anthroview: 2022

Just announced from the Royal Anthropological Institute - a selection of film titles now available on the streaming service at Kanopy:

https://www.kanopy.com/en/category/63039

=-=-= original announcement from the RAI film officer:

We are happy to announce that a selection of films from our extensive catalogue of enthnographic and anthropological films is now available on the educational streaming platform Kanopy.

Films are available to stream for free through subscribing institutions, including public libraries and many universities. Log in via your institution and start watching now.

spotlight on Archaeology - people & their environment via material traces recovered & posited

The American Anthropological Association features a different one of its 3-dozen plus Sections. This time it is the Archaeology Division.

See the recommended things to hear, watch, and read:

Watching

Community as Rebellion: Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color, YouTube
Reclaiming Our Heritage: The Monacan Indian Nation of Virginia, The Archaeology Channel
Diving for the Clotilda: The Archaeology, History, and Legacy of the Last Known Slave Ship, YouTube
White Hill Plantation: Excavation Units, YouTube

Listening

The Sounds of Borders, AnthroPod
Classic Tides | Peasants and the Medieval Countryside, Tides of history
The New Science of Archaeoecology, The Archaeology Show
More Parts of Cladh Hallan, The Dirt

Reading

Doing

DHR Virginia Department of Historic Resources Threatened Sites Program Ongoing
Fairfield Fridays Fairfield Archaeology Park, Hayes VA | Fridays 10 - 4:00pm EDT
"A City Built on Ships: Reconstructing 18th-Century Ships Excavated from the Alexandria Waterfront" Online | October 26, 7:00pm EDT
Advocacy for Archaeologists: Building Strong Relationships with Local, State, and Federal Policymakers Online | December 8, 1 - 2:00pm EDT

Shopping

Following

=-=-=-=-= SEE ALSO

AAA Resources

Advances in Archaeological Practice, Cambridge Core
Herding Heritage, Anthropology News
Archaeology in 2021: Repatriation, reclamation, and reckoning with historical trauma, American Anthropologist

2022-09-26

museums and genocide episodes showcased

There have been so many instances (Bosnia/Serbia 1992, Rwanda 1998, way back to 1915 Armenia, 1820s Trail of Tears in USA, Cossacks, Shtetl pogroms); see also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

Still more: Biblical record of Jews escaping Egyptian bondage and crossing the Jordan river to kill local residents of 'promised' land. Today in Israel the Holocaust is put in prominent, clear view at Yad Vashem. Native peoples throughout the New World were killed actively and passively, bodily and culturally in many instances, methods, and locations. Tasmania and the continent of Australia is filled with injustices, too. And in mid-September 2022 the dictator of the Russian Federation, #PutinWarCriminal, is targeting ethnic minorities to be destroyed in Ukraine by being pushed into the killing zone.

Here and there the subject of genocide is showcased in a museum form - both in static display, but also in programming events to generate discussion and awareness and further documentation of personal accounts.

The suppressing, sterilization, and killing of people and cultural landscape of the Turkic peoples in the west part of China since 2017 joins the Burmar's Path to Genocide exhibit is quite substantial and has been up for nearly two years now. The physical exhibit is in USHHM and also can be toured online (they do a number of presentations in Cox Bazaar and with the Rohingya community): https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/burmas-path-to-genocide

2022-09-22

Local accent - English spoken in Yorkshire, Britain's north

Roman occupiers put the sound of the city sited on the banks of the river Ouse into Latin letters as "Eboracum." Viking occupiers 400 years later heard the name as "Jorvik," from which people today call it York and which settlers at the meeting of the Hudson and East Rivers at Manhattan took as the reference for NEW York.

In this 5-minute video there are several speakers young and old from Yorkshire, as well as a hint of Northumbria (Geordie) or else from the Scottish borders, whose vocabulary, rhythms, and accents display the Yorkshire accent. The subject is a sad one about deadly sepsis: Hannah Brown whose flu-like symptoms suddenly flared into mortal illness which the hospital was unable to stop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLpaTYDeXG0

2022-08-01

Pre-college anthropology examples (panel discussion) 2022

Many of us stumbled upon the fascinating world we now make careers in. But more and more places purposefully introduce young people to ideas and methods for understanding identity, culture, and context in time and place. Many weeks ago The Royal Anthropological Institute held an online panel discussion on past and current instances of anthropology being taught and schools and (secondary school) in Scotland and in England. Last week they announced the recording (1:52) for viewing of the session and Q and A that followed (begins from 1:10:00), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYM6p4Jb9YM

Within the conversation during QA there were comparisons offered from Kenya, Italy, Israel, and Germany, among other places.

Whether you watch for children in your own family and for friends, or it is an abiding interest in advancing anthropology more generally in schools around you, this session offers a lot of good examples of overcoming obstacles, opening eyes, and enlisting help of others adjacent or amenable to anthropology for pre-college learners.

The commenting function on the video is not activated, but you can always send email to www.therai.org.uk or pursue contacts given in the recording itself.

