anthroview

Story about the field of forensic anthropology from Michigan State University weekly newsletter,

https://msutoday.msu.edu/feature/2019/spartan-death-detective/

2019-09-19

Such pyramids of solid waste - or Ziggurat?

Exemplar from India's capital city, probably composed of the "11 per centers" who are Middle Class and above and who are accustomed to buy, consume, and discard; repeat at will.

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/19/new-delhis-garbage-mountain.html

2019-06-30

online textbook, Biological Anthropology (lab)

via the message board of the American Anthropological Association on 30 June 2019,

...LibreTexts just harvested Alex A. G. Taub's Biological Anthropology Laboratory Activities, a free Open Educational Resource (OER). Labs include: Identifying Bones, Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, Primates, Bone Injuries, Early, Middle, and Recent Hominid Cranium Comparison Checklists.

The LibreTexts platform makes it easier to customize.

2019-06-22

languages of Australia - last chance, Miriwoong

video story via BBC in June 2019 about the people, places, and language of Miriwoong.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-australia-48632801/miriwoong-the-australian-language-which-barely-anybody-speaks

2019-06-13

overview - Britain's Bronze-Age "Pompeii" excavated, first synthesis of the pieces

[copied from Facebook page of Must Farm Archaeology 13 June 2019]

We are excited to share our first formal article on the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement! The piece, published in Antiquity, is Open Access and completely free to download. We wanted to provide an overview of the site, incorporate information emerging from post-excavation and share our current interpretations of the archaeology.

We discuss the background to the latest excavations, describe some of the material recovered and detail the evidence that suggests the settlement had a short lifespan before its destruction in a large fire.

In the coming days we'll also share a new Post-Excavation Diary where we discuss the future of the post-excavation and the next stages in the publication process.

Article Link, https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.38

2019-05-30

close-up look at Orangutans of Sumatra

Just 6,000 left on Planet Earth and 97% shared DNA to human DNA, as told in this 11 minute story that makes use of the tiny action cameras for a close-up view, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oir_PSJpbAA

GoPro: Our Orangutan Brethren

The seventh of the GoPro HERO3+ Adventure Series. What we do for orangutans, we do for ourselves. Peter Pratje, of the Frankfurt Zoological Society, introduces us to our orangutan family and reveals how we, as individuals, can help prevent their imminent extinction. Shot 100% on the HD HERO3+® camera from http://GoPro.com. For more information ...

www.youtube.com

2019-05-22

intersection Mikmaq x English

Canada story on the radio 22 May 2019:

https://youtu.be/99-LoEkAA3w [blackbird sung to showcase indigenous language]

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/05/22/blackbird-mikmaq-indigenous-language

2019-04-27

roots of literacy, writing systems, society's changes that follow

Here is a modest introduction to the subject matter of writing systems and written languages, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190426-the-british-librarys-exhibition-of-writing

2019-04-18

early Japan ethnography 1950s-60s (taidan), Plath - Vogel

With permission of the Midwest Japan Seminar, Japan Foundation and host at Ohio Wesleyan University, here is the Youtube link to the hour-long conversation recently between long-time friends and colleagues, Prs David Plath and Ezra Vogel. Hearing first-hand of their early years in the field and in Japanese Studies circles is eye-opening for one and all, no matter your scholarly generation or genealogy. Feel free to share widely with others.

https://www.owu.edu/about/follow-owu/stream-owu/special-events/april-6-2019-midwest-japan-seminar--taidan-/

2019-04-09

new book, "An Anthropology of Anthropology"

This 372 page book comes from an anthropologist in Hawai'i. The PDF can be downloaded at no cost. A print edition can be ordered after June 1 at the latest. His subject is "public anthropology" - using anthropology methods and data to solve social problems with the environment, society, justice, food, education, health, and so on. He says that anthropology has many insights, but usually only is a spectator to watch the world; not to apply the insight to solve big or complicated problems.

Some of the testimonials from noted anthropologists, selectively appended below, give some sense of the book.

