| Diary for August 2010
Monday 30th August- Booking Ahead for Wales Anthropology Day  Many of you who were not able to come to this year's London Anthropology Day will be happy to know that there is a sister event happening on the 16th of September in Wales. Every year the University of Wales Lampeter organises a free university taster day of anthropological workshops and films aimed at Year 12, 13, FE students and teachers. To find out more and book your free place visit this website. London Anthropology Day 2010 Photos now Online!
 The London Anthropology Day 2010 is a university taster day for Year 12,13 and FE students, career advisors and teachers. Organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute's Education Programme in collaboration with the British Museum and participating universities the event was held on 8th July. This year's event included 18 universities from England, Ireland and Wales and over 350 participants making it the largest London Anthropology Day to date. Take a look at the this year's photos along with other anthropological events on this website.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127859150 [discussion about the following article] For 70 years, this picture has been used to tell the same story – of inequality, class division, "toffs and toughs". As an old Etonian closes in on Downing Street, it is being trotted out again. But what was the story behind it? Ian Jack investigates [ From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Spring 2010; http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ian-jack/5-boys] Almost since its invention, photography has had the habit of turning people into symbols by accident. A painter might spend a year on a canvas, working up the personification of an abstract idea to its full visual glory ("Truth Triumphant" or "Temptation Denied"), but a camera could capture a scene in a fraction of a second, and if the scene was somehow striking and memorable – in its composition, its subject matter, its light – it might become "iconic", meaning that its particulars might be understood to suggest much more general emotions, conflicts and problems. When the shutter clicked, such a metaphorical future was rarely suspected either by the photographer or his subjects, who might not even be aware that a picture had been taken. The moment could be ordinary or extraordinary: a couple kissing in a Paris street, a sharecropper and her children in California, a burning child running down a road in Vietnam. It could happen anywhere, to anybody. It might happen even at an old-fashioned English cricket match.
June 13, 2010 For as long as anyone can remember, Churro sheep have been central to Navajo life and spirituality. Yet the animal was nearly exterminated by the federal government, which deemed it an inferior breed. Now the Churro is making a comeback, but the old Navajo ways may not. [ National Public Radio broadcast, Sunday, June 13, 2010]
Bournemouth University in the UK recently started work on a rare and historically important northwest European armed merchant ship. It was wrecked in the approaches to Poole Harbour in the early 17th century. With almost 40% of the port side of originating ship being present this project has the potential to yield important information about merchant vessels from this time period. The Swash Channel Wreck team has posted its first two entries on the MUA and will provide periodic updates over the next few months. project journal, ttp://www.uri.edu/artsci/his/mua/project_journals/swash/swash_intro.shtml
Many people alive today possess some Neanderthal ancestry, according to a landmark scientific study. The finding has surprised many experts, as previous genetic evidence suggested the Neanderthals made little or no contribution to our inheritance. The result comes from analysis of the Neanderthal genome - the "instruction manual" describing how these ancient humans were put together. Between 1% and 4% of the Eurasian human genome seems to come from Neanderthals. BBC story (excerpt). Full story, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm
Deciphering what death means to chimpanzees has always been difficult, as they usually die without a human witness. Two new papers in Current Biology offer a glimpse into the minds of chimps as they confront death. In one case, when an older matriarch died, the researcher says the chimps were subdued for several weeks after she passed. [National Public Radio on 26 April 2010]
from the on-air, online (radio) essay series, "This I Believe" A Reverence for All Life
via National Public Radio, March 22, 2010 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124700865 In Jamaica, like all over the world, there are deep conversations about the ideal body type. While there are competing norms of beauty, some women are using extreme methods to fit their vision of beautiful, like ingesting chicken pills for broader hips and butts, and bleaching their skin to be whiter. And they're taking health risks to do so.
