Isabella Alexander is writing a new monthly column for Sapiens called BORDERS. Check out her first article and check back every month for human stories from political crises around the world.
Grace Veatch continues her research in Liang Bua, Indonesia and is features on National Geographic
Veatch, a graduate student who researches the environmental context of the Late Pleistocene archaeological site Liang Bua in Indonesia, specifically focuses on the rodent remains found in the cave. She remarks on their diversity as a group of mammals helped by the continuity of bones in the cave sequence, which persist over the 190,000-year stretch preserved in the cave.
Read more about the work of Veatch and other researchers in the National Geographic article.
Carol Worthman suggests a more comprehensive approach to research on youth development
In her recent Journal on Research in Adolescence review paper Worthman argues that puberty and adolescences should not be split up into bio and cultural but seen as a whole. She emphasizes the importance of improving research in this area due to the large numbers, 17% of the worlds population is aged 10-19 right now, and emphasizes the impact of youth development on mental and physical health.
Read more on eScience Commons.
Read more on eScience Commons.
Sharing, Wasting, and Tasting in Our Mother Tongue, an essay published by Shreyas Sreenath
In this short piece on tasting and speaking with the mother tongue, PhD candidate Shreyas Sreenath explores how organs of social power might inhabit spaces more intimate than we would like to acknowledge. Published in Anthropology news.
Mel Konner named 2019 honoree for the John F. Morgan, Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture
From Emory News: Melvin J. Konner, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and Behavioral Biology at Emory, will present this year’s John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture.
Konner will speak on “Believers: Faith in Human Nature,” which is also the title of his forthcoming book, on Tuesday, March 26, at 5 p.m. in the Presentation Room of the Oxford Road Building. RSVP here.
Justin Pargeter’s research on miniaturized tools is featured in Emory News
The journal Evolutionary Anthropology is publishing the first overview of prehistoric tool miniaturization, a technology which has been largely overlooked in the stone tool record. The paper, co-authored by current Emory Anthropology post-doc Justin Pargeter, argues that technological miniaturization was a central tendency in hominin technologies going back at least 2.6 million years and may have helped some humans survive climate change during the last period of rapid global climate change.
Carol Worthman’s research on sleep is cited in Aeon article
“Here’s to naps and snoozes.” In his article Todd Pitock summarizes the American culture of sleep and its perceptions of what is considered acceptable and contextualizes it with international examples. He quotes Dr. Worthman who’s research on sleep around the world has shown it as “more flexible and more social” then sleep is considered in the West. Communal sleeping arrangement are more common and can be based on an array of reasons such as comfort or safety, while the West has a tendency to judge sleep by its number of hours spend not being productive.
Mel Konner publishes book review essay in The Atlantic
In “A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves” Dr. Konner contextualizes the research published by in “ The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution”.
Give it a read here.
Peter Little delivers the African Studies Review Distinguished Lecture
Peter Little delivers the African Studies Review Distinguished Lecture at the 61st Annual Meetings of the African Studies Association (ASA), Atlanta, GA, November 30, 2018 The ASA is the largest professional association of African specialists in the world.
Douglas Falen (92C) publishes new book on African Science
Douglas Falen (C’92) is a cultural anthropologist at nearby Agnes Scott College in Decatur. His new ethnography, African Science: Witchcraft, Vodun, and Healing in Southern Benin (University of Wisconsin Press) examines the ways that Benin’s occult world blends notions of magic, science, and religion. In emphasizing the moral ambivalence of human acts, Beninois people compare African witchcraft to western technology, known as “white people’s witchcraft.” The books explains how “witchcraft” becomes a universal, all-encompassing term that allows Beninois people to incorporate foreign religions and esoteric traditions, including Hindu mysticism and Freemasonry, into a single category.
EMORY ANTHROPOLOGY 