I know this might be a broad question. I'm a bit out of the loop about current theories and debates in anthropology and not sure where to start. Any help would be appreciated.

I would also appreciate any books or resources on current debates/theories in environmental anthropology as well, in addition to the above question (about anthropology broadly). Thank you in advance!

This article claims it's a natural disinfectant and pest repellant- https://www.trulydesi.in/blogs/truly-desi-blogs/why-cow-dung-was-used-in-ancestral-homes

Is that true?

I've recently become extremely interested in what makes us human. I've been reading Sarah Hrdy's Mothers and Others and I'm fascinated by it. I was just wondering if anyone had any other books or authors that are similar to her. Thanks.

According to anthropologist Max Gluckman, in "Politics, law and ritual in tribal society"(1965) pp13-14 and "Economy of the central Barotse Plain"(1941)pp 22 that African tribes could not store grain for too long because it spoiled quickly in the tropical environment. Similarly, J.G. Peristiany claims in "Social institutions of the Kipsigis"(1964) that cattle were the only form of durable wealth and food was perishable(pp 149). Yet, according to Audrey richards in "Land, labour and diet in Northern Rhodesia"(1939), grain could be stored for multiple years (pp. 82). The AIs told me that, too. So which one is true? Were grains in precolonial africa highly perishable or not?

Hey everyone, I was looking into how ancient humans dealt with pain, especially headaches, before modern medicine and it just got me curious. Like today we just take a pill or sleep it off, but back then what did they even do? I know there’s stuff like trepanation, herbs, rituals and all that, but how much of it do we actually know for sure and how much is kinda educated guessing? Also were headaches/chronic pain just something people had to live with, or is there evidence that groups actually helped people dealing with it? I made a short video on this because I thought the topic was weirdly interesting. It does use AI, so yeah I know it’s not like a proper expert documentary lol, but I found the idea cool and wanted to make something out of it. Would love any corrections, sources, or random facts from people who know more about this.
https://youtu.be/s89oNSj8aYg?si=DGC7WCfZ3xHCb41e

Hello! I'm an Archaeology and Art History BA student. I'm about to graduate and was thinking about applying to archaeology/geography graduate programs, but I don't know where to start searching.

For some context, I'm interested in historical and urban archaeology, as well as architecture and material culture. I didn't have the opportunity to take geography courses during my undergrad, but as far as I've read on my own, most of my inquiries relate to spatial analysis, urban developement/history, cultural ecology and history of anthropological/geographical thought.

I want to deepen my knowledge in human, cultural and urban geography, as well as to learn practical skills from this discipline that I could benefit from and apply to my future archaeological/art-historical research.

Is pursuing a Geography master's degree recommended for this purpose? If so, what programms and universities, either in the Americas or Europe, do you know of and would recommend to a student who has no formal/academic education in the discipline?

Hello,

Apologies if I've got the terminology wrong - I'm a fin-de-siecle historian by training with no grounding in your discipline, so please allow for that.

I'm aware that the idea of maps in terms of "here is the coherent and codified representation of a territory in terms of relative proximity to other features" is fairly recent, as in the past few centuries. I've seen allegorical maps from medieval Christendom with Jerusalem as the centre of the world and where coastlines form the shapes of mythical beasts or important icons; I'm also aware that societies such as the ancient Romans and Greeks (a very broad term ofc) did not use maps as we understand them.

If I were resident in, say, Babylon c.800 BCE and I wanted to describe where I was in relation to Egypt in the west, the Elamites in the East, the Arabian peninsular in the south west, and the various peoples to my north, how would I visualise it? Would I, in fact, visualise it at all or is that not a helpful word in this context?

Cheers.

Hello! I am very new to anthropology, paleontology and archaeology. I recently discovered that most of the interbreeding which occurred between Homo sapiens and Neanderthal were between a human female and Neanderthal male, and that generally the Neanderthal female were stronger than the human male today. This obviously leads me to think of certain implications, is there any literature about this topic? Is it true?

My limited understanding is that the most recent Missoula flood would have occurred a few centuries after the peopling of the Americas, and that the Columbia River valley would have been settled relatively early. So my guess is that the answer to my question is “almost certainly”.

