Humans

Inspired by a traditional ritual, the potlatch, Indigenous Dene communities in central-northern Alaska have developed new forms of reciprocity as a response to exogenous political threats to their autonomy. The potlatch involved the ritualized gifting of food and other items to selected guests as a means of creating political equilibrium by inculcating a sense of obligatory reciprocity. Today, people are reluctant to leave their communities and have begun shipping bush food from one community to the next instead of receiving gifts of food as invited guests. This new development is in response to a perceived threat to community survival. Since the 1990s, the Alaskan state government has been threatening to close schools with fewer than 20 students. This would affect most Native communities in the region, which generally have under 200 residents and correspondingly small schools. Closures would force people to move to larger villages with functioning schools or abandon their communities and move to a larger city (Fairbanks, in this case). While the government proposal to close smaller schools has yet to be implemented, it remains a constant threat (it was last revived in 2018). The new form of food redistribution allows people to stay and reaffirm their ties to their communities while reinforcing social ties to people of other communities. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic had serious effects on the delivery of commercial archaeology in the United Kingdom during 2020 and 2021. This article presents a contemporary history of two years of practice and political developments. Because of commercial archaeology’s place within the broader construction sector, it became a ‘protected’ industry, resulting in a massive increase in the amount of work undertaken. Archaeology adapted remarkably well to the difficult and dangerous conditions of the pandemic, while encountering new challenges in staff recruitment. Full article

The two waves of reflexivity in archaeology are the identity politics of archaeologists and stakeholder politics. These social issues are considered in this article through the perspective of three African archaeological journals produced from 2014 to 2021. Identity politics is examined through a quantitative analysis of authorship, book reviewing, and the countries covered. I conclude that parity of gender authorship—assuming 61% male and 39% female archaeologists—has been achieved by the African Archaeological Review, Journal of African Archaeology, and Azania. In book reviewing, this is less so. The geographical coverage across the three journals shows lacunae. Stakeholder politics is most visible in book reviews and special issues. Journal ethics and goals and the final topics of open access and other ways of broadening the pool of authors, reviewers, and accessibility are offered. Full article

Many individuals practicing field-based research are subjected to sexual harassment and assault. This fact holds true for people engaged in archaeological field research and may be true for students who are just learning field methods while enrolled in an archaeological field school. We review some of our current research on the means of reducing and preventing sexual harassment and assault at archaeological field schools, as well as ways to create safer, more inclusive learning spaces. Additionally, we suggest that for the discipline to advance field school teaching and learning, we, as field directors, must situate ourselves as active and advocacy anthropologists: an approach that puts our students as a central focus when developing field-based pedagogy. As the authors of this work, we review our identities and positionality in conducting this research and in making meaning from the data we have collected. Full article

Consumers and academics alike perceive a status hierarchy among American universities. By this perception, professors are placed in the status hierarchy befitting their scholarly merit. However, a recent study of the archaeology professoriate found no consistent correlation between faculty placement and merit. This essay identifies reasons for the lack of meritocracy, some unique to archaeology and others common to many fields. Archaeology, similar to the American academy at large, ignores class as a bias that handicaps some while favoring others. Notwithstanding challenges of definition and measurement, class should be treated equally with race, gender, and other biases in an academy’s pursuit of true meritocracy. Full article

Community-based approaches in archaeology are poised to make an important contribution to the decolonization of the discipline. Archaeologists who are committed to this agenda are undoubtedly aware that community archaeology is a vibrant and growing research area, but the extent to which the practical aspects and interpretive impact of community archaeology are known beyond its adherents is unclear. This article reviews recent publication trends in highly ranked, international archaeology journals to determine if and what kind of community archaeology is reaching a discipline-spanning audience. The main finding of this analysis is that community archaeology occupies a dynamic but narrow niche within general archaeological scholarship. I argue that this pattern must be confronted and reversed if the transformative potential of community-based research is to be realized in archaeology. Full article

A mixed-methods approach is used to understand the human factors defining cultural heritage in two informal settlements in Islamabad, Pakistan, namely France Colony and Mehr Abadi. The methodology applied is based on spatial investigation within a placemaking framework to create a visual representation of the neighborhoods, and grounded theory to explore the experiences and memories of their inhabitants through verbal communication. A combination of techniques, including transect walks, photography, and on-site interviews, allows us to map the tangible and intangible elements of the informal settlements. Cultural characteristics are identified as essential in the spatio-cultural processes occurring in the informal settlements. The study concludes that cultural dilapidation happens because of obstructions in the processes translating intangible heritage into tangible space. Appropriate policy interventions are suggested to minimize the loss of rural heritage transfer to informal settlements within the urban fabric of Islamabad. Full article