March 13, 2010 A dozen ancient shipwrecks have been discovered in the Baltic Sea, just east of Sweden. The well-preserved ships are hundreds of years old. The oldest wreck may date back 800 years. [National Public Radio]
Our series on maritime archaeology in Europe continues with sites in Belgium. ...sites from various time periods including the Doel Cog, the
eighteenth-century Buiten Ratel wreck, and the early twentieth-century
French military vessel Bourrasque.
The main webpage for all projects of the Musuem of Underwater Archeology is at
...from "The Meaning Of Liff", a creation of John Lloyd and Douglas Adams: Aberbeeg: Of amateur actors, to adopt a Mexican accent when called upon to play any variety of foreigner (except Pakistanis - from whom a Welsh accent is considered sufficient). Ewelme: The smile bestowed on you by an air hostess. Liff: A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words. 'This book will change your life'. Meathop: One who sets off for the scene of an aircraft crash with a picnic hamper. Peoria: The fear of peeling too few potatoes. Scraptoft: The absurd flap of hair a vain and balding man grows long above one ear to comb it to the other ear. Thrupp: To hold a ruler on one end on a desk and make the other end go bbddbbddbbrrbrrrrddrr. Ventnor: One who, having been visited as a child by a mysterious gypsy lady, is gifted with the strange power of being able to operate the air-nozzles above aeroplane seats. Yarmouth: To shout at foreigners in the belief that the louder you speak, the better they'll understand you.
eye-opening poster by Pearson textbooks
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123131827 Comedian Russell Peters Capitalizes On Indian Roots ...He is now on the road with his Green Card Tour. He spoke with NPR's Audie Cornish from New York City. After ribbing Cornish about her family's Jamaican roots, he confessed his love for speaking in accents that are not his own. "Sometimes I get stuck in a Chinese accent and just want to talk to everybody like a Chinese person," Peters says. "Sometimes I might even just talk like myself, but that's on a crazy day." One of his standup routines includes a bit about the Indian accent.
The four field approach to anthro in North America comes from its 1800s roots: trying to understanding and inter-relate the scores of Native peoples at the time and the earlier societies leaving an imprint on the land. Archeology, linguistics, biological or physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology. Later in the 20th century the fifth field was added: Applied Anthropology.
Here is a synopsis from the website of the National Association of Practicing Anthropology, http://practicinganthropology.org/practicing-anthro/Practicing AnthropologistsPracticing anthropologists do exciting work to understand and help people around the world. We also turn up in places you might not expect to find us, including the fields of agriculture, computer science, law enforcement forensics, and more. Our profession is dynamic and constantly evolving into more opportunities for professional anthropologists. The links, at left, contain many examples of anthropology in action, and interesting information for the public, the press and educators. You can also locate a local organization dedicated to anthropology and share and view upcoming events related to our field. [elipsis...] Practicing anthropologists work in many industries and areas, including:Agricultural DevelopmentBusiness – Product DesignBusiness – Project ManagementBusiness – Program ManagementBusiness – Research and DevelopmentComputer Science – Database Design and DevelopmentComputer Science – Software Design and DevelopmentComputer Science – User Interface DesignCommunity DevelopmentCultural Resource ManagementEducation and TrainingEnvironment – ManagementEnvironment – PolicyGovernment – Local/Regional/FederalGovernment – MilitaryGovernment – International PolicyInformation Technology – Human Factors EngineeringInformation Technology – Localization and GlobalizationInformation Technology – Network Design and AdministrationLaw Enforcement – ForensicsLegal PracticesMedical – Health CareMedical – Public HealthMuseums – CurationMuseums – Program ManagersOrganizational ManagementNonprofit – Grant WritingNonprofit – ManagementNonprofit – PolicySocial Services
from the Bible (New International Version), Leviticus 11:20-22 cf. insect eating account by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, Man Eats Bug (2004) 20 All flying insects that walk on all fours are an abomination to you. 21 Yet you may eat these: of all winged creeping things that go on all fours, which have legs above their feet, with which to hop on the earth. 22 Even of these you may eat: any kind of locust, any kind of katydid, any kind of cricket, and any kind of grasshopper.