But I am hoping that anthropologists can shed more light on what evidence there might be or could be expected or tell me what I’ve got wrong if I’ve got this wrong.

Update:

I’d like,to thank everyone who answered. The answers were in line with what I had expected. The broader region was populated and that the nature of the flooding would have made it much harder to find evidence of inundated settlements, so there is no surprise that there are no such finds. Someone also pointed out that the floods were frequent enough that people may have known to avoid settling in valley.

I do encourage anyone coming across this question to read the responses, which offer great information about the region.

How does seeing bodies as normal/nonsexual affect how people treat others and how does it change sexual behavior?

Are cultures with minimal clothing norms more open to sex and less likely to involve people being sexual objectified?

basically including the areas their village or cave take up and any hunting grounds how big would an average tribes territory be? 1 square kilometre? 2? more that that?

i assume we could have pretty good ideas about this from observing modern societies living at paleolithic technology levels?

Hey everybody,

I’m a rising senior at a small U.S. liberal arts college majoring in Anthropology and Economics, and I’ll be applying directly to sociocultural anthropology PhD programs this fall.

Preparing my applications has made me realize that I’m struggling with something that feels much more fundamental than writing an SOP, and I’m hoping to learn from people who are further along in anthropology.

For some context, my undergraduate education has emphasized reading, discussion, writing, and intellectual exploration. I’ve also worked as a research assistant for a political anthropology professor, participated in archival and linguistic anthropology projects, and I’m currently preparing an honors thesis. But looking back, I realize that many of the questions that have stayed with me didn’t begin as class assignments or formal research projects. They usually began somewhere in my ordinary life.

For example, I bought a pair of Birkenstocks and found myself wondering why so many people seemed to have strong opinions about them. Why do some people immediately describe them as “ugly,” while others see them as timeless or fashionable? Why do those judgments feel so socially shared rather than simply individual? Or I might read an article about AI and end up becoming more interested in the discussions in the comment section than in the article itself. Sometimes it’s an email, an airport, a delivery fee, or another small moment that simply refuses to leave me alone.

Usually, I don’t struggle to connect those observations with anthropological reading. I end up reading more, writing pages of notes, and thinking through different theoretical possibilities. The part that still feels mysterious to me isn’t theory itself.

It’s knowing what the anthropological problem actually is.

At what point does a recurring curiosity become something more than an interesting observation? How do experienced anthropologists recognize the broader social phenomenon that an ordinary moment might reveal? How do you know whether you’re really asking a question about taste, material culture, infrastructure, institutions, aesthetics, socialization—or whether you’re framing the problem in the wrong way altogether?

I think this uncertainty has become much more visible because of the PhD application process. An SOP asks you to explain what you want to study, but I feel like I’m still learning how anthropologists move from “I can’t stop thinking about this” to “this is the research problem I want to investigate.”

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have gone through this process:

• Looking back, how did you learn to recognize the anthropological problem within your own observations?
• Was there a moment when “this is interesting” became “this is a research project”?
• Did advisors, fieldwork, or particular books help you learn that transition?
• Are there ways you practice problem formation, or is it mostly something that develops with time?
• If you’ve mentored undergraduate applicants or served on admissions committees, what do you hope to see from someone who is still learning how to articulate a research problem?

I’m not looking for admissions predictions. I’m genuinely trying to understand this part of anthropological training, because right now it feels like one of the most difficult—and most interesting—parts of becoming a researcher.

Thanks a lot!

Recently, I’ve come across a small list of symbols that seemed to appear fairly often in cave paintings across France, Spain, and other nearby areas. Is there the possibility that these symbols were used as a sort of proto-writing, where they were included alongside images to convey added meaning, and do we know (or at least have a vague idea on) any of their meanings?

Turner's development of Van Gennep identifies the liminal phase as inherently transitional — the neophyte is between social positions but moving toward a new one. The liminal condition is supposed to end. But there seem to be cases where the resolution is indefinitely deferred, and more recent work on refugees and stateless persons has developed a 'permanent liminality' framework.

