career while listening to a guest lecturer at an undergraduate seminar.

Pandora’s Brew: The New Ayahuasca

Part 2: The New Ayahuasca Churches

Yesterday I sat in on a webinar sponsored by ICEERS (the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service) and organized by anthropologist Bia Labate. Entitled “Myths and Realities about the Legality of Ayahuasca in the USA,” the webinar featured three experts on the subject. The first was Jeffrey Bronfman, a leader of the União do Vegetal church in the US whose shipment of ayahuasca (the UDV calls it hoasca) was seized in 1999, leading to a protracted court battle and, eventually, a supreme court decision in favor of the church’s right to use the tea as their sacrament. The second was Rob Heffernan, member of the Santo Daime church (which also uses ayahuasca as a sacrament) and chair of its legal committee. The third was J. Hamilton Hudson, a recent graduate of the Tulane law school who has been following legal developments surrounding ayahuasca-using groups who are affiliated with neither of the aforementioned churches.


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