reading - archaeology pages at Smithsonian Magazine

The section devoted to archaeology stories is at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeology/

Some of the titles include the following. -- [fall 2019 to spring 2020]

Treasure Trove of Artifacts Illustrates Life in a Lost Viking Mountain Pass

In Groundbreaking Find, Three Kinds of Early Humans Unearthed Living Together in South Africa

A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths

Divers Recover More Than 350 Artifacts From the HMS 'Erebus' Shipwreck

Angkor Wat May Owe Its Existence to an Engineering Catastrophe

The Best Board Games of the Ancient World

To Craft Cutting Tools, Neanderthals Dove for Clam Shells on the Ocean Floor

Twelve Fascinating Finds Revealed in 2019

Archaeologists Are Unearthing the Stories of the Past Faster Than Ever Before

Oldest Known Seawall Discovered Along Submerged Mediterranean Villages

Language listening - ear for regional accents

A 5 min. stand-up comedy routine: regional USA accents by Fred Armisen, pretty impressive, https://youtu.be/G72tZdjnS2A

 - Good for people with an ear for languages; and for people learning USA lingua-culture.

online Anthropology encyclopedia

A recent (c.2018) resource to browse, https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/articles-a-to-z

Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology

exploring anthropology's view, several short videos

from Dr. Robert Borofsky at Center for Public Anthropology, March 24, 2020

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

VIDEO PRESENTATIONS These videos are included in the Teaching and Learning Resources of Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology which is supported by the American Anthropological Association. They are freely available for instructors to use in their classes. Video Title                               Length Defining Anthropology - Lecture 1 12:52 Defining Anthropology - Lecture 2 7:02 Historical Trends - Lecture 1 10:33 Historical Trends - Lecture 2 11:23 Historical Trends - Lecture 3 10:54 Historical Trends - Lecture 4 10:26 Political Economy - Lecture 1 9:42 Political Economy - Lecture 2 12:35 Political Economy - Lecture 3 8:48 Political Economy - Lecture 4 8:35 Political Economy - Lecture 5 9:44 Political Economy - Lecture 6 10:24 Ethics - Lecture 1 13:26 Ethics - Lecture 2 16:57 Informants - Lecture 1 18:20 Informants - Lecture 2 15:19 Religion - Lecture 1 15:20 Religion - Lecture 2 14:45 Religion - Lecture 3 12:14 Social Organization - Lecture 1 9:51 Social Organization - Lecture 2 9:33 Social Organization - Lecture 3 11:32   All rights to these videos are reserved by Dr. Robert Borofsky. The videos are not creative commons licensed and may not be copied, edited, or included in other works without his written permission.

Public Anthropology

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

Article told from the point of view of people being recorded on camera or video camcorder: many considerations for the person waving the equipment around!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Seven insights for photojournalists from those on the other side of the lens

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/seven-insights-for-photojournalists-from-those-on-the-other-side-of-the-lens/

---subheadings

Actions over aesthetics

Expectations grow with experience

Representativeness over impact

Be more than just a fly on the wall

Privacy was more of a concern for older adults compared to younger ones.

Safety in numbers

There's no right to privacy in public — but people don't always understand that

45 years of fieldwork --documenting Japanese rural life in Kyushu since the 1970s

This newly released documentary will interest students of ethnography, not just those keen on life in Japan.

It is the first edition looking back at Joy Hendry's 45 years of anthropology field work in rural Japan (near Fukuoka), recorded during her fall 2019 return there in this documentary (later this year an enhanced version will be released, she sasys); about 45 minutes in length, Here is part of her email message on March 15, 2020 to the East Asia Anthropology listserv, forwarded with her permission. The idea of fieldwork scholars making a recap of their projects and career this way in visual form sets a good example to follow.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

...how we did anthropology in those days, and how things in rural Japan have changed, a film my son made last year when I went to return some family trees and a village chart to the people I worked with in 1975 will give you an idea. The film still has a few glitches, but might be interesting, especially as many of us are virtually housebound at present. https://youtu.be/x7qptoXqnhE "Understanding Japanese Culture - 45 years researching a village in rural Japan"

the 100 languages as of 2020

Something like 100 languages have written form to go with them. The other 6800 that remain on Earth are spoken-only.