<><><>text and link of the book announcement<><><>

...to download a free (open access) copy of An Anthropology of Anthropology as well as see what 35 prominent anthropologists from Australia, Canada, France, Norway, United Kingdom and United States say about it (including Philippe Bourgois, Paul Farmer, Didier Fassin, George Marcus, and Laura Nader).

https://books.publicanthropology.org/an-anthropology-of-anthropology.html

This link can be used by anyone, anytime, anywhere to freely download the book. Please forward this link to interested colleagues and students.

If you lose the link, you can readily obtain it from the new, updated publicanthropology website at www.publicanthropology.org.

Public Anthropology: An Open Access Series

c/o 45-045 Kamehameha Hwy., Kaneohe, HI 96744

= APPENDED NOTES =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [some comments by well-known anthropology colleagues]

Starting with a critical state of the art, he then defends and illustrates an alternative paradigm, which would involve a radical transformation of the way in which the academia considers its responsibility toward society. Rich in numerous case studies,

==========careerism in which quantity has replaced quality, in which creativity and path-breaking ideas have become a relic of the past. Borofsky makes a strong plea for redirecting anthropology into the world beyond the academy that is our object of study in order to produce knowledge that has a real impact on others

==========at a time when it needs to convey its insights to those beyond the discipline. It needs to ask big questions that matter to others. Rob Borofsky asks why cultural anthropology falls short of this potential. In his search to answer this question, he challenges the university-based contexts that shape the field—what == Note: jirei? if not rooted on campus then what alt vantage points.

==========written almost nothing about conditions of work, patronage, funding, institutional hierarchy in the academy—that is, the power relations under which anthropological writing is actually produced. Robert Borofsky is one of the few who's had the requisite courage to do so.

==========Borofsky catches a sea change in the discipline's perception of itself.

==========inclined to agree on the paramount need for the field to work at building an explicit consensus about what an anthropology degree signals to the world and also agree that the standards of accountability we set for ourselves go well beyond biblio-metrics to include the ways in which our work contributes to a more just and sustainable global community. EDWARD LIEBOW, Executive Director of AAA

==========the faith that Rob Borofsky places in what anthropologists can do in bringing professional and activist roles together—what I termed in the 1990s 'circumstantial activism'—for the benefit of both publics and anthropology.

==========moving past the "do no harm" seemingly neutral stance of the academy, to a more proactive "do good!" model of anthropology with no apologies.

==========He asks tough questions about individual accountability, ethics, and self-interests. Has anthropology made real intellectual breakthroughs in recent decades? He confronts anthropologists asking them to reassess and to renew our social contract with the public good

=========="Reach out to others or else become irrelevant!" is Rob Borofsky's take home message for American cultural anthropologists. He believes the discipline has shot itself in the foot: producing abstruse publications on topics of little value to the broader world, read only by an insular anthropological audience, and written primarily for the sake of narrow professional advancement.

=========="The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame." Sir Salman Rushdie, British-Indian novelist and essayist

2019-03-30

since 2012, the "Great Pompeii Project"

The website gives a glimpse of the locations and views open to the public. These days 30 buildings may be seen up close, compared to the 60 back in 1956 and compared to 10 in 2010. The Great Pompeii Project has succeeded in stabilizing the excavated spaces so that visitors may see some of the city buried by volcanic eruption almost 2000 years previously. Perhaps a drone recording will be added to the website to give a virtual visit to distant and nearby people who are curious about the society long ago.

http://pompeiisites.org/en/

2019-03-04

Nitty-gritty, archaeology methods after the excavating is done

The ongoing coverage of the UK's "Pompeii" site at Must Farm bronze age (wetland) site is being reported on their Facebook webpage brief and on their website in detail.

This three-part series covers the specialist scrutiny of samples and artifacts to shed new light on the people and events surrounding the fire and escape from this habitation long years ago.

