Wednesday, December 16, 2020

innovative ethnography by manga, Southeast Asia.

This 20 page ethnography example will interest those who like to think about ethnographic forms.

We have heard that "the medium is the message" (Marshall McLuhan). I think he was talking about TV: no matter what content is presented the *medium* tells the viewers something about the structure of information, authority, reality and worldview.

So manga-ethnography is an interesting idea!
 
Here is the abstract from the linked page, below

Abstract

This is an excerpt from The King of Bangkok. Originally appearing in Chapter 3, the section we present is a flashback that follows the book's protagonist, Nok, on his journey to the island of Koh Pha-Ngan in the Gulf of Thailand. Nok has secured work on a construction site there during the height of the country's economic boom. The section demonstrates how opportunity and precarity, excitement and devastation are fundamental forces animating and shaping the experiences of migrant workers like Nok.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
From: Rels-TLC <rels-tlc-bounces@groups.sas.upenn.ed
Subject: Rels-TLC Digest, Vol 138, Issue 33
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 09:27:40 +0100     From: Claudio Sopranzetti <sopranz83@ >gmail
Subject: [tlc] Preview and Interview on the forthcoming graphic novel in English, The King of Bangkok

COMMONING ETHNOGRAPHY VOLUME 3 contains a 20-pages preview of the next
graphic novel in the UTP EthnoGRAPHIC Series, The King of Bangkok, and an
interview with Claudio Sopranzetti, Sara Fabbri and Chiara Natalucci on the
possibilities of graphic ethnography.

For those interested:
https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/ce/index?fbclid=IwAR2D4d4NMLI8jmgGx0oRsQ8eIAFHK3YQm5K5A3XlunUP4hixouhPhmOZb50
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Saturday, December 5, 2020

Curated online listening/watching, bi-weekly

(example) From the email to American Anthropological Association members on Saturday, December 5, 2020 and issued for the past month or so as a convenience and way to promote wider participation in these arenas.
 
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Sunday, July 19, 2020

Dogs sniffing our (human) bones from centuries ago

Excerpt from "Archaeology Dogs Can Help Scholars Sniff Out the Past"

A dog's nose performs at least 10,000 times better than ours. Specifically, dogs pick up on low-molecular-weight compounds that easily evaporate at room temperature and often carry an odor—what scientists call volatile organic compounds. Canines can detect one such part in every trillion.
     As a result, dogs have demonstrated uncanny olfactory abilities. They have sniffed out melanoma skin cancer in humans and detected pregnancy in cows just by picking up scents in their bodily fluids.
     So, what exactly are canines detecting at archaeological digs? "Our dogs are not actually searching for bones," Glavaš emphasizes. "They are searching for the molecules of human decomposition."

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Sunday, June 14, 2020

excerpt, Indigenous + Scholarly lens on local life

extracted from "Indigenous Sociology for Social Impact" by Zuleyka Zevallos [The Sociological Review]

...While sociology largely ignores Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, Associate Professor Butler shows that the way in which we teach, research and discuss Indigenous experiences are framed through a White Western perspective that undervalues the complex cultures, spiritualities and social realities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Non-Aboriginal sociologists focus on written texts that exclude Indigenous people, ignoring oral traditions and seeking to mediate Indigenous experiences through White authority. 

=-=-= comment:
Although the subject and context is different, there seems to a parallel impasse between campus-based scholars and their colleagues of the same training but working on applied/practicing project: academic thinkers seek grant support for wide engagement while applied thinkers seek client support for matters defined by contract - the former uses cases studies to get at larger questions, while the latter uses larger questions to frame specific instances to grapple with. Likewise of indigenous knowledge keepers versus outsider scholars there is an impasse as well as intersection. While both may engage in the same subject, the standpoints and purposes differ. Academics see the fieldwork subject as an illustration of wider things, while local experts see the subject as inseparable from the names, places, and lives touched by that subject.
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Thursday, June 4, 2020

Britain's "Pompeii" time capsule, the Bronze Age site at Must Farm

Awarded the 2020 Antiquities prize for newly published and open access article, "The Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement."

The article provides a site overview and the current interpretations of the archaeology alongside discussing the material found during the 2015-16 excavations.