In Class, Marines Learn Cultural Cost Of Conflict, mp3 audio download The students in front of Paula Holmes-Eber wear camouflage and have close-cropped hair. Most of them are Marine officers, and many of them have already been to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're here to learn the consequences of their actions. "Should we change another culture?" she asks the class. "The reality is, the second you land on the ground with 100,000 troops eating and using the materials of the area, you've changed the economy; you've changed the environment." "It's not should we," she tells them, "it's what are we doing — and is that what we want to be doing?" An anthropologist, Holmes-Eber trains American warriors to be sensitive to other cultures. She teaches operational culture at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Va. It's her job to get soldiers to think through how every move they make on the battlefield has a consequence — not just for enemy forces, but for ordinary people. [elipsis]
The archives for "Interfaith Voices" offer rich listening segments. This one includes segments about pilgrimage to sites where relics reside. Whiskers, Bones, Toes, and Teeth
In Rag and Bone, author Peter Manseau explores the macabre world of religious relics—the bodily odds and ends of saints, gurus and prophets, scattered all around the world. From Muhammed's beard whisker to the Buddha's tooth, it's a look at why we save and celebrate pieces of the dead. Our interview originally aired in July 2009. Peter Manseau, author of Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead, founding editor of killingthebuddha.com
For nearly 1,000 years, the Hopi people have lived on the same three mesas, land now considered part of northeastern Arizona. For all that time, they have been speaking the Hopi language, which is slowly dying. There are many hurdles standing in the way of preserving Hopi, including, for Hopi teens, the choice between preserving their culture and adopting a modern lifestyle.
http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2009/12/20091229_atc_04.mp3?dl=1
[29 Dec 2009 National Public Radio broadcast; produced by Youth Radio: 5 minutes]
http://www.tollundman.dk/tollundmandens-tid.asp is about the "bog man" (Tollund, Denmark) with text, pictures, video about the time period of 500 BC to 800 AD - overlapping with the Okhotsk society along the north coast of Japan' north island of Hokkaido. In S. Sweden (west of Malmo) there is a village recreation with people volunteering to live in the old ways as an experiement. Imagine this experiment with Okhotsk living, as well.
issues such as migration, citizenship, youth crime and other topics | |
| Diary for 5th November to 11th November 2009
SUNDAY 8th November- Social Science for Schools  The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), have just launched a new website called Social Science for schools. The aim of the website is to provide teachers with accessible information bringing together ESRC funded research on issues such as migration, citizenship, youth crime and other topics, so that they have reliable quantitative and qualitative data to use in their classrooms. This is an excellent resource for any social science teacher!
...underwater archaeology in Europe. Today's entry on Belgium highlights past work including submerged medieval fishing villages, shipwrecks, exhibitions, and an online maritime database: click on the "Maritime Archaeology in Belgium" link at http://www.uri.edu/mua
| Diary for 1st October to 7th October 2009 Anthropologists who made history...
 In 1923 Margaret Mead set off to Samoa to conduct research on adolescence. Mead became the first anthropologist to explore the realm of anthropology of childhood, and throughout her career she helped to popularise the discipline with her writings. Her work is included as mandatory texts in undergraduate degrees in North America and Europe. In this podcast, Professor Adam Cooper and June Goodfield reflect on Mead's career, the controversies surrounding the personal and professional life, and her impact on the discipline as a whole. If you'd like to know more about Mead's life and her research, the Library of Congress has an excellent online exhibition and an extensive archive collection on Mead.
