A good way to capture someone’s attention is to start off by saying, “I have a few things to get off my chest…” This is how science writer John Horgan begins his latest post at Scientific American. It works. I was leaning close to my laptop by the end of the first sentence, eager to…Continue Reading…
E. O. Wilson and Jared Diamond have a few things in common. Both are ecologists, popularizers of science, famous best-selling authors, meme creators, and lately, objects of ridicule and academic rage. Let’s recall that Wilson, before he became the bard of biodiversity, had withstood a furious assault on his reputation after the publication in 1975 of…Continue Reading…
UPDATE: Charlie Petit at Science Journalism Tracker has a very complimentary overview of the special package discussed below. Twenty years ago, landmark legislation passed by the U.S. Congress revolutionized the field of archaeology in America. That much everyone can agree on. But some anthropologists insist that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)…Continue Reading…
Over at Savage Minds, there’s an interesting post on the merits of anthropologists hanging in the field with jihadists. It quotes Roxanne Varzi wondering how to contextualize jihadi videos: These strike me as a rich source of information about a culture that is otherwise inaccessible to anthropologists: jihadi martyrs. How would you go about developing…Continue Reading…
I just don’t understand why academic anthropologists are so viscerally opposed to the Pentagon’s Human Terrain program. If injecting cultural sensitivity into the military can defuse tensions and reduce conflict in a war zone, isn’t that a good thing? I can appreciate the ethical concerns, but from what little I’ve followed on this, it seems…Continue Reading…
I recently wrote two stories for Archaeology magazine about the clash of history, science, and culture in the American Southwest. The main piece in the Nov/Dec issue juxtaposes Navajo claims to famous prehistoric sites, such as Chaco Canyon, with new archaeological data. This latest material evidence reinforces the strong scientific consensus that the Navajo didn’t…Continue Reading…
This story in Nature News about societal collapse in ancient Peru is worth noting, especially for this quote by one of the main researchers: Dramatic climactic events are always used to explain culture change in the Andes. But this is not satisfying based on what we know about human culture. It paints a picture of…Continue Reading…
Yesterday, in response to a story in the NY Times, entitled “Sudan Court Fines Woman for Wearing Trousers,” Andy Revkin posted this meta thought at Dot Earth about the future of women in the developing world and how that ties into humanity’s prospects for sustainability: In a broader sense, then, there appears to be simmering…Continue Reading…
[UPDATE: See comment # 5 for clarification and added detail about the Childs talk that I discuss below. Now I wish more SW archaeologists would weigh in…but most of them don’t read blogs, as far as I can tell.] Craig Childs advising archaeologists on how to write for a popular audience is about as useful…Continue Reading…
Mysterious disappearances of adventurous young wander seekers seem to captivate journalists, Hollywood and the public. So of course there was a lot of buzz when National Geographic Adventure announced recently that it had identified the skeleton of Everett Ruess, who had disappeared 75 years ago in the Southwest’s Four Corners region. Not so fast, says…Continue Reading…