Part 1, Post-Ex Diary 8: Specialist Analyses Part One
http://www.mustfarm.com/post-dig/post-ex-diary-8-specialist-analyses-part-one/

Part 2, Post-Ex Diary 9: Specialist Analyses Part Two
http://www.mustfarm.com/post-dig/post-ex-diary-9-specialist-analyses-part-two/

Part 3, Waterlogged and Charred Wood; Ceramic; Bone; Fabrics
http://www.mustfarm.com/post-dig/post-ex-diary-10-specialist-analyses-part-three/

2019-02-06

linguistic anthropology> Project online to record all the many languages rooted to a place

[excerpt from article linked, below] ...2019 is the UNESCO International Year of Indigenous Languages. What is Wikitongues doing in coordination with it? The International Year of Indigenous Languages (#IYIL2019) was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly as a way of making 2019 a platform for promoting linguistic diversity and the recent groundswell of activism to sustain it. This was accomplished thanks to the hard work of indigenous activists who spent a long time lobbying for this level of recognition. UNESCO is stewarding the year-long campaign, since they’re the branch most concerned with cultural preservation. Wikitongues was brought on board to help bridge the gap between UNESCO and the grassroots organizations, so we helped build a coalition of civil society organizations from the around the world to amplify the spirit of the year. Wikitongues will be working to encourage people to use their languages publicly, especially online, so we’ll be designing and copromoting fun and creative social media campaigns that do just that, such as the Mother Language Meme challenge, which is self-explanatory, or Indigenous Language Challenge, which encourages nonindigenous people to learn indigenous languages in solidarity, and indigenous heritage speakers to reclaim their ancestral languages. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The wiki-tongues project, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wikitongues-documenting-languages =-= See also, 2007, K. David Harrison, When Languages Die <>Similarly eye-opening is the story of his LivingTongues.org research center, (Iron Bound Films) The Linguists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Linguists <>Then also, see PBS.org, Language Matters (2015), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Matters_with_Bob_Holman

2019-02-02

museum care - how to clean a totem pole

Major caretaking of collection of totem poles in NYC at the American Museum of Natural History, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-conserve-totem-poles

2019-01-18

your language shapes what you pay attention to (or you are blind to)

This November 2017 T.E.D. talk about languages and relativity of one's perspective in the world includes many vivid illustrations to show the way that your language shines a light (or casts a shadow) on social interactions and relationship to the environment, too.

https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think/discussion

After watch the presentation a Russian speaking colleague observes (posted with permission): Of course, each language, in turn, is a product of the history, geography, culture and mentality of that particular ethnic group and thus, reflection thereof. For instance, one of the differences between English and Russian is that in Russian it's very common to use impersonal idioms akin to "it rains," even in situations where there clearly is a traceable responsible source of action or at least, there should be. So, from the language one often gets an impression that something of a personal, political, etc. nature just happened so -- sort of like a natural occurrence. By contrast, in English the indication of who is the action subject is typically much more evident. That definitely reflects the centuries-old collective/communal/totalitarian culture where individual responsibility is neither common, nor encouraged, whereas in the lands of English language the mentality builds around individual rights and responsibilities.

2019-01-03

ancient human DNA as window on distribution and timeline of related peoples

At the end of 2018 this article provides recap of major insights produced or suggested from labwork on samples of ancient human remains.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferraff/2018/12/27/five-amazing-things-we-learned-about-history-from-ancient-dna-in-2018/#ac3a5d611f7a

One author, David Reich, has compared the powers of this new technology to the breakthroughs offered by Carbon 14 dating of organic materials excavated. Instead of induction and deduction from the layering of deposited materials to estimate dates, now some precision was possible. In the same way, DNA offers a sharper view of relatedness of peoples ancient and modern; it allows previous conclusions about (paleo) archaeological locations to be revisited, too.

Reich's 2018 book, Who We Are and How We Got Here, offers chapter by chapter visions of the past in various corners of the world.

https://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-How-Got-Here/dp/110187032X

2018-08-16

linguists? English spelling quirks... what if

quoting from boingboing.net today: what if English were to follow the Dutch example 200 years ago when they changed spellings to get rid of exceptions to the rule, so that each spelling combination had only one pronunciation.