2022-07-06

Language lore - click languages in SE corner of Africa

- quoting boingboing.net for July 6, 2022 (about 3.5 minutes)

Sakhile Dube of "Safari and Surf" in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Province explains the click sounds heard in the Zulu language (aka IsiZulu), a Bantu language spoken by more than ten million people in the region.

https://youtu.be/kBW2eDx3h8w

How to pronounce Zulu Clicks with Sakhile from Safari and Surf - Wilderness Adventures

Many of the South African Tribes use click sounds in their language, this is a great Zulu click lesson with Sakhile from Safari and Surf - Wilderness Adventu...

youtu.be

2022-06-15

Online "laugh, laugh" spellings in 26 languages

Sample from full article at https://preply.com/en/d/laughing-around-the-world-map--lp

1 - Thai: "55555" is the most curious graphic representation and the reason behind it is because the number 5 in Thai is pronounced "haa". To laugh a lot you will see 55555555+(+) adding the "+" sign.

2 - Portuguese: In both Portugal and Brazil, laughter is written "kkkkk" but you will also find "rsrsrs" (abbreviation of "riso", meaning "laughter") and the ironic "rarara".

3 - Turkish: "hahaha", "ahahah", "jsjsjsjs", "weqeqwqewqew" or, the funniest option, random letters like: "dksajdksajdoşad" (which is the most common) are used to laugh.

4 - Malay: because "ha" x 3 times equals "hahaha", Malay speakers write "Ha3Ha3Ha3" or "Ha3". They also write laughter the way an English speaker writes, like "haha" or "ha, ha".

2022-06-05

About Black Accent, "blaccent"

excerpt from https://boingboing.net/2022/06/04/the-history-of-blaccent.html

The concept of "Blaccent" or African American Vernacular English will always elude me. I don't mean that on a conceptual level, but rather a practical one since I "talk white." My voice has been a source of great pain throughout my life since the simple act of speaking earns me the ire, even if unintentionally, of a large swath of Black Americans. Whenever I meet other Black people, projections about my past, connection to my culture, and self-love are hurled before me as conversational obstacles outside of the already daunting process of forging a human connection.

Video link, https://youtu.be/8mXaccYFKRQ

2022-05-14

Writing the past for people without history

Story about one of Norway's 16 cities during the Middle Ages, excavated in 30 seasons from the early 1950s until 1981 and producing 45,000 artifacts and many human remains, too. Only now is a new generation taking the work of interpreting the excavated materials.

Uncovering the Secrets of a Forgotten Viking Town - Atlas Obscura

Of course there are many more societies without written records than there are ones with a system of writing or other form of keeping records. Now in 2022 still there are something between 6700 and 6900 human languages, of which just 100 or so read and write in the same language that they speak. However, population-wise a sizable majority of living-breathing humans speak just one of 20 or 30 languages. All the diversity in the remaining ones accounts for a fraction of those walking the planet. In other words, "people without history" (part of the title for Eric Wolf's famous book from the 1980s) are relatively few persons, but relatively most languages/societies. Stated in reverse, the people who do record history account for relatively few societies, but numerically far outnumber the souls who live out their lives with no writing use.

2022-03-29

Speaking with an accent - 7 min. explainer

Presenter comes from West Lancashire, adjacent to Liverpool's own "liverpudlian" (scouse) accent and illustrates some of the forces that come into play when creating the particular way that people speak in a specific landscape. Examples are given from among the 56 recognized varieties across the British Isles. Often the best (conserved, traditional) illustrations can be heard in preschool children with contact with grandparents; also among livelihoods closely associated with the land (and sea), such as farmers and fishermen.

Why do we have accents?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXaorSYACPo

2022-03-07

Film Festival-7, indigenous languages today and tomorrow

=-= crossposting March 7, 2022 film festival organizer's email message

This year, our festival showcased 45 languages through 35 exceptional films that span over 16 regions around the world. Your support contributes to our continued success and the quality of the festival.

If you enjoyed this year's festival and would like to revisit some of the programming, you can explore open access films on our website and watch roundtable sessions on our YouTube channel. You can also stay up-to-date with the festival by subscribing to our mailing list for occasional newsletters about our films, events, and related programming.

Gracias, tekk, mahalo, merci, and thank you!

—The Mother Tongue Film Festival Team

7th Annual Mother Tongue Film Festival

February 17 – March 4, 2022

2022-01-29

Reconsidering our Neanderthal ancestry 160 to 45,000 years ago

Weekly radio show, On The Media (OTM), https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538775/on-the-media

January 28, 2022 - Humans, Being

When you hear the word "Neanderthal," you probably picture a mindless, clumsy brute. It's often used as an insult — even by our president, who last year called anti-maskers "Neanderthals." But what if we have more in common with our ancestral cousins than we think? On this week's On the Media, hear how these early humans have been unfairly maligned in science and in popular culture.

1. John Hawks [@johnhawks], professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, on our biological family tree—and the complicated branch that is Neanderthals. Listen.

2. Rebecca Wragg Sykes [@LeMoustier], archeologist and author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, on and what we know about how they lived. Listen.

3. Clive Finlayson [@CliveFinlayson], Director, Chief Scientist, and Curator of the Gibraltar National Museum, on how studying what's inside Gorham and Vanguard caves can help reconstruct Neanderthal life beyond them. Listen.

4. Angela Saini, science journalist, on how Neanderthals have been co-opted to push mythologies about the genetic basis of race.

2022-01-13

Exhibit "Race: are we so different?" now online thanks to Google-Arts/culture initiative

See https://artsandculture.google.com/story/race-are-we-so-different/ugKy-3EjEtQeIg

Little by little the google form of spreading access to collections and displays grows each year.

anthroview

2022-12-14

World Council of Anthropological Associations, WCAA - video list

2022-11-06

in the month of November - focus on Indigenous people today

2022-10-21

Watching ethnographic films online (Kanopy streaming service via many libraries)