Over the course of twenty five years, approximately 1990 to 2015, American archaeologists grew to accept the regular use of local knowledge, in the form of Native American and local community knowledge, in their development of archaeological knowledge and in cultural resource management. This change mostly pushed archaeologists to engage with groups of people that would have been ignored previously. This transformation is part of a larger process of Modernism becoming Post Modernism via the expanded use of high context communication, a concept from Communications Studies, throughout American culture. This paper briefly describes the use of local knowledge and summarizes structural changes in cultural resource management, especially consultation practices, that highlight a wider usage of high context communication. Full article

Although marine resources are known to have been exploited by both foragers and early farmers in Scotland, the importance of seafood to the diets of Neolithic groups has been widely debated. Here we present paired stable isotope (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) and radiocarbon measurements on Early Neolithic human remains from Raschoille Cave in Oban. These are compared with published data for other sites in western Scotland and used to re-evaluate the use of marine resources by the first farmers. The diets of Late Mesolithic foragers and Early Neolithic farmers were modelled from stable isotope data using both Linear and Bayesian (FRUITS) mixing models. Our FRUITS dietary models indicate that Mesolithic foragers obtained much of their dietary protein and calories from marine resources, consistent with the predominance of shellfish, fish and sea mammal remains in their shell middens. Of note is the large proportion of dietary calories obtained from plant foods, which is like that of the early farming groups. The diets of Early Neolithic farmers appear relatively homogeneous across Scotland. Plant foods were the primary source of calories. Meat and/or dairy from terrestrial mammals were the most important source of dietary protein. Marine resources were, at most, a minor component of the ‘lifetime’ diet. Full article

Using the Strong Programme developed in Edinburgh in the 1970s clarifies how to do sociology of science freed from Enlightenment paradigms of testing for Truth. This paper uses, as an example, the case of Lewis Binford and his wife (in the 1960s) Sally Rosen, revealing Rosen’s work to make Lewis’s writing clear and persuasive. Rosen’s work was the efficient cause of Lewis Binford’s success with the New Archaeology. Full article

The research that forms this paper was conducted over six years 1993-1999 in a Mormon Fundamentalist community in Western USA. I wanted to understand if it was possible to love multiple individuals at the same time or if, instead, there was a preference for emotional involvement. I live inside the community dwelling with different families which enable me to view ordinary life and daily interactions that are often not noted in survey research. I supplement this approach by collecting the life history of people’s relationships and feelings toward one another. My results are present as a set of ethnographic narratives that highlight the emotional fulfillment and angst of individual experience trying to love more than one person at the same time. I found that the impulse to form dyadic love is relentless; women are the primary agents behind the push towards a more exclusive couple centered or dyad love intimacy; the “favorite” wife was readily identified in 52 out of 60 families. This presents something of a paradox: humans are both a pair-bond species who desire to form dyadic unions, even when they are not culturally sanctioned, and who have an adaptive cognitive capacity to create alternative ways of living. Full article

An Aramaic-inscribed object made of copper-alloy was discovered in 1993 in the south-western part of Tulûl Mas‘ud (Moshav Elyakhin) and has recently been studied using an archaeometallurgical approach. Based on visual testing and multifocal light microscopy observation, the object was probably produced in a nearby workshop, with the inscription engraved using a sharp tool during the production process. Given the larger assemblage of inscribed copper-alloy artefacts from the site, this item appears not only to have been used as a cultic object, but was also most probably made for the purpose of cultic offerings. The XRF analysis results of the Aramaic-inscribed object after it was sanded revealed the core metal to have been made of relatively pure copper with a tin content of less than 1.0 wt. % Sn. The choice to produce the object using a low-tin copper-alloy indicates that the alloy was chosen based on technological considerations, in order to facilitate plasticity in fashioning the part into its cylindrical shape. The manufacturing process involved bending the object while it was hot and shaping it into its final form by means of several cycles of forging and annealing. Although the current research has revealed the bulk composition and the general manufacturing process of the object, the microstructure of the core alloy could not be observed because destructive testing was not permitted. Although only a single copper object was analysed, the current archaeometallurgical study allows to gain further information on metallurgical knowledge and manufacturing processes of copper objects in the Persian period Levant. Full article

Evolutionary perspectives have generated many questions and some answers in the study of human health and disease. The field of evolutionary medicine, and related analytics of evolutionary psychiatry and evolutionary psychology have extended and expanded the way health disorders are viewed by searching for why humans, as a species, are vulnerable to certain pathological conditions. The search is organized into four domains that apply proximate and evolutionary explanations to human traits and developmental sequences. This framework opens inquiry to the ontogeny, phylogeny, mechanism, and adaptive significance of human health conditions. In this paper I argue that evolutionary medicine seems to parallel biomedicine in its primarily pathogenic focus. That is, conditions of pain, suffering, and disorder have received the most attention. Some work has used the architecture of evolutionary medicine to take a salutogenic approach, evaluating the proximate and evolutionary explanations of human well-being. I propose that an evolutionary understanding of human well-being requires a survey of emotions and their relationship with neurobiology, language, and culture. My anthropology-based, multidisciplinary review of biopsychosocial processes reveals the way evolution has shaped modern human understanding of well-being through sociolinguistic learning processes and thereby our individual experiences of well-being. These insights have the power to contextualize human suffering and flourishing as we progress toward the goal of attenuating the former and expanding the latter. Full article