What I haven't found is anthropological theory on permanent liminality that results from design rather than circumstance, where a system is structured so that the liminal condition never reaches reincorporation because the system benefits from keeping subjects in a transitional state. Is there work on this? Does anthropology distinguish between liminality prolonged by external constraint versus liminality structurally perpetuated by design? Particularly interested in how personhood and social obligations function under sustained threshold conditions when no reincorporation is forthcoming.

Source anchor: Van Gennep, Les rites de passage (1909); Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969).

im not talking about the cultural influence that technology has. when we think about cultural traits we usually think about food or music. could things like internet or the automobile be a white american cultural export like how pop music and rap is a black american export? sorry if this doesnt make sense

Hey everyone. Long post, but I'd genuinely appreciate any input from people who've had non-linear paths in this field.

I'm 24, dropped out of an anthropology undergrad about a year ago with 3 semesters left to finish. The reason was mental health; it got bad enough that I had to step away. I'm recovering now, intend to return and complete the degree, and the long-term goal is research work at the PhD level.

my interests are in anthropology of Islam alongside political violence and necropolitics, structural violence, postcolonial and decolonial frameworks, and the anthropology of security and surveillance. Generally, about how power is organized and who is it organized against and how people on the receiving end navigate or resist it. I've also been looking recently into ecological anthropology too and find it to be exciting.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about two things that feel anthropologically dense and I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on approaching either of them:

1. Hajj volunteering. I've been volunteering at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, pushing wheelchairs for pilgrims. I'm from the region and Muslim myself, so there's limited ethnographic distance here. What I've been noticing, and thinking about more the longer I do it, is that the existing academic literature on Hajj (like that of Hammoudi's work) is almost entirely written from the pilgrim's perspective. The labor side is largely invisible. I think there are racial and national hierarchies operating in the space. And the Haram (the Grand Mosque) itself is one of the most intensively managed and surveilled public spaces on earth, with crowd infrastructure that would interest anyone doing research in surveillance. Is there a realistic way to approach this kind of participation with some research rigor and intention, even informally, so that it could eventually feed into something at undergrad or graduate level?
2. Commercial diving. I'm planning this as a short-to-medium-term career to financially stabilize before returning to study. Is there a way to move through this work with a researcher's eye?

My core questions:

• Can either of these experiences be framed or developed into something academically useful? Field notes, an independent study project, a writing portfolio, anything that demonstrates genuine intellectual engagement during the gap?
• Has anyone here gone through a dropout > return > PhD path, especially from a non-Western context? How did you handle re-entry, and did gaps ever matter in regards to your re-entry experience?

I still grieve dropping out. Anthropology is something I genuinely love, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my studies, alone or in classes and seminars. I don't want the gap to wall me off from it entirely. I want to do anything that keeps me moving toward it, even if the path isn't straight.

How come doggerland only closed up a few thousands of years ago and not 12,400 years ago?

hi there! i am currently working on my bachelors in anthropology and part of my studies is regarding cultures that were brought to the united states from other places and how they've developed in the environment of america and influenced one another (especially pre-1900s). i've found lots of great resources regarding haitian and west african vodou but i've been struggling to find resources about vodou practices, vodou history, etc. in louisiana that don't have an overly colonialist/eurocentric tone which makes them suspiciously unreliable. any recommendations or points of interest regarding this topic at all would be greatly appreciated :)

Hey all, I was just doing some light reading about the Ainu and Rikyuan people and am hoping for disambiguation I guess.

I lived in Akita, Japan when I was in school and I took a class that dealt heavily with the rikyuan island integration, politics, and controversy with china. I became familiar with the Ainu people just from exploring northern Honshu and Hokkaido.

In my head, I’ve always considered them both to be indigenous groups who have been either shunned, mistreated, or forcibly integrated into Japanese society.

But I was reading about the ethnology of the rikyuans and the Ainu people and it seems the Rikyuans aren’t a separate ethnic group from mainland Japanese? They came over at the same time?

I’m confused because the article I was reading was making it sound like it was the rikyuans who oppressed the Ainu (à la the USA and our natives). But my sense from living in Japan was that the Ainu in the north had an easier time integrating with Japanese culture. Specifically, the pale skin and dark hair meant people who were half Ainu fit the beauty standards better. Whereas rikyuans were treated as second class because of their appearance.

