Humans have been engaging with the supernatural for at least 50,000 years and perhaps much longer. Because humans have been writing for less than 5,000 years, this means that some 45,000 years of religious history reveals itself to us only through the archaeological record. For a long period of time, archaeologists were reluctant to investigate [...]
Tags:archaeology·burials·domestic·grave goods·Higgs·Jarman·monuments·neolithic·Richard Bradley·ritual·ritualization·sacred·shrines·soul·soul beliefs·writing
Anthropologists are at it again: engaged in fruitless and unproductive arguments about whether the discipline is a “science.” The furor revolves around proposed changes to the American Anthropological Association’s mission statement:
The purposes of the Association shall be to advance anthropology as the science that studies public understanding of humankind in all its aspects, through This [...]
Tags:AAA·American Anthropological Association·anthropology·archaeology·biological anthropology·cultural anthropology·four field anthropology·holistic anthropology·humanities·linguistics·science
The Guardian has posted an encouraging story about studying anthropology and what people do with anthropology degrees.
Assuming that one is truly dedicated to four-field anthropology, the following certainly rings of truth: “Anthropology has been described as the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences.”
Unfortunately for most anthropology graduate students, the [...]
Tags:anthropology degree·archaeology·biological anthropology·cultural anthropology·four field anthropology·holistic anthropology·humanities·linguistics·science
What we today call “religion” obviously has a history that pre-dates societies that had writing and which left us with religious texts. The archaeological record consists of material objects that may clearly indicate (or merely suggest) that those who created the objects did so under the influence of supernatural beliefs or in the course of [...]
