New Stories
All Stories
Anthropology Magazine
essay /
Counterpoint
Do Strict Criminal Penalties Protect Animals From Abuse?
Iván Sandoval-Cervantes
In Mexico, a growing animal protection movement often promotes harsh criminal punishment for those who abuse animals. But are these strategies working, or do they lead to further injustices?
essay /
Crossroads
Past and Present Approaches to the Management of Red Deer
Jacqui Mulville
An archaeologist weighs the pros and cons driving debates around the rising population of Scotland’s renowned animal and explains what historical archaeology could add to the conversation.
essay /
Decoded
Decoding Diversity and Power at Machu Picchu
Roberta Davidson
New DNA analysis has revealed surprising diversity among remains from burial sites in Peru. A genetic anthropologist explains what this suggests about the 15th century Inca palace.
essay /
Phenomenon
Inside Mexico City’s Surveillance State
Esteban Salmón
An anthropologist investigates how one city’s rapidly expanding video surveillance system is transforming criminal investigation—sometimes in deeply flawed ways.
essay /
Field Notes
Through Film, Discovering Hope in the Face of Environmental Destruction
Peter Sutoris
In the midst of acute eco-anxiety, can community-based filmmaking help young people imagine a different future?
essay /
Unearthed
What Ancient Goat Teeth Reveal About Animal Care
Melina Seabrook
Unraveling a mystery around millennia-old goat bones, an archaeologist reflects on the harm people can cause their most cherished animals.
essay /
Redux
The Hidden Ancestry Extracted From an Ancient Pendant
Michelle Langley
An anthropologist explains how new forensics tools offer unprecedented answers to questions about who likely held or wore Stone Age objects.
essay /
Viewpoint
Archaeological Tropes That Perpetuate Colonialism
Nicholas C. Laluk and Joseph Aguilar
Two Indigenous archaeologists from the U.S. Southwest shed light on how “abandonment” and other common archaeological terms continue to cause harm. They offer insights into how to rewrite narratives of the past.
essay /
Decoded
Forensic Methods Unveil Clues About Megafauna Extinctions
Christopher R. Moore
An archaeologist explains how novel applications of forensic methods—namely, blood residue analyses—have yielded evidence that Paleoindians hunted mastodons, mammoths, and other megafauna in eastern North America 13,000 years ago.
op-ed /
Standpoints
How Eugenics Shaped the U.S. Prenatal Care System
Dána-Ain Davis and Kelley Akhiemokhali
Black women in the U.S. are far more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and birth than White women. Two scholars explore how the discrediting of Black midwives helped create these racial disparities—and call for alternative models of prenatal care.
poem /
In Flux
Speaking in Tongues
Beni Sumer Yanthan
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community.
essay /
Expressions
Bringing Nhakpoti, the Kayapó Story of Star Girl, to the Screen
Paul Chilsen, Glenn H. Shepard Jr., and Pat-i Kayapó
Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how agriculture came to Kayapó communities, Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon.
essay /
Wayfinding
Dating the Arrival of Modern Humans in Asia
Kira Westaway, Meghan McAllister-Hayward, Mike W. Morley, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, and Vito C. Hernandez
A team of researchers explains how the discovery of a human skull and jawbone helps push back the timing of modern humans’ migration into Southeast Asia.
op-ed /
Crisis
Can Archaeology Help Restore the Oceans?
Todd Braje, Emma Elliott Smith, Juliette Meling, and Torben Rick
On the Channel Islands, archaeologists draw lessons in sustainability from historic Chumash fishing practices.
essay /
Crossroads
Imagining Other Worlds at the India-Pakistan Border
Rashmi Sadana
For decades, soldiers at the border between Attari, India, and Wagah, Pakistan, have staged an elaborate ceremony for onlookers. An anthropologist reflects on the ceremony as a legacy of Partition—and imagines other futures for the two nations.
essay /
Material Culture
What Pots Say—and Don’t Say—About People
Joss Whittaker
Archaeologists long abandoned the simple notion that “pots are people”—that people’s identities directly correspond with the pottery they made and used. What, then, can ceramics reveal about past lives?
essay /
In Flux
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
Karminn C.D. Daytec Yañgot
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands.
essay /
Excerpt
The Persistence of Fukushima’s Fisherfolk
Satsuki Takahashi
In a new book, an anthropologist with long-term ties to northeastern Japan shares stories of how fishing communities have continued making a living in uncertain waters after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disaster.