This visual represenation of the biggest number of language speakers includes some explanation and discussion.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/100-most-spoken-languages/

Seeing the reverse - least number of speakers - in visual form wold be good, too!

One of the easily overlooked features of the (English language) Wikipedia is the sidebar at lower left in which a given topic is shown with hotlinks to all the other language-versions of Wikipedia, when that topic is also available there. Some subjects have lots of corresponding articles; others have few. In some cases the biggest number of Wikipedia articles (found in English, Dutch, German) provide outline and some content for the other languages. But in other cases the article is composed from scratch, using supporting documents of that other language, with little or no reference to the English or another source article.

Native American; paying attention to something besides capitalism

as an organizing principle for social life and livelihoods,

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/indigenous-climate-adaptation

Internment in concentration camps - the USA in WWII-era, but also Pres. Trump's Mexican border

Lest we forget:

One of the annual photo contest winners was this aerial view of the WWII-era Topaz concentration camp near Delta, Utah. Image description by photographer by Chang Kyun Kim follows. For anthropology colleagues teaching complex societies, this instance is one of the many instances of harm to remember. Today there are the USA camps near the Mexican border, both in USA and with the coercion of the Mexican government also based on Mexican land. And there are also the industrial scale and logic of the Chinese concentration camps in Xinjiang, filled with China's own citizens who follow the way of Islam, chiefly among the Uyghur-Chinese.

https://www.dpreview.com/news/6341303024/sony-world-photography-awards-2020?slide=9

see also an earlier project by another social observer, the award-winning documentary, "Resistance at Tule Lake," http://www.resistanceattulelake.com

Image Description: The lower part of the image shows the massive grids where the prison barracks of Topaz War Relocation Center that incarcerated 10,000 Japanese people living in U.S. were constructed. I tried to show the long lasting artifact and the harsh landscape that surrounds the camp site. It was taken with my drone in Nov 2019 in Delta, Utah.

This is part of a series (description by photographer follows).

Series Description: This series is about Japanese internment camps that were built in remote and harsh areas of the United States during the Second World War. These camps imprisoned 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry - more than 60% of them were U.S. citizens.

Working on the project reminded me of the racial antagonism we have witnessed in recent history, and led me to consider how radically our view can alter when war and terror affect our lives. History can always be repeated if not properly recalled or told. The pictures here were taken between 2018 and '19 in California, Arizona and Utah. For the aerial shots, I used a drone to capture the camp sites - these locations are so harsh and remote that no one would try building anything here.

Photography for seeing archaeology

Article from the folks at "the UK's Pompeii," bronze-age Must Farm archaeology project.

http://www.mustfarm.com/post-dig/post-ex-diary-20-the-importance-of-visualisation-photography-part-one/

archaeology all around you

1) bombing rubble from Liverpool that makes up the Crosby beach, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/liverpool-beach-war-archaeology

2) recent book about "mudlarks" of London's low-tide river Thames who are registered with the bureau for overseeing cultural properties; bits of the past that wash up or erode into plain view become the treasure that trained eyes pick up,

author interview, https://www.npr.org/2019/11/10/777336935/londons-mudlark-pulls-treasure-from-the-thames

ebook link, https://www.amazon.com/Mudlark-Search-Londons-Along-Thames-ebook/dp/B07DP6R4Q1/ref=sr_1_1

and 3) Nazca, Peru is the location of 1000 year old burials that have mummified from the climate's low-humidity, but were desecrated by robbers in the 1920s. This 1.9 minute video introduces the cultural site that has been prepared to allow visitors to view a few examples of the bodies at rest.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/videos/an-ancient-cemetery-pillaged-by-grave-robbers

forensic anthro - 1 of 6 programs in USA

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!