Japanese is a hard language to learn, but one of the easy parts is its generally phonetic consistency. English is also hard language to learn, and it's made harder because letters and letter combinations are pronounced differently depending on the word they are in. An example that illustrates this is "ghoti," a made up word that is pronounced "fish." The "gh" is pronounced like the "f" sound in "tough," the "o" is the "i" sound in "women," "ti" is the "sh" sound in "fiction."

Aaron Alon made a video that shows what English would sound like if each vowel had one, and only one, pronunciation. The result sounds like an American pretending to have a weird pan-European accent. https://youtu.be/A8zWWp0akUU

What If English Were Phonetically Consistent?

youtu.be

Learn more about Aaron Alon's music, writing, and films at aaronalon.com.

2018-08-06

online course to see the length and breadth of Cross-cultural Methods

[excerpt of webpage, http://hraf.yale.edu/ccc/] Introducing Cross-Cultural Research

This online course is a brief introduction to the world of ethnography-based cross-cultural research. The course outlines the logic of cross-cultural research and various aspects of the research process from start to finish, including the steps involved in framing a research question, deriving hypotheses from theory, design of measures, coding procedures, sampling, reliability, and the use of statistics to analyze results.

2018-07-17

Looking for Iron Age locations

The dry summer days show off structures ordinarily not visible at ground level, or even like this from the air when all is well watered at other seasons and even during the summer of a typical rainfall year. Here are a few structures in the vicinity of Eire's giant New Grange stone building of millennia ago, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mythicalireland/41635425520/in/explore-2018-07-16/

No doubt these will contribute to the mapped locations and finds across the hilltops through the British Isles around the time that implements and weapons of iron overtook the weaker points of bronze (admixing copper with tin) and before that the artifacts of copper alone.

New henge discovery near Newgrange

I was at the centre of a major archaeological discovery in the Boyne Valley last week. Using a drone, I found a massive crop mark which is believed to be the footprint of a huge late Neolithic henge or enclosure. I was flying with Ken Williams at the time. The markings are only visible because of the prolonged drought in the area.

2018-07-12

dry weather reveals subsurface structures (aerial view; drone uses)

Low tide lines in the long-term water cycle, as well as droughts bring opportunities for Space Archaeologists and aerial spotting of human activity in places normally obscured by water tideline or surface vegetation. Here are examples of crop marks in the fields around Wales:

Cropmarks 2018 (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales)

2018-06-30

language tuning (Singapore English)

Wikipedia has entries for some of the most prolific blends of English and other languages: Spanglish (Spanish), Frangalis (French), Chinglish - Japlish - Konglish (Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Here is Singapore's effort to rectify local habits of English on the island, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/singlish-singapore-government-campaign

The Government Campaign to Get Rid of Singapore's Unofficial Language

www.atlasobscura.com

Singlish, a creole, is spoken all over the country, but politicians want citizens to "speak good English."

2018-06-27

anthro eye in the private sector - seeing what people say & do

The power of empirical, fieldwork-based observation and participant-observation has been recognized in companies big and small, USA and other countries' businesses.

This June 2018 radio story features a conversation with future anthropologists seeking possible careers away from campus settings.

~~from Marketplace featuring Rebekah Park (ReD) and Elizabeth Briody (Cultural Keys).
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/06262018-us-edition

2018-06-10

ancient role of grandmothering - radio story, June 2018

Babysitters, tuber-diggers: Studies show the rise of grandmas helped babies thrive — and evolve

For decades, a "man the hunter" theory of early humans prevailed, with the image of societies and interactions revolving around bagging big game. But new research suggests that women likely brought home a lot more food. When grandmothers were added to the mix, babies ate better and may have developed better social skills to manage their multiple caregivers.

"Human children are adapted for cooperation … in ways that apes aren't," says a psychologist.

