The Problem of Imagining the Real

One of the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis is taking serious action against a threat that seems so abstract and intangible.

What Will Italy Become Without Its Elders?

The coronavirus has swept away a generation of wisdom-keepers, WWII survivors, storytellers, parents, and grandparents in Bergamo, Italy. An anthropologist mourns with her community—the hardest hit in the country—and asks all of us the most difficult questions of this pandemic.

Is It Ever OK to Publish Photographs of Human Remains?

In many cultures, people consider it unethical, insensitive, and harmful to photograph human remains, much less to make such an image viewable to the public. The SAPIENS editorial team explains its philosophy and approach to handling images of human remains.

Digging up the Dead

An archaeological field school experience shines a light on the grave concerns people have about the treatment of human remains.

What Migrants Leave Behind

Piles of backpacks, empty water jugs, and even high heels left scattered on migrant trails leave visible markers of the desperation and endurance of those who traveled there.

How to Care for the Dead

How long have we been burying the dead? And why is it so haunting when we can’t set those who have passed to rest?

Did Ancient People Die Young?

Many of us believe our ancestors lived much shorter lives than we do. Cutting-edge archaeology shows otherwise.

The Weird, Wild World of Mortuary Customs

Embalming is just one among the world’s wide variety of funeral practices, and in a sense it’s as ordinary as any other. Then again, it’s pretty strange.

Grief Can Make Us Wise

Grief makes sense of loss and opens us to rebuilding all that is meaningful in life. Society would benefit if public grief were acknowledged more.

The Death of a Hungry God

The electrocution of a wild elephant in a village in northeast India illustrates how these formidable beings are experienced as both animal and deity.