Acolytes To Our Culture

An anthropology student catalogues the things that interest her, attempts to learn more.

[acolytestoourculture]

On Cultural Anthropology

I have a midterm today that I only found out about at 4:30 (midterm eta 6:30).  Cultural anthropology makes me want to lie facedown on the floor sometimes always  most of the time.  

[acolytestoourculture]

My only job was stirring the honey while it melted.  Also pictures.  I have come to the realization that if I had more patience and a garage, I would make alcohol and then drink it and be pleased.  

Update: the mead was good.  

[acolytestoourculture]

I am reading three papers tonight, and apparently writing about them also.  Page 5 of 21 of paper one = coffee forever.  

Also, three of my humans have always thrown Arrested Development references at me, and I am only watching it now and I cannot stop (why).  Summer classes are painful (yet I chose this for myself).  

[acolytestoourculture]

So we have survived the end of term.  It is currently raining outside, but it is also SUMMER. 

Summer classes start May 1st.  

[acolytestoourculture]

I'm living other peoples lives, 

I can't stop putting on other peoples clothes

In the final that I wrote this morning, the last essay question asked when in the archaeological record "humanness" began.  I didn't realize it until that moment, but there are a lot of ways that I disagree with defining the specific moment in evolution when our ancestors became "human".  

It's interesting to think that we often connect "humanness" with the behavioural revolution (largely during the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic).  Somewhere in the Upper Paleolithic, the "anatomically modern human" became simply "human".  Really, by "human", we mean most similar to us.  

And yet...at what point does a species qualify as human enough to be "human" (in all sense of the word was actually used in my exam, and I wasn't sure how to respond).  Is it enough to walk bipedally?  To display cognitive ability?  To show altruism?  

What I found interesting, was that throughout my process of answering the question, I thought of "humanness" as closest to modern humans, most similar to "us".  This makes sense, we (as modern humans) are human.  

My question is: should this be valid in our evaluation of other hominins?   Should we focus our research on placing H. erectus somewhere on a scale of "not us" to "us"?  When hypothesizing land-use strategies in Olduvai Gorge, is this our ultimate goal?  

[More of Yellow Ostrich]

[Interesting article by Shea that talks about defining "behavioural modernity": Shea, J.J. 2011. Homo sapiens is as Homo sapiens was. Current Anthropology. 52(1)1-35.]

[Also, if you can grab it from JSTOR, check out: Nowell, April.  2010. Defining Behavioral Modernity in the Context of Neandertal and Anatomically Modern Human Populations.  Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 437-452.] 

[I would throw more in but I was really just word-vomiting about something that freaked me out during that exam]

[acolytestoourculture]

My last exam is Ethnology of the Circumpolar Region.  I usually veer away from cultural anthropology, but this caught my eye.  These humans are fighting for this.  

[Image courtesy of Mike Beedell, Parks Canada Agency and National Geographic]

[Dehcho First Nations]

[acolytestoourculture]

I AM A HORRIBLE STUDENT.  STUDY BREAK IS OVER.  MORE COFFEE.  MOTHER MOTHER.  

[acolytestoourculture]

"UGHH" (student for: I have never wanted coffee more in my life and I hope this pays off eventually/a grad school had better want me one day/I hope I don't end up selling shoes forever/I probably will).

[byuook-blog]

[acolytestoourculture]

I am Canadian, and I approve this message*.  In other news, I am failing at studying for my Anth 341 final.  

*but seriously, it doesn't actually snow that much all the time.  

[acolytestoourculture]

For everybody studying like your life depends on it, this is me taking a break.  I can't believe I missed this video (apparently it's been hanging around for a year): our coast's Said The Whale + a heavy nod to Back To The Future.  

[acolytestoourculture]

We have begun to recognize and accept that the ground on which we stand to represent others in the past is not firm, but more tectonic and shifting. The archaeological record tells us that the past has a mosaic rather than a lineal trajectory: we may have anatomically modern humans in Australia before they were in France; we appear to have cohabiting Neanderthals and modern humans, using similar tool kits in the Middle East and moving into the same site and valleys, and we have early image making in many places.

Soffer and Conkey, 1997 (“Studying Ancient Visual Cultures”)

[acolytestoourculture]

I'm finishing up my Archaeology of Death class this week, and I'm pretty sad to see it go.  In the first week of the death class we read a paper about funerary practices in Anglo-Saxon archaeology which described, in detail, the process of a cremation.  It was pretty interesting, and when we were given time to talk about it in class we all clamoured over each other to voice our opinions.  It was cool.  

In the spirit of funerary archaeology: this is a music video.  I think we were all entranced by the idea of watching the dead burn because the idea was so disturbingly foreign to us.  And yet, in the present, we are unsettling too.  

[For the article about Anglo-Saxon cremation: Williams, H. 2004. Death Warmed Up: the agency of bodies and bones in early Anglo-Saxon cremation rites, Journal of Material Culture 9(3): 263-91.] 