2018-05-23

language, identity, existential environment

Perils of speaking (and speaking about) Tibetan language and society; whether linguistic fluency, social proficiency, or cultural literacy,

https://boingboing.net/2018/05/22/tibetan-man-gets-five-years-in.html

Tibetan man gets five years in prison for speaking about his native language

boingboing.net

Tibetan man gets five years in prison for speaking about his native language

2018-05-11

what happens when country shifts print from Cyrillic to Latin-based alphabet

Kazakhstan's commitment to change, following the 1928 example of Turkey's own shift from Arabic script to Latin-based alphabet.

www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180424-the-cost-of-changing-an-entire-countrys-alphabet

BBC - Capital - The cost of changing an entire country's ...

www.bbc.com

The Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic script to the Latin-based style favoured by the West. What are the economics of such a change?

2018-01-03

migrating from NE Asia to North America - news story

Two infant remains from the last Ice Age excavated in Alaska; DNA patterns suggest many Asia linkages and various branches sometime after settling in N. America, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/03/575326694/ancient-human-remains-document-migration-from-asia-to-america

2017-09-06

annual whale hunt - contrasting documentary viewpoints

Japan Times (7 Sept 2017) gives a good overview of "Whale of a Tale," the newly released story with builds in local villagers point of view for the annual killing in the Taiji cove that was forcefully presented by the lenses of "The Cove." Excerpt of online news article follows, with URL to full article and movie URL.

The anthropological foundational ideas of point of view and context are well illustrated by both documentaries.

EXCERPT

..."Quite simply, I was fascinated by the controversy," Sasaki tells The Japan Times, "but I was also pained by what I felt was a very one-sided way of viewing things.

"'The Cove' showed us what the Taiji fishermen were doing to dolphins in a way that made any counter-arguments difficult if not impossible. As a filmmaker based in the United States, I knew that using hidden cameras and bypassing authority is a very effective way to make a documentary, but I wouldn't call that journalism. And there were a lot of misleading passages and untruthful depictions in that film.

"And as a Japanese I could understand how the people of Taiji felt betrayed and outraged. Their response was to try and cover things up, or put up a wall of silence and hope the foreigners would go away. Well, the foreigners were never going away. Unless the Taiji locals spoke up about their side of the story, things were going to get worse."

Sasaki dedicated six years to meticulous research and interview and says she now feels like something of an expert on cetaceans, the scientific classification for sea mammals.

Taiji has gotten a little wiser, too. It has gradually opened itself up to overseas media and protesters that routinely visit the town. In fact, all the attention has given the local economy a bit of a boost — what could be more appropriate for the digital age than "outrage tourism"? Also, last month Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen visited the town of Klaksvik in the Faroe Islands with hopes of forging a sister city relationship. Fishermen there share the same practices and methods of hunting.

google map link

flickr geo-tagged map of photos, https://www.flickr.com/map?&fLat=33.5961&fLon=135.9507&zl=16

flickr, photos search

movie page, www.okujirasama.com

FULL ARTICLE, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2017/09/06/films/documentarian-megumi-sasaki-hopes-bring-balance-story-taiji-whale-tale/#.WbChQ6i0NhE

2017-03-21

nanotechnology to trace antiquities

Story about microscopic particles suspended in water and applied to cultural relics that attract smugglers and buyers.
Maybe just the news of this fingerprint tracking feature will dampen the interest of smugglers; or they will will use an expendable person to take the risk?
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/21/520922468/archaeologists-in-syria-use-data-water-to-confound-antiquities-smugglers

Archaeologists In Syria Use 'Data Water' To Confound Antiquities Smugglers

www.npr.org

Syrian archaeologists are using a new product to try to stop the illegal flow of antiquities. It's a high-tech liquid visible under special light that carries tagging data on where items come from.

2017-02-17

Sonic Japan - audio recordings around the society

Sound recordings bring listeners up close to the immediacy of the context and events at hand. The Sonic Japan project has collected a variety of settings to let you explore the many cultural places around the society and language of the Japanese islands. Thanks to the initiative of colleagues in Australia, Japan, and the USA, this project has taken full form. Details of method, funding, contributors and links to follow via Twitter, Facebook, or the collection itself at Soundcloud can be found at http://sonicjapan.clab.org.au/about and this website also groups the recordings to browse by map, by places list, and by cultural theme. The soundcloud address is https://soundcloud.com/sonicjapan/

sonicjapan | Free Listening on SoundCloud

soundcloud.com

Sonic Japan is a collection of sound recordings made in Japan that enables listeners to traverse an array of themes pertaining to everyday life through a ...

