Reimagining Rock Art in Southern Africa
With the help of key contemporary ethnographic texts about modern San peoples, archaeologists are reconsidering the meaning of cave paintings created by ancient San in a new—and sacred—light.
Essays
-
-
Anti-Asian Racism’s Deep Roots in the United States
SAPIENS talks with anthropologist Kyeyoung Park about anti-Asian violence and Asian Americans’ fraught sense of belonging in the U.S.
-
An Archaeologist on the Railroad of Death
The 1950s Hollywood movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, about a Japanese POW camp during World War II, nearly contained a fascinating side story about a dedicated archaeologist prisoner. Hendrik Robert van Heekeren deserves the spotlight.
-
How Black Caribbean Communities Are Reviving an Ancestral Dance Tradition
An interview with anthropologist Camee Maddox-Wingfield explores how practitioners of bèlè on the island of Martinique find agency, healing, and connection.
-
A West African Window Into Human Evolution
Senegalese archaeology is revealing new insights into human history on the African continent.
-
Finding and Losing the World’s Oldest Art in Sulawesi
An anthropologist goes back to see Sulawesi cave paintings he reported in Indonesia decades ago—and mourns their degradation and loss.