[For more of Father John Misty] 

[acolytestoourculture]

A project that took so much more effort that it should have.  This was the end of term group-torture for my archaeology of death class.  Actually I really enjoyed it, but we chose to present it via blog which was more difficult than I thought it would be.  Writing for normal people while consistently aware that you're going to be marked academically is alarming.   

[theolduvaigorge]

Fossils in Acheulean Handaxes

Top image: An Acheulean handaxe knapped around a Cretaceous fossil of the bivalve Spondylus spinosus (West Tofts, Norfolk, England).

Bottom image: An Acheulean handaxe knapped around an echinoid Conulus fossil (Middle Gravels: Swanscombe, Kent, England).

For further information see: 

Lycett, S.J. 2008. “Acheulean variation and selection: does handaxe symmetry fit neutral expectations?,” Journal of Archaeological Science 35(9):2640-2648.

McNamara, K.J. 2007. “Shepherds’ crowns, fairy loaves and thunderstones: the mythology of fossil echinoids in England,” Piccardi, L and Masse, W.B. (eds.,) Myth and Geology. London: The Geological Society: 279-294.

Nowell, A. and Chang, M.L. 2009. “The Case Against Sexual Selection as an Explanation of Handaxe Morphology,” PaleoAnthropology, 77-88.

Saragusti, I., Sharon, I., Katzenelson, O., and Avnir, D. 1998. “Quantitative Analysis of the Symmetry of Artefacts: Lower Paleolithic Handaxes,” Journal of Archaeological Science 25(8):817-825.

(Image sources: Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, London and The Geological Society, London).

[acolytestoourculture]

WOAH WOAH WOAH.  I would just like to say, Nowell and Chang (second to last) are both profs at my university.  Read their paper to watch Dr. Nowell smack down Kohn and Mithen 1999 (who argue for Acheulian handaxes' use in sexual selection).  

I was actually thinking about that as I was looking at these images AND THERE THEY WERE.  It's weird to think that people that I regularly interact with are academically significant.  I'm supposed to be writing a paper for her class right now.    

This is actually a really cool topic to follow, especially because so many academics passionately argue about it often.  

For even more information: 

[Kohn M and S Mithen. 1999. Handaxes: products of sexual selection? Antiquity

[Machin AJ, Hosfield RT, Mithen SJ. 2006. Why are some handaxes symmetrical? Testing the influences of handaxe morphology on butchery effectiveness.  Journal of Archaeological Science. 34:883-893.]

[Wynn T. 2002. Archaeology and cognitive evolution.  Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 25:389-438.]

[nemos-sex-free-family-fun-z-blog]

Researchers have analyzed Otzi the Iceman’s full nuclear genome sequence and discovered that he had Lyme disease. Otzi died 5300 years ago which makes his the earliest known human case of Lyme disease.

This study confirmed the results of an earlier study which sequenced his mitochondrial genome and found that he has no contemporary descendants. His ancestors in the K haplogroup migrated to Europe from the Middle East at some point during the Neolithic. Their descendants are few in number (only 8% of Europeans belong to the K haplogroup) and concentrated in isolated areas like Sardinia and Corsica. None of them are in Otzi’s branch of the K haplogroup.

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/15283

[acolytestoourculture]

This is really interesting, although it seems that there has yet to be a thorough peer-reviewed publication on the topic.  Ötzi just seems to pop up everywhere.  

[For the original Science News article that the info here comes from: 

Sae, Tina Hesman. 2012. Genome paints a better portrait of the iceman. Science News 181(6):5-6.] 

[For an interesting peer-reviewed: 

Kean, Walter F, Shannon Tocchio, Mary Kean, K.D. Rainsford. 2013. The musculoskeletal abnormalities of the Similaun Iceman ("OTZI"): clues to chronic pain and possible treatments. Inflammopharmacol. 21:11-20. ]

[acolytestoourculture]

On Why We Could Never Go Back in Time and Understand Via Time Machine

I have a prof who, in every class, specifically says "do not write in your term paper 'if we could only go back in a time machine' ".  It's true kids, never write this in a term paper.  

But one interesting thing about this idea, that clearly multiple students have clung to as a misty-eyed concluding statement, is that it probably wouldn't work anyway.  Imagine that all of the anthropologists of the world managed to throw together some kind of contraption to launch us backwards in time (which, lets face it, is what we all really want).  We would emerge at 42,450 BP and stare at H. neanderthalensis for a while as they went about their lives.  As they interacted with those around them, we would furiously record details, grappling with any information we could.  Cherished theories would be disproved by the second, we would discreetly mock those who were wrong (because we are all A-personality children, in the end).  How can the evidence support my theories?  We all would think in unison, drinking in behavioural qualities like a recently single undergraduate with tequila.  

I keep in mind that realistically I, as an underdeveloped fetus of an anthropologist, would be stuck watching the time machine and boiling water for supper.  

With this picture in mind, I have to wonder whether we would even be able to see past ourselves to understand the populations we'd be gaping at.  Even if we could, is it possible to understand something so far away?  Could we understand the social weight that is wrapped around every gesture?  

I guess not; thus is life.     

[acolytestoourculture]