2017-02-07

anthropology in 10 minutes or less (Youtube channel)

https://www.patreon.com/Anthropologyin10orLess

blurb:

Anthropology in 10 or Less: Your Basement Based Source for Anthropological Inquiry

My name is Michael Kilman and I am an anthropologist. I lecture at several universities and last year, after searching YouTube for Anthropology Videos, I realized that someone needed to make them. As a result, as of January of 2017 I launched a new YouTube Series called Anthropology in 10 or Less.

This show will explore the four fields of Anthropology, which include: Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistic Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology. Each episode will focus on a specific topic within these four fields and cover the topic in less then 10 minutes, making Anthropology more accessible to the general public and as a teaching tool, or study tool for students.

Michael Kilman is creating Videos that explore Anthropology | Patreon

www.patreon.com

Follow Michael Kilman on Patreon: Read posts by Michael Kilman on the world's largest platform enabling a new generation of creators and artists to live out their passions!

2017-01-13

accents on website, finding yourself

It seems like everyone else has an accent, but from their point of you it is you yourself who sounds *not from around here." The project described here lets users hover across the many languages there.

article source credit, http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-interactive-map-hear-accents-around-world/

=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=
There are many websites that exist just to stoke your curiosity. Localingual is one of them.

Land on the website and a colorful world map takes up your screen. There is no mention of what exactly this map is for, but let your mouse travel around the map and ratchet up your speakers. Travel to any country in the world and listen to the unique accents of that country!

Localingual

The website came from the mind of a world traveler. David Ding is a former Microsoft engineer fascinated by dialects and languages. His backpacking trips allow him to experience both. So he took this interest and started the site as an encyclopedia for languages:

My dream for this site is for it to become the Wikipedia of languages and dialects spoken around the world.

...[truncated]

2016-10-06

maps showing USA pronunciation boundaries

These 22 slides show mapped representations of various diagnostic words like "law-yer" versus "loyer" for an attorney-as-law, for example.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/smart-living/22-fascinating-maps-that-show-how-americans-speak-english-differently-across-the-us

2016-07-29

death & dying - video, Australia

This short video impression of the old cemetery for the town of Ballart, Australia, in service 1840 - 1920s, is densely packed with cultural meanings.

In particular the use of space and material culture particular to the people, place and time can be seen on display.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/67030040@N05/28314268960

2016-05-29

language sources of swearing - Quebec's French

The Delightful Perversity of Québec's Catholic Swears - The Canadian province has expletives like no other.

[excerpt] ...The sacres is the group of Catholic swears unique to Québec. There are many of them; the most popular are probably tabarnak (tabernacle), osti or hostie or estie (host, the bread used during communion), câlisse (chalice), ciboire (the container that holds the host), and sacrament (sacrament). These usually have some milder forms as well, slightly modified versions that lessen their blow. "For example, tabarnouche and tabarouette are non-vulgar versions of tabarnak, similar to 'shoot' and 'darn' in English," says Polesello.

[full article] http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-delightful-perversity-of-quebecs-catholic-swears

2016-02-22

marking languages still vigorous today

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/international-mother-language-day-2016/

This year's day for Mother Languages.

On the other side of the human patrimony ledger is the erosion of spoken languages and environments/livelihoods they derive from; see these notes taken from K. David Harrison's book, When Languages Die, to get a taste of this subject.

https://sites.google.com/site/big1file/nb-languagesdie

2016-02-06

time culture - attitudes in cultural landscapes

excerpt from article about regulating and calculating time in ways different to broadcast news media and everyday consumer worlds,

...within Arizona, which recognizes Mountain Standard Time year-round, the case gets more confusing for anyone traveling through the Hopi and Navajo nations. Both nations are in the same area–in fact, the Navajo nation completely surrounds Hopi territory, and both nations have enclaves within the other.