 After gaining a his first degree in Philosophy from Antioch College, Clifford Geertz went on to do his PhD in Anthropology at Harvard. Geertz did extensive research in Indonesia and then later in Morocco. Geertz was fascinated with the ways in which culture is expressed through ' a system of meanings embodied in symbols'. He became a founder of interpretive or symbolic anthropology, and his work was extremely influential within the discipline and beyond in other social sciences. In this podcast Byron Good, Professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School, explains the contribution of Geertz's work to the discipline. For a wonderful summary of his life and work take a look a this obituary written in the New York Times. |
Michigan to Remove Indian Dioramas from Natural History Museum Responding to objections from American Indian students and staff members, the University of Michigan will remove a set of dioramas depicting scenes of Native American life from its natural history museum, Indian Country Today reported. Some American Indian professors at Michigan said they found it insulting for them and their culture to be represented as miniaturized dolls amid the museum's dinosaur bones and fossils. "We are living, breathing, contemporary human beings," Margaret Noori, a professor of Ojibwe language and literature at Michigan, told Indian Country Today. A Michigan official confirmed that the dioramas would be removed by January. [ http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/15/qt#208267]
hunter-gatherer societies altering their environments - intentional or not http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112124572 August 23, 2009 Archaeologists who study early hunter-gatherer societies are discovering that even the simplest cultures altered their environments, whether they meant to or not. For example, aboriginal people in Australia burned huge areas to change the landscape so they could hunt animals more easily. Perhaps the most famous example is the way mastodons and giant sloth and other ice-age animals were killed off by roving bands of hungry humans... [National Public Radio, npr.org] article on coastal exploitation appears in the journal Science
http://scienceblogs.com/bloggingtheorigin [chapter by chapter modern re-reading of Darwin's The Origin of Species;
or see the original text at www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles]
on display at the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC) until February 2011,
Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake and the webcomic presentation, http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/comic photo preview [13 views]
via Korean Studies Discussion List <http://us.mc580.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws>
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2009/08/06/56/0302000000AEN20090806001200315F.HTML
[compare to] ...other instances in the past where other cultures attempted to adopt Han'gu(l / Choso(n'gu(l as their written language only to have it be rejected, no?
I don't recall as it has been a long time since I read Kim-Renaud, Y-K.
(ed) 1997. The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure.
Anyway, this is a very interesting language development that *gasp* for
once doesn't involve romanizations.
=-=-=-= follow up:
The case of using hangeul by one of Indonesian tribes as a practical systemof writing is funny. It is one more ?success? of local nationalists in theera of globalization, when the state sponsors such "experiments"! Koreanalphabet is excellent only for the Korean language, but is almost unsuitablefor the transmission of sounds, which are absent in the Korean language. Inthe Soviet Union in 1920-30?s attempts were made to create scripts fornationalities, which had no their own script on the basis of the Latinalphabet. This letter alphabet, as well as Cyrillic, is much more suitablethan Korean letter-syllabic alphabet, for transcription of all kinds ofsounds through a combination of letters or diacritics. But the grandioseexperiment failed. It is difficult to believe that the Korean experimentwill last for long.
---Lev Kontsevich [Moscow]
|
Daily Life in Ancient Times: Archaeology of Israel and Jordan July 1 - July 24, 2009 -- directed by Rhonda Root and Gloria London -- sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities http://home.earthlink.net/~galondon/NEH2009/
"In the field of human evolution which is what I'm in, Atapuerca is a world reference site," Quam says. "This is the richest fossil bearing deposits in the world. And every single site in Atapuerca that has been excavated has yielded human remains, which is something that is very unusual." Last year, the team uncovered a 1.2 million-year-old jawbone fragment from a species known as homo antecessor. It's the oldest hominid fossil ever found in western Europe. Near the railway trench, another site yielded human remains of 28 individuals, dating back at least half a million years. The Spanish paleontologist believes it's a mass grave. "This was a collective act, something a group did with its dead," Arsuaga says. full story; or mp3 download --from NPR.org Morning Edition 3 Aug. 2009
point of reference when organizing a course to introduce anthro:
Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) ****************************** From: Reviews of Internet resources for Asian Studies < asia-www-monitor@anu.edu.au> PARADISEC, c/o The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia Self-description:
"PARADISEC (Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) offers a facility for digital
conservation and access for endangered materials from the Pacific region, defined broadly to include Oceania and East and
Southeast Asia. Our research group has developed models to ensure that the archive can provide access to interested
communities, and conforms with emerging international standards for digital archiving. Our research group is
composed of investigators from the four participating institutions PARADISEC collaborates with other groups to promote good practice in field documentation and digital archiving of
endangered languages:
Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD)
[http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/thieberger/RNLD/
RNLDmailing.html],
the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) [http://www.language-
archives.org],
the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Network (DELAMAN)
[http://www.delaman.org/] and the
Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data project
(E-MELD) [http://www.emeld.org/index.cfm]. At September 2008 PARADISEC's collection contains 2051 hours of digital audio and video files on 3.65 TB of disk space. A
catalogue of this material is available at the link given in the right hand frame of this page. 614 languages from 60
countries are represented in PARADISEC's collection."
