Category Archives: Uncategorized

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?

Posted on February 22, 2013 by

I’m going through some old files here in the lab, and came across an interesting book review by Jim Fitting from 1972.  He was looking at 3 books about ‘Science and Archaeology’, and asking the question anthropologists still debate today … Continue reading →

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The World until Yesterday vs The Foraging Spectrum

Posted on January 31, 2013 by

In all of the discussion lately about Jared Diamond’s new book, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies, I haven’t heard anyone bring up the book that keeps coming to my mind, so I figured I … Continue reading →

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Historical Particularism, Achieved Status and the End of Days

Posted on December 20, 2012 by

The last time I taught Introduction to Anthropology, I decided to use the Mayan Apocalypse phenomenon as a case study for how we recognize and evaluate pseudoscience. We discussed what the students had heard about Maya eschatology, figured out what … Continue reading →

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Bad ‘anthropological’ movie reviews

Posted on November 10, 2012 by

Most folks who know me know that I LOVE bad movies. There’s a limit, but with the right crew watching a film with you, some of the worst plots, strangest special effects and annoying characters can become downright hilarious.  When … Continue reading →

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Student Engagement and Engaging with Students

Posted on September 22, 2012 by

I’ve had a really busy week, but it’s ended on a fun note, even if I did drop a folder full of graded papers into a deep oily rain puddle outside of this coffee shop. I’m interested in getting students … Continue reading →

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Plant domestication and my garden

Posted on August 8, 2012 by

Archaeologists spend a lot of time thinking about the origins of gardening, and eventually agriculture. What makes a person start caring for a set of plants? What makes them start to intentionally grow them? We know that people in several … Continue reading →

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More thoughts on X-men action figures and biological anthropology

Posted on June 1, 2012 by

After I made my post last week about using the X-Men to teach students about how we define humans AS humans, I was talking with some geology friends and came up with another teaching tool from this story that I … Continue reading →

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Even greeting cards teach bad science

Posted on May 30, 2012 by

Most anthropologists are used to seeing greeting cards…and commercials…and movies…etc… that mistakenly label chimps as monkeys. It’s annoying but I am used to it now (though for a good discussion of the problem of using chimps in movies, correctly identified … Continue reading →

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Year of silence

Posted on May 10, 2012 by

Wow, I haven’t posted in a year! I’ve been busy – I taught three classes per term this year instead of two, and I had some new preps, but a whole year, I can’t believe it.  I’m going to try … Continue reading →

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Teaching the revolutions

Posted on February 21, 2011 by

The number of blog posts that turn into requests for help in teaching are more than I had anticipated, but when you’ve got the blogosphere at your fingertips, you might as well take advantage of that, I suppose. Since the … Continue reading →

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