Anthropology Magazine
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Shading U.S. Empire in Puerto Rico’s Ballroom Scene
A linguistic anthropologist explores the queer Ballroom scene in San Juan—and how performers are incorporating critiques of colonialism into the art form.
How Cultural Knowledge Sustained Desert Farms in the Ancient Andes
An archaeologist who studies past farming practices in the north coast of Peru argues these offer models for navigating current climate crises.
Caring Across Distance—One Call at a Time
An anthropologist explores how a phone call home may seem simple but carries layers of meaning for migrating nurses and their families in India.
Excavating the Traces of Ice Age Foragers
A filmmaker showcases archaeologists unearthing tiny lithics that evidence the presence of hunters from 13,000 years ago in what is today Michigan.
Expanding worlds by exploring everything human.
Spotlight
A MATTER OF VOICE
Who Gets to Study Whom?
As the field of anthropology struggles to shed its colonial past, the discipline has inadvertently put constraints on anthropologists of color who already face racism, bias, and discrimination.
The Untold Stories of Archaeology’s Women
Stories of pioneering women in the “digging” sciences have been skewed toward those who were White, wealthy, and networked. The TrowelBlazers project aims to reset our imagination—and our future.
Do Dreams Give Voice to the Divine?
An anthropologist immerses herself in Islamic dream culture to understand how the divine plays a role in everyday lives.
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With the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship program guides anthropologists on accessible writing and podcasting for nonacademic audiences.
With our newsletter in your inbox every Friday, you’ll be able to stay on top of SAPIENS’ newest stories and get context to learn about what’s happening in the field of anthropology.
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human, the magazine’s podcast, speaks with anthropologists from around the globe to help us uncover what makes us human.
Anthropological poems have the potential to transform ways of thinking and being in the world.
SAPIENS teaching units offer an opportunity to use the magazine's content in the classroom, alongside additional resources, to enrich the teaching and learning experience.
Learn how to write for general audiences with the SAPIENS Public Writing Training Program, a self-directed course.
Are you an anthropologist aspiring to make a difference in how people see themselves and their worlds?
EXPLORE ANTHROPOLOGY
ASK SAPIENSThe broad field of anthropology studies “everything human,” focusing on what makes different people human in their own distinctive ways.
What Is Anthropology?
The broad field of anthropology is the science of humanity that studies “everything human,” focusing on what makes different people human in their own distinctive ways.
What Is Linguistic Anthropology?
Linguistic anthropologists study language in context, revealing how people’s ways of communicating and expressing themselves interact with human culture, history, politics, identity, and much more.
What Is Cultural Anthropology?
Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the dizzyingly diverse ways people live today, including how they think, act, create, struggle, make meaning, and organize their societies.
What Do Archaeologists Do?
Archaeologists use a wide variety of methods to explore a fascinating range of topics about human history, culture, and behavior. Here’s an overview of the ways archaeologists preserve heritage and how you can work in this field.
Podcast
OpenNEW: SEASON 8
All stories
Reclaiming Collective Life in a Fractured U.S.
After Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win, an anthropologist set out across the U.S. to understand the nation’s deepening divides. In the new book Something Between Us, he grapples with these rifts and how to repair them.
Ancient Tools in East Asia Reveal Middle Paleolithic Innovation
An archaeologist explains his team’s insights into how Quina scrapers in southwest China overturn long-standing assumptions about the region’s humans more than 50,000 years ago.
When Wartime Plunder Comes to Campus
An archaeologist considers whether students should learn from antiquities looted from Iraq.
Why Are People Worshipping the Virgin Mary as a Goddess?
Amid a goddess worship revival, some feminists are revering the mother of Jesus as a deity, defying Christian doctrines and confronting the use of Mary as a handmaiden of patriarchy.
How Virtual Reality Is Restoring Liberia’s Culture
Traveling Treasures is a new project led by a team of anthropologists that puts Liberians directly in touch with their dispersed cultural heritage through immersive technologies designed to bridge continents and histories.
In Japan, Rethinking What It Means to Care for the Dead
Facing an increasing aging population and other societal shifts, people are looking beyond traditional family-based mortuary practices.
Huh? The Valuable Role of Interjections
Utterances like “um,” “wow,” and “mm-hmm” aren’t garbage, they keep conversations flowing.