First anthropology became unbound from “the village”, then from the single site, and gradually from the physical site altogether. As humans resume their push into space, anthropology is set to become unbound from the earth itself. This essay considers what the discipline has offered and can offer toward understanding the present and future of space colonization. It begins by examining the surprisingly long and productive history of anthropology’s engagement with the subject, going back at least to the 1950s. Then it surveys current analysis of law, sovereignty, and nationalism in space, which largely imagines law and identity in off-earth settlements as more-or-less direct extensions or transfers of earth law and identity; in other words, space settlers will remain affiliated with and loyal to their source countries (or companies). However, taking seriously the analogy of terran migration and colonialism, where colonies developed distinct and separatist identities, the essay predicts the emergence of exonationalism, in which over generations colonists will invent new identities and shift their affiliations to their non-terran homes and ultimately seek independence from the earth. The essay concludes with reflections on how the settlement of space, still a distant goal, will reshape our definition of the human and therefore the practice of anthropology as the science of human diversity. Full article

This article studies and provides a narrative review of the history of the native Orang Kallang people residing on Singapore’s Kallang River before Singapore’s modernization. The first section delves into the Orang Laut and how a group of them moved to the Kallang River to form the independent tribe of the Orang Kallang. This is followed by the historical significance of the Kallang River and its role in trade and maritime commerce in early Singapore. Subsequently, the second section investigates the Orang Kallang’s origins, livelihood, language, and reasons for their eventual decline. As the Orang Kallang tribe split after the arrival of the British in 1819, the group that settled in Pulai River, Johor, was recorded to have dwindled staggeringly in population due to a smallpox epidemic. The third section will focus on the impact of smallpox on the early aboriginal populations of Singapore (and the overarching region of Malaya), failed vaccination attempts, and how the Orang Kallang was likely to have been impacted. The last section will sum up the themes discussed in the paper. Full article

Wari is thought by many to be the first Andean Empire (ca. 600–1000 AD); however, the means of expansion, the areas controlled, the strength of the polity, and the nature of Wari institutions remain largely contested. In general, models describing the Wari polity are simplistic and do not exploit sophisticated approaches developed by historical archaeologists. Wari expansion into the Moquegua Valley, Peru, was originally interpreted as an intrusive colony or distant outpost, perhaps to engage its southern neighbor, Tiwanaku. It was presumed that migrants from the polity’s core established settlements and imperial infrastructure in an unoccupied ecozone. Recent research of households in the colony reveals diverse domestic material culture, diets, and use of living space. Those who lived in Wari-affiliated settlements were probably drawn from other imperial provinces and communities from other areas of the drainage. Forced relocations are common among historically documented empires, but willing pioneers may have selected for this tenuous frontier. Regional-scale data show that Wari had the strength to change the local economy and control this distant frontier province; household-scale data reveal the polyethnic nature of the colonial enclave and provide clues to understand early imperial institutions. Full article

The claim of possessing supernatural abilities is a commonly reported phenomenon across human societies. To bolster the credibility of such claims, performers may make use of illusions and sleight of hand to give the appearance of impressive powers. One common trick found among culturally independent hunter–gatherers on every continent they inhabit involves a healer ostensibly extracting from a sick person an object, such as a pebble or insect, that is supposedly causing the patient’s illness. The use and functions of the ‘extraction trick’ are here explored across a global sample of hunter–gatherer societies (N = 74), with attention given to the possible costs and benefits accrued by performers and their patients or audiences. This and similar tricks can be highly deceptive, but they can also be undertaken for entertainment, symbolic reasons, their placebo-like utility to sick patients, or some mixture of each. The recurrent invention of the trick across independent societies, as well as its cultural inheritance and diffusion between groups, indicates that it likely appeals to certain universal facets of human psychology, where experiences of sickness and pain commonly induce one to seek interventive cures from specialists, who in turn may use deceptive displays to give the appearance of greater skill and powers. Full article

This paper makes a case for Buried Culture—humanly modified packages of sediments and artifacts. Specifically, it argues that Buried Culture amounts to an a-social, literally posthuman, cultural being. The argument proceeds through three main steps. Firstly, drawing on the prototypical example of landfills, it demonstrates that while ontically solid, Buried Culture is epistemically vacuous. Secondly, placing it between sedimentology and archaeology, a diagnosis is offered: The epistemic vehicles at our disposal either acknowledge Buried Culture’s existence as a proper being or appreciate its cultural qualities, but not both. Thirdly, an aesthetically oriented approach is proposed, adopting the analytical reasoning of the art critic as a means to straddle this gap. To illustrate this, a small-scale case study is presented, concerned with an early 20th-century landfill near Tel Aviv, Israel. Full article