This Is the Way the World Ends
Sex is declining because the options seem endless. This is counter-intuitive, but biologically it makes sense.
Robert King
· 17 min read
Anthropology
A collection of 20 posts
What Is the Point of Anthropology?
How a discipline lost interest in the people it was founded to understand.
Robert Lynch
· 11 min read
The Sexual Paradise That Never Was
How Margaret Mead’s romanticised account of Samoan life became the founding myth of cultural determinism—and why it endures despite having been thoroughly debunked.
Patrick Whittle
· 19 min read
Among Savage Tribes
Napoleon Chagnon documented a society in which violent men enjoyed greater reproductive and marital success. Some of his academic colleagues never forgave him for it.
Peggy Sastre
· 10 min read
Where Have All the Cultures Gone?
The homogenisation of culture begins with the loss of language.
Tristan S. Rapp
· 10 min read
Mortuary Archaeology
Death, DNA, and the culture wars.
Jon Entine, Patrick Whittle
· 14 min read
Chasing the Ice Moon
A new book describes the crackpot anthropological theories that Nazis used to justify their belief in Aryan racial superiority.
Steven Tucker
· 10 min read
The Sex of Skeletons
To suggest that a spirited discussion of the importance of sex and gender in archeology threatens “scientific integrity” is to misunderstand the nature of science.
Lawrence M. Krauss
· 7 min read
The Aztec Way of Empire
Six imperial rulers expanded the Mexica domain from 1430 until 1519, until the Spaniards first set foot in Tenochtitlan and disrupted the Aztec imperial agenda.
Frances F. Berdan
· 11 min read
Jennifer Raff’s ‘Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas’—A Review
Jennifer Raff’s Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas was published with much fanfare in February, garnering a rave New York Times review. And as of this writing, it is listed as one of the top 10 books about genetics on Amazon. The success reflects the fact that the
Elizabeth Weiss
· 13 min read
The Problem of Sex Discrimination in Indigenous Archaeology
In January, as reporters were celebrating the first woman—and also the first transgender person—to win more than a million dollars on Jeopardy!, I was reading up on the discrimination still faced by biological women who toil away in my own fields of endeavor: anthropology and archaeology. This discrimination
Elizabeth Weiss
· 8 min read
Remembering Richard Leakey (1944–2022), the Last Victorian Scientist
While he may have seemed like something of an (enormously) overachieving dilettante to some, there was in fact a unity to his life and work.
Geoffrey Clarfield
· 11 min read
The Society of Cultural Anthropology’s Campaign to Present American Populism as Fascism
The January 6th riot does make for a visually dramatic backdrop to an exploration of the fascistic strain in modern populist politics.
Matthew Porter
· 8 min read
Why Is the Society for American Archaeology Promoting Indigenous Creationism?
The most expansive interpretations of NAGPRA’s provisions now serve to place Indigenous oral traditions, which typically include religious stories, on equal footing with traditional forms of scientific evidence such as DNA analysis.
Elizabeth Weiss and James W. Springer
· 16 min read
The Campaign to Thwart Paleogenetic Research Into North America's Indigenous Peoples
In the north, the Maritime Archaic gave way to Pre-Dorset Palaeoeskimos (as they are known in the literature) that had recently arrived from Siberia.
Bruce Bourque
· 20 min read