Menu
Idea

anthropology

91
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Mead reading a book, against a psychedelic background.

One of Our Most Respected 20th-Century Scientists Was LSD-Curious. What Happened?

A document in her papers in the Library of Congress sheds new light on postwar research on psychedelics.
by Benjamin Breen via Slate on February 10, 2024
Yellow book cover reading "The Dawn of Everything" in red text.

As Deep as it is Vast: An Introduction to "The Dawn of Everything" in Early America

A new book provides a framework that engages with “big history” or “deep history” while avoiding explanations that flirt with forms of determinism.
by Gordon Sayre, Robbie Ethridge, Keith Pluymers, Sean P. Harvey, Barbara Alice Mann, Daniel Richter via Commonplace on October 4, 2022
Smithsonian anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide points out details in the sculptures depicting the faces of two enslaved African Americans who labored at Catoctin Furnace in the late 1700s or early 1800s

Faces of the Dead Emerge From Lost African American Graveyard

The bones of enslaved furnace workers tell the grim story of their lives.
by Michael E. Ruane via Washington Post on July 9, 2021
Aerial view of Japanese internment camp barracks

Social Science as a Tool for Surveillance in World War II Japanese American Concentration Camps

Edward Spicer's writings indicate an awareness of the deeply unjust circumstances that Japanese Americans found themselves in within Japanese internment camps.
by Natasha Varner via University Of Arizona Press on July 2, 2021

The Defender of Differences

Three new books consider the life, and impact, of Franz Boas, the "father of American cultural anthropology."
by Kwame Anthony Appiah via New York Review of Books on May 14, 2020

The Life and Times of Franz Boas

The founder of cultural anthropology, Franz Boas challenged the reigning notions of race and culture.
by Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on December 1, 2019
Margaret Mead in front of a bookshelf, with a book in hand

How Cultural Anthropologists Redefined Humanity

A brave band of scholars set out to save us from racism and sexism. What happened?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on August 29, 2019
Black and white photograph of Henrietta Schmerler.

How Henrietta Schmerler Was Lost, Then Found

Women anthropologists, face assault in the field, exposing victim blaming, institutional failures, and ethical gaps in academia.
by Nell Gluckman via The Chronicle of Higher Education on October 14, 2018

How America Invented the Red State

According to conventional wisdom, the last quarter century of elections has proved that most of the country leans conservative. It all started with a map.
by Tarence Ray via The Nation on December 17, 2024
Table of illustrations of various diverse human faces from "Ethnographic Tableau."

Baffled by Human Diversity

Confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today.
by Jacob Zellmer via Aeon on July 8, 2024
Margaret Mead and Joe Rogan.

Turn on, Tune in, Write Code

How psychedelics went from counterculture to grind culture.
by Geoff Shullenberger via The New Atlantis on April 12, 2024
Harry Smith pointing finger upward

Outsider’s Outsider

At once famous and obscure, marginal and central, Harry Smith anticipated and even invented several important elements of Sixties counterculture.
by J. Hoberman via New York Review of Books on February 28, 2024
A woman of the Mi’kmaq Nation stands in front of a lake.

Tribes in Maine Spent Decades Fighting to Rebury Ancestral Remains. Harvard Resisted Them at Nearly Every Turn.

The university’s Peabody Museum exploited loopholes to prevent repatriation to the Wabanaki people while still staying in compliance with NAGPRA.
by Mary Hudetz, Ash Ngu via ProPublica on December 4, 2023
Peter Waddell's "A Vision Unfolds" imaginatively depicts Benjamin Banneker advising President Washington and fellow surveyor Andrew Ellicott on the layout of the proposed federal capital.

Banneker’s Answer to Jefferson: “I Am an American”

The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”
by Edward J. Larson via American Heritage on November 21, 2023
Scaffolding around the statue of President Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History as it is prepared for removal on December 2, 2021 in New York City

A New York Museum's House of Bones

The American Museum of Natural History holds 12,000 bodies — but they don’t want you to know whose.
by Erin L. Thompson via Hyperallergic on October 15, 2023
Maps and photos of the Smithsonian and its anthropologicl collections.

Revealing the Smithsonian’s ‘Racial Brain Collection’

The Smithsonian’s human brains collection was led by Ales Hrdlicka, a museum curator in the 1900s who believed that White people were superior.
by Nicole Dungca, Claire Healy via Washington Post on August 14, 2023
Harry Smith.