This looks like a handy summary and skills list for anybody working in our mobile world of languages and societies today!
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| 1) Be sensitive and respectful to individuals who have invested the time to learn English. Learning a new language is a large undertaking. They have sacrificed many years to learn English. To help you with this, try learning and using several phrases of another language. It's quite humbling.
2) Be aware of the factors that can enhance miscommunication. For example: Is the miscommunication a language misunderstanding? Is it based on differences in gender, age, national culture, or corporate culture? Is the miscommunication linked to technology malfunctions? Is it caused by more implicit variables, such as non-verbal components, context of message, or relationships based on hierarchy? By understanding the nature of the quandary, you can find more efficient solutions.
3) Pause. Native English speakers will often ask a question and not allow enough time for the listener to process the words, think about an answer, find the appropriate wording (based on their relationship to the speaker), and then execute a grammatically correct sentence. If it's information you are seeking, then pausing can work wonders!
4) When conducting meetings and conference calls, provide an outline or overview ahead of time. Give clear and simple statements of what is to be expected and define the length of discussion points.
5) Avoid slang, professional jargon, and acronyms at all costs. A statement like this can be confusing to non-native English speakers: "Please send the RFP by COB on hump day. Are we all on board?" Rephrasing can be advantageous: "Please send the Request for Proposal by 5 pm on Wednesday. Is that agreeable?"
6) Communicate with story. Often times bullet points and lists of information lack the ability to show the elusive. Example vignettes from your experiences or someone else's (including personal stories, folktales, and historical tales) can provide clarity, and at the same time, keep respect and honor for all members by not pointing out the flaws in others.
7) Have listeners rephrase what they think they heard you say. This is much better than asking, "Do you all understand?" and eventually receiving unsatisfactory outcomes.
8) Speak clearly and enunciate properly. Pausing before and after significant words can help improve communication, too.
| | If the points above seem superfluous or unessential, then spend some time trying to make sense of the following:
Hvis du har noen spørsmål om dette emnet eller andre relaterte emner, ta kontakt med Cultural Awareness International.
(Tip: You might want to use a Norwegian dictionary.)
In conclusion, the energy and time it takes to understand just one sentence may bring about feelings of frustration and confusion. However, by obtaining this point of view you will unearth the empathy needed to communicate effectively with all of your colleagues and clients worldwide.
Other helpful tips that will also enhance communication:
• Trust begins with openness and authenticity. Presenting an image of yourself with flaws and weaknesses can often times be beneficial to you.
• View the world from someone else's eyes by shifting your paradigm. This can give you an advantageous viewpoint on a particular situation or problem.
• Don't see the world by what's right or wrong. See what's beneficial or ineffectual. Go from there.