When Calls for Vengeance Go Online
An anthropologist reckons with how digital media has changed youth gang culture dynamics—and what can be done to combat the spread of deadly rumors.
A Poetics of Liberation: An Imagined Archive
A Tanzanian historian and poet conjures alternative engagements with Black African women who were marginalized by violent colonial histories and imprisoned in the archives. As the 2024 poet-in-resident at the magazine, she imaginatively reaches for new possibilities.
The Hopes and Hazards for AI in Reconstructing Ancient Worlds
An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical innovation and avoid misrepresentations.
“Stop This Invader!”—The War on Spotted Lanternflies
An anthropologist reflects on the racist undertones of some U.S. efforts to eradicate the spotted lanternfly, an insect from Asia deemed invasive.
Erasure I and Erasure VI
In two erasure poems, a poet-anthropologist imagines alternative futures using text from the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, through which the British “sold” Kashmir to a despotic Dogra ruler. The poems are from a six-part series titled Song of the First Spring.
How Heavy Metal Fuels Indigenous Revival in Patagonia
An anthropologist plunges into the world of Patagonian heavy metal music in Argentina to explore how the genre relates to language and cultural revitalization.
Tallahassee Ghazal
Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. But in the end, they celebrate love for this place—and that “most of us are breathing.”
Fighting for Justice for the Dead—and the Living
A group of forensic anthropologists argues their field must reject the myth of pure objectivity and challenge systemic inequities through advocacy and activism.
Debitage
Using an original poetic form, a poet chips away at a difficult history—becoming an agent of her own remaking and more than just an estranged daughter.
Tracing Roti’s Pasts, Presents, and Futures
The Roti Collective, a community-based research project, explores the layered histories that brought a flatbread from the Indian subcontinent around the world.
In Iron Age Britain, Descent Was Matrilineal
New analyses from Iron Age burials reveal that women remained in their natal communities and provided the key to kinship. The findings offer essential clues about gender roles and social structures in ancient Europe.
Broken Sonnets for the Anthropocene
The speaker in this broken sonnet form utters disobedience for structures that extract care in the Anthropocene.
David Graeber’s Lasting Influence on Anthropology and Activism
When activist and anthropologist Graeber died unexpectedly in 2020, scholars gathered to mourn him. Contributors to a resulting volume, As If Already Free, reflect on his legacy.
Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya
On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history.
Pequi Winds
A poet-anthropologist reflects on the resistance of rural women in the Brazilian Cerrado whose wisdom and knowledge help cultivate life amid the devastation of large-scale plantations.
Launching Starship in South Texas
An anthropologist witnesses the first integrated flight attempt of the world’s largest rocket—and the wide range of responses it elicited from people.
A Spacecraft’s Dance From French Guiana to Jupiter
As the European Space Agency launches its flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s moons, an anthropologist explores the gap between launch enthusiasts and local residents.
The First Space Launch for Mauritius
An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.
How Cosmic Explorations Are Reshaping Life on Earth
In a series of essays, a collaborative research project brings together “space anthropologists” to investigate how communities around the globe are grappling with the current boom in outer space exploration.
Emic/Etic
A poet-anthropologist offers an “anti-glossary” to contest ways of knowing in social science that objectify people(s) into categories.
Envisioning a More Empathetic Treatment of Great Ape Remains
Many museums are reckoning with the colonial legacies of the human remains and cultural objects in their collections. Now anthropologists are advocating to pay similar respects to primates.
Were Twins the Norm in Our Primate Past?
New research uncovers how the last common primate ancestors typically birthed twins until evolutionary pressures began to favor singletons—likely driven by the advantages of birthing larger, brainier offspring.
Passing Notes
The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation.
How a Megadam Disrupts the Flow of Water—and Money
In Northeast India, a controversial hydropower dam moves toward completion—causing great uncertainty for downstream dwellers whose livelihoods depend on the river.
Cómo una megarrepresa interrumpe el flujo de agua —y dinero—
En el noreste de la India, una controvertida represa hidroeléctrica avanza hacia su finalización —provocando una gran incertidumbre entre los habitantes de las zonas situadas aguas abajo, cuya subsistencia depende del río—.