This arrangement might not have much of an impact time-wise, except that the Navajo nation uses daylight savings time, while the Hopi nation, along with the rest of Arizona, does not. Essentially, it'd be possible to drive through each outlying city and change time zones five times, all within two hours.

full article, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/meet-the-people-who-live-outside-of-time

2016-02-03

Tribal Lands - map project for North America

This same idea would work well among all indigenous peoples displaced, disoriented, or distopic these past 500 years since global flows of people, ideas, money, material culture, diseases and species got started:

The 9 minute backstory of how the Tribal Nations Maps came to be, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0coKPtbP3is, Aaron Carapella's project to chart the placenames and locations of the people living in North America before immigration started in the 15th century.

reckoning time - swap from Julian to Gregorian calendar

excerpt from full article, http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-england-was-a-year-behind-belgium-spain-and-italy-for-170-years

...the longer a country waited to shift to the Gregorian calendar, the more days needed to be removed; in 1752, England and its colonies went to sleep on September 2 and rose on September 13, as per the Calendar Act of 1750. Russia didn't change calendars until February 14, 1918 and skipped a whole 13 days, meaning their October Revolution of 1917 actually happened, by today's dating system, in November.

2016-01-14

anthropology articles getting into news media

Upshot from project at the Center for Public Anthropology to track the mentions by anthropologists (cultural, biological, archaeological) in wider circulation or cited or interviewed in mainstream news media [emphasis added]:

A Pattern to Ponder: Perusing the data, readers will note that archeologists and biological anthropologists tend to be cited in the media more than cultural anthropologists. One likely reason derives from the journals the discipline's subfields publish in. Cultural anthropologists tend to publish in a set of sub-field journals. Archeologists and biological anthropologists tend to publish in more interdisciplinary journals leading, in turn, to a wider distribution and more attention paid to their articles. There is no reason why cultural anthropologists could not publish in PlusOne, Science, or Nature. But many prefer publishing in the American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist or Cultural Anthropology thereby attracting limited attention from those beyond their sub-field. Current Anthropology, which crosses the discipline's sub-fields, tends to attract less attention than inter-disciplinary journals', but comparatively more attention than the American Anthropological Associations journals, focused on specific sub-fields.

-source page, http://metrics.publicanthropology.org/collected.php

2016-01-10

context - 6 photographers make 6 different portraits

Experiment: each photographer was given a different story about the person coming in for a portrait. Results varied widely when told the subject was fisherman, self-made millionaire, parolee, beach lifeguard, psychic, and so on.

: six different backstories led 6 photographers to make differing portraits

Perhaps the same contextual framing and predisposition affects documentary projects, archival work, ethnographic field studies, or transposing a biographical sketch from one language to another for readers of a different culture or era. In other words, if the lens can stand for a perceptual grasp of a subject, then the same assumptions that these photographers baked into their choice of composition and lighting and shutter release also may reveal how one goes about engaging with the world in general: we prejudge people and settings, we view the world as half-empty instead of half-full, for example; or at the time of middle age we feel that so many opportunities remain, rather than feeling that so few days are left before extinction.

And while this portrait experiment misled the photographers who were doing their very best creative work to interpret the man, based on the sparse backstory provided, the end result of this decoy experiment powerfully demonstrates to journalists, archaeologists and other scientists (predisposed with the working theories or hypotheses they bake into their research design and deployment of available methods), philosophers and novelists, as well as social observers of all stripes that assumptions and prior knowledge frame one's boundaries and the placement of one's subject within that context.

By extension the frame we paint for our selves (presentation of self; self-image; concept of self) is colored by the assumptions we adopt, discover, aspire to, or have been given by others we know and have been labeled by society more generally.
see the experiment, https://youtu.be/F-TyPfYMDK8 or jump to the time mark showing the resulting portraits

Blurb: A photograph is shaped more by the person behind the camera than by what's in front of it. To prove this we invited six photographers to a portrait session with a twist. ‘Decoy’ is one of six experiments from The Lab, designed to shift creative thinking behind the lens. [November 2015]

2015-12-23

what's so great about human language?

cross-posted from CARLA (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition); source, The Guardian newspaper online.