• See the good that every individual or situation brings to your world. It is often in this place that we find satisfaction with ourselves, with others, and the communication between. | | Written by Gene Edgerton, Edited by Rebecca Garza and Kayla Kluempke
June 2009, www.CulturalAwareness.com
sets of interest groups on the Ning platform (one sign-up allows multiple Ning memberships) http://openanthcoop.ning.com/As of June 3, there are groups for Visual anthro, Anthro of Japan, Anthro of Brazil, Physical/forensic, and a Forum on general policy of this Cooperative intersection of groupings.
| Diary for 28th May to 3rd June 2009  Anthropologists find work in a variety of different fields ranging from working in museums, to working as business consultants, or in development and tourist agencies. Often the word 'anthropologist' does not appear in their job title, but anthropologists use the skills they have learned from their degrees, such as undertaking ethnographic research, analysing cross cultural data, doing interviews and apply these skills to their current roles. Veronica Strang, professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland has written a new book called What do Anthropologists do? The book takes a close look at why anthropologists are in demand for certain roles, and the job opportunities that are open to people studying the degree. It's written in an accessible manner and is a very useful resource for people beginning their exploration of anthropology and those already studying it at university. |
REUTERS.COM Thu Mar 26, 2009 LONDON (Reuters) - The number of people in Britain with surnames like Cockshott, Balls, Death and Shufflebottom -- likely the source of schoolroom laughter -- has declined by up to 75 percent in the last century. A study found the number of people with the name Cock shrank to 785 last year from 3,211 in 1881, those called Balls fell to 1,299 from 2,904 and the number of Deaths were reduced to 605 from 1,133. People named Smellie decreased by 70 percent, Dafts by 51 percent, Gotobeds by 42 percent, Shufflebottoms by 40 percent, and Cockshotts by 34 percent, said Richard Webber, visiting professor of geography at King's College, London. ...full text, http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSTRE52O5IN20090326?sp=true
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100648070 [opening text] Morning Edition, February 13, 2009 · Scientists in Germany say they have drawn up a map of about 60 percent of the genetic "letters" in the genome of Neanderthals. The map is expected to shed light not only on what kind of creatures they were, but also what genetic differences allowed humans to leave Neanderthals in the evolutionary dust.
See how Windows Mobile brings your life together—at home, work, or on the go. See Now
from National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100057939
[excerpt]... look at the patch of skin on the inside of your upper arm, the part of you that almost never sees the sun.
Whatever color you see there is what experts call your basic skin color, according to professor Nina Jablonski, head of the Penn State Department of Anthropology.
And that color, the one you have now, says Jablonski, is very probably not the color your ancient ancestors had — even if you think your family has been the same color for a long, long time.
from the blog, Anthropologist About Town [London-based, weekly] | Diary for 29th January to 5th February 2009 The other day on the internet, I came across this wonderful website: http:www.anthropologie.net . This website has an incredible amount of links for those interested in anthropology. There is a vast array of links from museums, research institutions, and university departments around the world, anthropology in the news sites, and a lot more! |
http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=collaboration&second=radio
Audio recordings are an essential means of communication and collaboration between the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Native and indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere and Hawai'i, and the general public. Recordings are supported at the NMAI by the Community and Constituent Services Department. The department's staff works with Native and indigenous organizations and professionals to produce audio programs, products, and services that are informative, educational, and entertaining. At the same time, NMAI recordings uphold a long tradition of preserving Native oral history. The NMAI offers live radio broadcasts, audio recordings, and a radio series.
Introducing FOCAL POINT The new web-exclusive series of documentary shorts from WIDE ANGLE In its first weeks, FOCAL POINT, the new online exclusive series of documentary shorts from Wide Angle, will bring viewers to polling stations in Pakistan, breadlines in Zimbabwe, and demonstrations in Greece, where the children of immigrants are fighting for the right to citizenship.
The first episode of FOCAL POINT, From Jihad to Rehab, takes us inside a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia, where art therapy and religious re-education are being used to reform militant jihadists.
Like Wide Angle, FOCAL POINT offers a deeper understanding of forces shaping the world today through online-exclusive documentary shorts, an increasingly popular medium. This exciting new series will showcase the work of emerging and established independent filmmakers from around the world.
