What It’s Like to Grow Old on the Margins

In a brief documentary, an anthropologist provides a glimpse into the precarious lives of poor older Peruvians whose experiences mirror…

How Racism Shapes the U.S. Opioid Epidemic

Public health officials say opioid use and related deaths have reached a crisis point in the U.S. An interview with…

Decoding Diversity and Power at Machu Picchu

New DNA analysis has revealed surprising diversity among remains from burial sites in Peru. A genetic anthropologist explains what this…

Giving Winter a Funeral in Transylvania

In a village in Romania, residents maintain a centuries-old carnival tradition called farsang to mark winter’s death. ✽ As the…

Finding Mrs. Jackson

From your backyard to a hill by the ocean, you can come upon an archaeological find just about anywhere. But…

I Do This for You, Mom

One day, a woman in Baltimore received a text message from her mother wishing her a happy holiday. But something…

Can Digitizing Gravestones Save History?

An anthropologist is digitizing gravestones at Burial Hill, a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that holds the remains of some…

Centering Black Lives in the Study of Human Remains

A contributor to a special series on decolonizing anthropology reckons with bioarchaeology’s racist past by focusing on Black women’s creativity…

Aztec Antichrist: A Performance of the Apocalypse

A 16th-century play written by the descendants of the Aztecs after the Spanish conquest dramatically reveals Indigenous people’s responses to…

Misperceiving Life Expectancy in the Deep Past

An archaeologist explains that most people do not calculate life expectancy correctly. This leads to misunderstandings. This article was originally…