Full article, http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/nov/05/roots-language-what-makes-us-different-animals

Excerpts,

it looks as if kids don't learn language in the way predicted by a universal grammar; rather, they start with small pockets of reliable patterns in the language they hear, such as Where's the X?, I wanna X, More X, It's a X, I'm X-ing it, Put X here, Mommy's X-ing it, Let's X it, Throw X, X gone, I X-ed it, Sit on the X, Open X, X here, There's a X, X broken … and gradually build their grammar on these patterns, from the "bottom up".

...Importantly, these same basic processes of intention-reading are necessary not only for language, but also for discerning what someone is communicating when they simply poke their index finger out in a particular direction for the purpose of communication. To understand why someone is pointing to, for example, a bicycle leaning against a tree, one must share some background experience and knowledge with that person to determine why on earth they would be directing one's attention to this particular situation at this particular moment.

The idea is that something (we don't precisely know what) in our evolutionary history placed pressure on us (but not chimpanzees) to evolve the kind of mental machinery that allows us to read communicative intentions. One of the consequences of this was that it provided a key mental capacity for language. But it also put in place the potential for us to take part in ever more complex and large-scale cooperative ventures that form the fabric of our different cultures.

2015-12-20

Migration data - interactive, online

http://www.iom.int/world-migration allows you to display IN-migration or OUT-migration for any country pictured on the map.

Just move the slider from IN to OUT and then click a country to populate with color data. Hover your mouse over the groupings of dots to pop-up the source country and headcount estimates (UK example, here).

2015-12-07

language + mannerisms to portray diverse voices on stage

Feature story this morning at National Public Radio's "morning edition"

- intro: Through powerful monologues, Anna Deavere Smith has tackled race riots, integration and health care. In Notes from the Field, she's using her characters to explore the school-to-prison pipeline.

- play full story online, http://www.npr.org/2015/12/07/458742076/anna-deavere-smith-wants-playgoers-to-do-what-they-can-to-counter-violence

- or look for transcript 6 hours after air time

2015-11-21

language and cognition - color domains

example of Himba (Ethiopia) 5 part division of the spectrum, excerpted from infographic at http://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/learning-languages.jpg?da557e
[creative commons lic.]

2015-11-13

USA Veterans' Day - parade photos 11-11-2015

Annual commemoration of the people who joined the military or were killed in wars, "Armistice Day" (in Europe: 11-11 at 11:11 a.m. --cessation of WW I in 1918) but in USA, "veterans' day."

The town's high school marching band and the local association of veterans, some in original uniforms or riding in original vehicles, are the main features in the event. Nearby school children come to watch, along with family or friends of those marching in the parade. When the weather is not inclement the people watching will be 100-200. But with rain or sleet or snow, with or without strong November winds, the people who attend and stay for the speech making [text of speech 2015] will be only a few dozen, very often.

https://picasaweb.google.com/110845930262453987007/151111

2015-11-02

death & dying studies; video - San Diego 'death cafe'

A place to talk about end of life pathways - https://vimeo.com/144081072

Uploaded and accessed late October 2015

2015-09-02

customs of bodies; body parts

Current technology allows matching of body parts to bodies and their kin, but customs still play a leading role in assigning significance to the physical fabric of personhood.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/investigation-what-happens-when-limbs-turn-up-without-a-body-attached

excerpt,

For centuries in Europe, some aristocrats had their bodies dismembered after death, in an echo of the practice of separating and distributing the body parts of Christian saints. Galileo's finger was removed from his hand 95 years after he died, and ended up in a science museum. Chopin's heart was separated from the rest of his body and buried in Poland. This veneration of limbs occasionally made its way Stateside, as well: Stonewall Jackson's arm has its own memorial.

2019-11-13

2019-10-31