Lots of insights from a person working between English and Thai,
320 A.D., soon after the Empire went Christian under Constantine: A joint effort between Google, the Rome Reborn Project, and Past Perfect Productions, the new Ancient Rome 3D Layer in Google Earth allows users to view and explore over 6700 3D buildings as scholars determine they stood in 320 AD. If you ever dreamed of walking along the same streets as Constantine or gazing up at the Coliseum as it stood in ancient times, you'll be amazed at what you can experience behind your keyboard!
about indigenous media research: Postma, M. and P. I. Crawford (eds.)(2006), Reflecting Visual Ethnography, Leiden & Hoejbjerg: CNWS Publications & Intervention Press. Philipsen, H.H. and B. Markussen (eds.), Advocacy and Indigenous Filmmaking, Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press Aaron Glass' work about a traditional dance of one of the NW coastal indigenous groups in North America; also with W. Osman about her film in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan. PDF version of the Anthropology News (vol.47/no.9 =November 2008) at anthrosource.net The interviewer/author is Dinah Winnick. Worth & Adair's Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology Hoque, Abdul (2006) Radio and indigenous peoples. The role of radio in the sustainable livelihoods of indigenous peoples: A case study of the Rakhaing and the Garo people in Bangladesh. University of Tromso. PamelaWilson and Michelle Stewart (eds) Global indigenous media: culture,politics and poetics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk3-no1foTE Thoughts on Fieldwork From Three Research Sites
Cultural Anthropology is a social science that explores how people understand - and act in - the world. But what, exactly, is it that Cultural Anthropologists do? How do they approach their research? In this short film,
P 40.5 .L33 H37 2007 Harrison, K. David. When Languages Die. The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. London: OUP. _______________ 13 The world's 6.34B people speak, at latest count, 6,912 languages. If speakers were divided evenly among languages, each tongue would have 917,000 speakers... The top 10 biggest languages have hundreds of millions of speakers each, accounting for just over 50% of humans. If we expand this set to include the top 83 languages, we have covered nearly 80% of the world's population. 35 mankind... classifying, grouping, and describing plant and animal life, behavior, and usefulness to humans. Scientists refer to this practice as taxonomy: naming individuals and groups, sorting things into groups, discovering relations among them. 57 [reindeer words] Dongur. It is a powerful word. It means 'male domesticated reindeer in its third year and first mating season, but not ready for mating', and it allows a tribe of nomadic reindeer herders in Siberia to identify and describe with a single word what would otherwise require a full sentence. 58 ...uncle may be a mother's brother, or a mother's sister's husband, or perhaps just his parents' adult male friend. While our mind readily grasps the various types of 'uncle', English provides no ready-made, unique labels to distinguish them. Conversely, in cultures like Tofa with more socially important kinship relations, there exists no general word for 'uncle'. Five different type of uncles would have five completely different labels. By simply learning these labels, the child implicitly learns that these are distinct kinship roles. [unique identifiers] 146 [Walter Ong] Language s so overwhelmingly oral that of all the many thousands of languages --possibly tens of thousands-- spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all. Of the some 3,000 languages spoken that exist today only some 78 have a literature... ...what it means to be a purely oral, non-literature culture. No grocery lists, no letters or e-mails, no memos, no text messages on cell phones, no books, no report cards, [no junk mail, direct mail, bills, email], no instructions on how to assemble artificial Christmas trees, no owner's manuals, no dictionaries, no newspapers, no libraries. This is the *normal* state of affairs for most human languages. [and therefore societies] 210 Rotokas (spoken in New Guinea by 4,320 people) reportedly gets by with a mere six consonants: p, t, k, v, r, and g, while Ingush a language of the Caucasus (230,000 speakers) boasts a whopping 40 consonants. Besides many common sounds like 'p', 'b', and 'f', Ingush uses a special series of ejective consonants that are produced by closing and raising the vocal chores to compress air inside the pharynx, then releasing the pressure suddenly to create a popping sound to accompany the consonant. Ejectives are moderately rare, occurring in only about 20% of the world's languages. To employ *seven* distinct kinds of ejectives, as does Ingush, is exceedingly rare. But even Ingush is not the upper limit: Ubykh, which reportedly had 70 consonants, lost its last speaker in 1992. ...Ingush appears more complex, allowing multiple consonants to sit next to each other, for example, bw, hw, ljg, and rjg: bwarjg 'eye' hwazaljg 'bird' ==NOTES to text