‘Cosmic Scholar’ Review: Harry Smith’s Strange Frequencies

Smith collected rare books, paper airplanes, Pennsylvania Dutch tools—and harvested the folk music recordings that changed a generation.
by Timothy Farrington via The Wall Street Journal on August 11, 2023
Chaco Canyon ruins.

A Scientist Said Her Research Could Help With Repatriation. Instead, It Destroyed Native Remains.

Federal agencies awarded millions of dollars to scientific studies on Native American human remains, undermining the goals of tribes fighting for repatriation.
by Mary Hudetz via ProPublica on July 20, 2023
Collage of images: UC Berkeley clocktower, professor Tim White in 1979, and a collection of boxes of human remains labeled as "clavicle, vertibrae," etc.

A Top UC Berkeley Professor Taught With Remains That May Include Dozens of Native Americans

Despite decades of Indigenous activism and resistance, UC Berkeley has failed to return the remains of thousands of Native Americans to tribes.
by Mary Hudetz, Graham Lee Brewer via ProPublica on March 5, 2023
Five globes shaped like human faces, connected by threads.

It’s Time to Rethink the Idea of the “Indigenous”

Many groups who identify as Indigenous don’t claim to be first peoples; many who came first don’t claim to be Indigenous. Can the idea escape its colonial past?
by Manvir Singh via The New Yorker on February 20, 2023
Men standing around an archaeological site.

America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains

The remains of more than 100,000 Native Americans are held by prestigious U.S. institutions, despite a 1990 law meant to return them to tribal nations.
by Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz, Ash Ngu, Graham Lee Brewer via ProPublica on January 11, 2023
Footprints dated to 23,000-21,000 years ago at the White Sands National Park, New Mexico.

The First Americans – A Story of Wonderful, Uncertain Science

Archaeology and genetics can’t yet agree on when humans first arrived in the Americas. That’s good science, and here’s why.
by Jennifer Raff via Aeon on December 22, 2022
Children in costume looking out a window by the light of a jack o' lantern.

Halloween: A Mystic and Eerie Significance

Despite the prevalence of tricks and spooky spirits in earlier years, the American commercial holiday didn’t develop until the middle of the twentieth century.
by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on October 26, 2022
Illustration of an archaeologist digging through artifacts.

The Bodies in the Cave

Native people have lived in the Big Bend region of west Texas for thousands of years. Who should claim their remains?
by Rachel Monroe via The New Yorker on October 3, 2022
Drawings of hands holding calipers.

Bodies of Knowledge

Philadelphia and the dark history of collecting human remains.
by Samuel J. Redman via Perspectives on History on September 15, 2022
A room full of empty hospital beds.

Modern Medicine Has Improved Our Lives, But What About Our Deaths?

Anthropologists study the hormones in hair to compare the stress levels of people nearing death today with those who died 100 years ago.
by Katie East via Nursing Clio on August 30, 2022
Yellow oily paper with writing

Smell, History, and Heritage

Smell’s diffuse nature requires crossing the boundaries of several subfields within the historical discipline, but also moving beyond the boundaries of history alone.
by Cecilia Bembibre, William Tullett, Stephanie Weismann, Melanie A. Kiechle, Inger Leemans, Anna Chen, Hsuan L. Hsu, Xuelei Huang, Duane Jethro, Jorge Otero-Pailos via American Historical Review on April 26, 2022
Franz Boas adopts the pose of a wild Hamat̓sa, crouching with outstretched arms and mouth open.

On the Influence of Indigenous Knowledge on Modern Thought

We often associate dance with art and performance, but it is also a way that humans document, interpret, and create history.
by Isaiah Lorado Wilner, Nuala P. Caomhánach via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on February 28, 2022
Portrait photo of Geronimo in European style clothing, holding a bow and arrow, 1904.

Ambushing Geronimo

An introduction to salvage anthropology.
by Samuel J. Redman via Lapham’s Quarterly on October 27, 2021
A woman in a horse-drawn wagon in the American west.

For Me, but Not for Thee

How white feminism failed Native Americans in the late-19th century.
by Kyla Schuller via Slate on October 25, 2021
View More
30 of
91

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History