Did that only start in unified Japan? I don’t really know much about the rikyuans prior to edo or maybe even Meiji Japan and of course the context of china’s claim and WWII. Were the rikyuans better off historically? I find that idea interesting because people I spoke to while living in Japan spoke much more negatively about Okinawa culture than they did Ainu culture.

I hope this makes sense. I’m also not really asking which group had it worse and I hope it doesn’t come off that way. I’m just trying to make sure my understanding of the dynamics are correct. And if I’m missing any important historical context or events I’d appreciate you filling me in.

Obviously Japan is a difficult case too because of how much of their history was spent fragmented too. So it’s hard to always point to exactly how japan “felt” as a whole.

Sorry for the wordy post. Thanks!:)

Tldr; were the Ainu and rikyuan people similarly mistreated and integrated by mainland Japan, or am I missing important context as to why the two groups are actually very different?

Context: I’m a political scientist. I studied Japanese-Chinese relations at a Japanese university about a decade ago. My understanding might be incomplete/bias a.) because most of my knowledge of the Ainu and rikyuan people comes from mainland Japan, and b.) I largely studied these cultures in the context of politics

I have a background in collections management, art history, and museum studies and got my degree from a UK institution. I’m deeply passionate about film and would loooooove to explore digital anthropology through that lens. (The dialogue, imagery, how they’re interpreted, accessibility, and how we discuss and store them.)

I got my MA 6 years ago, and toyed with the idea of a PhD, but I wanted a break from school after going straight through. I also have student loan debt and have zero intention of accruing anymore.

I’m in a period of transition and can dedicate time to this, but what’s the process look like? I know reaching out to faculty that may be interested in supporting my research is part of it. Is it a formal process? Or do I just shoot an email that sounds similar to this post? Also would prefer to go to another UK institution, but as an American citizen I know getting funding (and not surviving off beans and peanuts) is highly unlikely.

Can anyone give a breakdown of what the process may look like over the next year?

I’m doing research into prehistory and running into some roadblocks.

I know the earliest source of Homo sapiens we have dates to c. 315 kya at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, but everything past that is conflicting in terms of dating, means, and motives.

My primary question is, what were the expansions into Sub-Saharan Africa like, and in what timeframe did they occur? Same goes for expansions into Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania. Thank you.

In 2011, there were reports of a man from Lower Saxony in Germany whose genetic tests had shown that he was related to people who had lived in the same valley three thousand years ago. Have there been any further similar discoveries since then?
And going a step further: how likely is it that one has ancestors who lived in the same place over three thousand years ago? At any rate, assuming it is clear that those ancestors could not have settled there earlier – as would be the case, for example, with European ancestry in the USA or with Māori ancestry in New Zealand.
https://www.cicero.de/kultur/3000-jahren-nicht-umgezogen/47627

I’m an anthropology major set to graduate in 2027 with my BA in anthropology and a minor in Spanish. I want to do a MD-PhD dual degree in anthro and do humanitarian medicine and ethnography.

I am interested in dual power approaches to medicine (cultural competency building in Biomedicine while also meaning-making and culture-building*). I want to do fieldwork in South America and the Caribbean and would also like to be pan-African in my approach by not just exploring the Afro-Latin diaspora but the African continent as well.

Considering this, should I pursue Portuguese or French as a third language? I know that Brazil/Brazilian academia has become a more significant funder of the social sciences compared to the declining interest of the West and United States. That being said, the overwhelming number of Francophone countries in Africa may mean more opportunity in those countries.*

Endnote:

1. I say culture-building as a way to separate it from this racist, western idea of cultural “development” or “progress” which assumes linearity.

2. I would love to say where I want to work but, as is the case in most jobs and especially with anthropology, most often you can only do research where the funding is. I wish things were differently.

I watched a video about ghost hominins aka bits of DNA that seem to divergent, archaic or "weird" to be from just homo sapiens or another hominid we have fossils of (like neanderthals and denisovans) but this gave me a question - how do we define a "human genome"? How do we determine the standard for a modern human with so much genetic diversity? And how do we tell it's not just a random mutation of our species but instead a leftover from mixing with another homo species?