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]

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Blog Archive

• ▼  2025 (1)
  • ▼  December (1)
    • Native people - not 'historical' or 'extinct' but ...

• ►  2024 (18)
  • ►  December (1)
  • ►  November (1)
  • ►  September (1)
  • ►  August (3)
  • ►  July (1)
  • ►  April (2)
  • ►  March (4)
  • ►  February (3)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2023 (3)
  • ►  December (2)
  • ►  November (1)

• ►  2022 (15)
  • ►  December (1)
  • ►  November (1)
  • ►  October (2)
  • ►  September (2)
  • ►  August (1)
  • ►  July (1)
  • ►  June (2)
  • ►  May (1)
  • ►  March (2)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2021 (14)
  • ►  November (1)
  • ►  October (2)
  • ►  September (2)
  • ►  August (1)
  • ►  July (1)
  • ►  March (1)
  • ►  February (4)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2020 (17)
  • ►  December (1)
  • ►  November (1)
  • ►  July (1)
  • ►  June (4)
  • ►  May (1)
  • ►  April (2)
  • ►  March (4)
  • ►  February (3)

• ►  2019 (17)
  • ►  November (1)
  • ►  October (1)
  • ►  September (1)
  • ►  June (3)
  • ►  May (2)
  • ►  April (3)
  • ►  March (2)
  • ►  February (2)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2018 (10)
  • ►  August (2)
  • ►  July (2)
  • ►  June (3)
  • ►  May (2)
  • ►  January (1)

• ►  2017 (5)
  • ►  September (1)
  • ►  March (1)
  • ►  February (2)
  • ►  January (1)

• ►  2016 (9)
  • ►  October (1)
  • ►  July (1)
  • ►  May (1)
  • ►  February (4)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2015 (22)
  • ►  December (3)
  • ►  November (3)
  • ►  September (1)
  • ►  August (1)
  • ►  July (3)
  • ►  June (2)
  • ►  May (5)
  • ►  April (1)
  • ►  March (1)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2014 (14)
  • ►  November (2)
  • ►  October (1)
  • ►  September (1)
  • ►  July (2)
  • ►  June (3)
  • ►  May (1)
  • ►  April (1)
  • ►  January (3)

• ►  2013 (11)
  • ►  October (1)
  • ►  September (1)
  • ►  August (1)
  • ►  July (3)
  • ►  June (1)
  • ►  May (1)
  • ►  March (3)

• ►  2012 (11)
  • ►  December (2)
  • ►  November (1)
  • ►  October (1)
  • ►  September (1)
  • ►  May (3)
  • ►  March (1)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2011 (26)
  • ►  December (3)
  • ►  November (1)
  • ►  October (2)
  • ►  August (3)
  • ►  July (4)
  • ►  June (3)
  • ►  May (1)
  • ►  April (5)
  • ►  March (1)
  • ►  February (2)
  • ►  January (1)

• ►  2010 (39)
  • ►  December (4)
  • ►  October (3)
  • ►  September (5)
  • ►  August (6)
  • ►  July (1)
  • ►  June (3)
  • ►  May (4)
  • ►  April (3)
  • ►  March (3)
  • ►  February (2)
  • ►  January (5)

• ►  2009 (29)
  • ►  November (3)
  • ►  October (3)
  • ►  September (2)
  • ►  August (7)
  • ►  July (2)
  • ►  June (3)
  • ►  May (4)
  • ►  March (1)
  • ►  February (2)
  • ►  January (2)

• ►  2008 (42)
  • ►  December (6)
  • ►  November (2)
  • ►  October (6)
  • ►  September (2)
  • ►  August (2)
  • ►  July (5)
  • ►  June (2)
  • ►  April (6)
  • ►  March (3)
  • ►  February (3)
  • ►  January (5)

• ►  2007 (50)
  • ►  December (2)
  • ►  November (3)
  • ►  October (3)
  • ►  September (3)
  • ►  June (1)
  • ►  May (8)
  • ►  April (9)
  • ►  March (10)
  • ►  February (11)