243 Russian and Polish and other languages have a term that means "a whole 24 day," while English lacks this word. 246 [seven day week/calendar] first came into use in ancient Babylon, but a 10-day week was adopted by the Mayan Empire, and some Bantu civilizations in Africa adopted a six-day week. 261 [inventory of sign languages] ...about 700 sign languages in the final count == urls:
p237> Lenape words (Deleware; Delaware), www.delawaretribeofindians.nsn.us. Talking dico, www.talk-lenape.comp246 Halkomelem elders; folkbiology, www.sfu.ca/halk-ethnobiology [NW coast] p249 [Baltic: Karaim chanting prayers/religion ceremonies online] www.karaimi.home.pl/index/php?p=4 AND http://daugenis.mch.mii.lt/karaimai/literature1.htmp250 [video clip] http://tuvan.swarthmore.edup256 www.ethnologue.com >population estimates for many languages; e.g. India's many languages p270 Myth: Signs are glorified gestures. Online at http://facstaff.gallaudet.edu/harry.markowicz/asl/myth4.html. p278 Hawaiian Dictionary. Online at http://wehewehe.org/gsdl2.5/cgi-bin/hdict?l=en Hillis, David M, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell 2003. Tree of Life. Online at http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/antisense/Download.html. Accessed January 2006. [As published in Science 300: 1692-1697] Kiesling, Scott F. 2004. Dude. American Speech 79(3): 281-305. Medin, Douglas L., and Scott Atran 1999. Folkbiology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Nettle, Daniel, and Suzanne Romaine 2000. Vanishing Voices: The extinction of the world's languages. New York: OUP. [ch.3 "Lost Words - Lost Worlds"] Weisstein, Eric W. 2005. Base In MathWorld - A Wolfram Web Resource. Online at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Base.html. Accessed August 2006. ==ALSOIronbound Films, "The Last Speakers" (Siberia documentary). National Geographic project on endangered languages. Living Tongues Inst for Endangered Languages podcast, The World of Words, www.theworld.org/languages
[excerpt & source, http://www.slate.com/id/2202303/pagenum/all/] You could say our lives as social beings are ruled by the three R's: respect—the sense that proper deference has been paid to our status, reputation—the carefully maintained perception of our qualities, and reciprocity—the belief that our actions are responded to fairly. In other words, high school may be the most perfect recapitulation of the evolutionary pressures that shaped us as a species...
...the film 'Anglesea Road' on youtube... It was made as part of visual anthropology project between the Royal Anthropological Institute and a college in South East London, where a group of 16-19 year-olds made a mini-ethnographic film about their local area, and takes a look at a street which has a large Somali population, and what the area means to them.
for a sense of the whole planetary scope of human activity (and its absence): Matt Harding collected clips of his happy jigging all over the world. This set this to music. A simple but powerful statement. It is hard not to smile. http://youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY For anyone interested in geography, energy - water - air/space, and the places around the world, this Flash movie is vivid and powerful. www.greatdanepro.com/Blue%20Bueaty [that spelling error is part of the link]
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Many of you who were not able to come to this year's London Anthropology Day will be happy to know that there is a sister event happening on the 16th of September in Wales. Every year the University of Wales Lampeter organises a free university taster day of anthropological workshops and films aimed at Year 12, 13, FE students and teachers. To find out more and book your free place visit this website. 
The London Anthropology Day 2010 is a university taster day for Year 12,13 and FE students, career advisors and teachers. Organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute's Education Programme in collaboration with the British Museum and participating universities the event was held on 8th July. This year's event included 18 universities from England, Ireland and Wales and over 350 participants making it the largest London Anthropology Day to date. Take a look at the this year's photos along with other anthropological events on this website.