essay /
Lab Bench
On the Quandaries of Aquatic Forensics
Paola A. Magni, Edda Guareschi, and Rossella Paba
A team of scientists, including an anthropologist, explains the challenges and methods for locating, identifying, and retrieving human remains from underwater.
poem /
Reflections
Cold Hubris and Fundo
Alma Simba
A poet-historian reflects on the legacy of colonial-era collecting practices in Tanzania that tore Black Indigenous ancestors from their communities and history.
op-ed /
Counterpoint
Extinguishing the Idea That Hobbits Had Fire
Elizabeth Grace Veatch
Research has overturned earlier claims that a diminutive human relative,
Homo floresiensis
, lit fires—but big stories die hard.
essay /
Material World
Piecing Together the Puzzle of Oman’s Ancient Towers
Smiti Nathan
In recent years, the Omani government has invested in archaeology and heritage tourism to boost its economy—renewing interest in mysterious 4,000-year-old towers that dot the Southeastern Arabian landscape.
essay /
Decoded
A New Take on an Old Fossil Hints at Ancient Migrations
Brian Anthony Keeling and Rolf Quam
Two anthropologists explain how an enigmatic human fossil jawbone—and its 3D-printed reconstruction—may evidence an early
Homo sapiens
presence in Europe and shed new light on evolutionary diversity and migration.
column /
Entanglements
What Spider Games Say About Arachnophobia
Gideon Lasco
Many people around the world fear spiders. But in the Philippines, the tradition of spider wrestling often brings people and arachnids in close proximity.
column /
Unearthed
Why Store 41,000 Bison Bones?
Stephen E. Nash
An archaeologist explains why a museum keeps so many bones from the Jones-Miller site, an ice age bison kill on the North American plains.
op-ed /
Standpoints
The Urgency of Envisioning a World Without Police
Brendane A. Tynes
An anthropologist working in Baltimore argues that safety for Black communities requires an end to policing. That also means taking a hard look at how policing intersects with patriarchy and intimate partner violence.
poem /
Expressions
A Call for Anthropological Poems From Within “Zones of Conflict”
SAPIENS is seeking poetry submissions for a curated collection that will publish in early 2024. Deadline September 15, 2023.
op-ed /
Material Culture
What Happens When Catholic Medals Become Mainstream Jewelry
Emma Cieslik
Retailers are selling medallions cherished by Catholics who favor conservative gender roles. Are secular buyers sporting anti-feminist symbols?
essay /
Lost in Translation
Scientists Uplift Indigenous Human-Horse Histories
William Taylor and Yvette Running Horse Collin
An archaeologist and a Lakota genomics scientist explain how combining archaeology, DNA, and Indigenous knowledge can help revise colonial human-horse narratives largely associated with the western U.S.
essay /
Cultural Relativity
Fair and Balanced—Weighing Coca With a
Wipi
in Peru
Jordan Dalton and Sarah Bennison
An Andean community’s use of weighing scales shows how meanings of fairness and justice differ across cultures.
op-ed /
Icons
What Indiana Jones Gets Right About Archaeology
Petar Parvanov
As Dr. Jones returns to the big screen, a real archaeologist acknowledges the movie franchise's shortcomings while espousing its merits.
op-ed /
Standpoints
Collaborating So a 200-Year-Old Pipe Can Continue Its Work
Justin Jennings and Duke Peltier
A museum curator and a First Nations leader explain how a treaty pipe, sold at auction, exemplifies a new path for repatriations in Canada.
Search
+
-
Branch
+
-
Story type
+
-
Tags
↻ Clear
Archaeology
Biology
Culture
Language
Archaeology
Biology
Culture
Language
Column
Essay
Interview
Op-ed
Photo Essay
Poem
Video
History
Indigenous
Environment
Identity
Health
Violence
Opinion
Politics
Relationships
Emotions
Race
Science
More...
Power
Biology
Migration
Food
Communication
Economics
Evolution
Place
Ritual
Ethics
Paleolithic
Policy
Mind
Gender
Preservation
Memory
Disasters
Methods
Animals
War
Medicine
Death
Art
Hominins
Law
Religion
Genetics
Heritage
Colonialism
Sex
Technology
Primates
Video
Urban
Development
Sports
Museums
Disease
Agriculture
Climate Change
Activism
Water
Space
Media
Labor
Crime
Children
Music
Kinship
Conservation
Education
Clothing
Disability
Dance
↻ Clear
←
Back to Menu
All Articles
Podcast
Teaching
Write
Contributors
Donate
Newsletter
About
Staff
Contact
An editorially independent anthropology magazine of the Wenner-Gren Foundation
& University of Chicago Press