See https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.38


or look at Facebook for updates to the project, https://www.facebook.com/MustFarmArchaeology/

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Thursday, May 14, 2020

reading - archaeology pages at Smithsonian Magazine

The section devoted to archaeology stories is at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeology/

Some of the titles include the following. -- [fall 2019 to spring 2020]

Treasure Trove of Artifacts Illustrates Life in a Lost Viking Mountain Pass

In Groundbreaking Find, Three Kinds of Early Humans Unearthed Living Together in South Africa

A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths

Divers Recover More Than 350 Artifacts From the HMS 'Erebus' Shipwreck

Angkor Wat May Owe Its Existence to an Engineering Catastrophe

The Best Board Games of the Ancient World

To Craft Cutting Tools, Neanderthals Dove for Clam Shells on the Ocean Floor

Twelve Fascinating Finds Revealed in 2019

Archaeologists Are Unearthing the Stories of the Past Faster Than Ever Before

Oldest Known Seawall Discovered Along Submerged Mediterranean Villages
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Monday, April 27, 2020

online Anthropology encyclopedia

A recent (c.2018) resource to browse, https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/articles-a-to-z
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology
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Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Hey, be careful where you point thing [camera lens]

Article told from the point of view of people being recorded on camera or video camcorder: many considerations for the person waving the equipment around!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Seven insights for photojournalists from those on the other side of the lens
---subheadings

Actions over aesthetics

Expectations grow with experience

Representativeness over impact

Be more than just a fly on the wall

Privacy was more of a concern for older adults compared to younger ones.

Safety in numbers

There's no right to privacy in public — but people don't always understand that
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Sunday, February 16, 2020

Native American; paying attention to something besides capitalism

as an organizing principle for social life and livelihoods,

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

archaeology all around you

1) bombing rubble from Liverpool that makes up the Crosby beach, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/liverpool-beach-war-archaeology

2) recent book about "mudlarks" of London's low-tide river Thames who are registered with the bureau for overseeing cultural properties; bits of the past that wash up or erode into plain view become the treasure that trained eyes pick up,



and 3) Nazca, Peru is the location of 1000 year old burials that have mummified from the climate's low-humidity, but were desecrated by robbers in the 1920s. This 1.9 minute video introduces the cultural site that has been prepared to allow visitors to view a few examples of the bodies at rest.

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Thursday, October 31, 2019

forensic anthro - 1 of 6 programs in USA

Story about the field of forensic anthropology from Michigan State University weekly newsletter,

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Such pyramids of solid waste - or Ziggurat?

Exemplar from India's capital city, probably composed of the "11 per centers" who are Middle Class and above and who are accustomed to buy, consume, and discard; repeat at will.

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Sunday, June 30, 2019

online textbook, Biological Anthropology (lab)

via the message board of the American Anthropological Association on 30 June 2019,

...LibreTexts just harvested Alex A. G. Taub's Biological Anthropology Laboratory Activities, a free Open Educational Resource (OER). Labs include: Identifying Bones, Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, Primates, Bone Injuries, Early, Middle, and Recent Hominid Cranium Comparison Checklists.

The LibreTexts platform makes it easier to customize.
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Thursday, June 13, 2019

overview - Britain's Bronze-Age "Pompeii" excavated, first synthesis of the pieces

[copied from Facebook page of Must Farm Archaeology 13 June 2019]

We are excited to share our first formal article on the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement! The piece, published in Antiquity, is Open Access and completely free to download. We wanted to provide an overview of the site, incorporate information emerging from post-excavation and share our current interpretations of the archaeology.
     We discuss the background to the latest excavations, describe some of the material recovered and detail the evidence that suggests the settlement had a short lifespan before its destruction in a large fire.
     In the coming days we'll also share a new Post-Excavation Diary where we discuss the future of the post-excavation and the next stages in the publication process.

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Thursday, April 18, 2019

early Japan ethnography 1950s-60s (taidan), Plath - Vogel

With permission of the Midwest Japan Seminar, Japan Foundation and host at Ohio Wesleyan University, here is the Youtube link to the hour-long conversation recently between long-time friends and colleagues, Prs David Plath and Ezra Vogel. Hearing first-hand of their early years in the field and in Japanese Studies circles is eye-opening for one and all, no matter your scholarly generation or genealogy. Feel free to share widely with others.

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Tuesday, April 9, 2019

new book, "An Anthropology of Anthropology"

This 372 page book comes from an anthropologist in Hawai'i. The PDF can be downloaded at no cost. A print edition can be ordered after June 1 at the latest. His subject is "public anthropology" - using anthropology methods and data to solve social problems with the environment, society, justice, food, education, health, and so on. He says that anthropology has many insights, but usually only is a spectator to watch the world; not to apply the insight to solve big or complicated problems.

Some of the testimonials from noted anthropologists, selectively appended below, give some sense of the book.

<><><>text and link of the book announcement<><><>

...to download a free (open access) copy of An Anthropology of Anthropology as well as see what 35 prominent anthropologists from Australia, Canada, France, Norway, United Kingdom and United States say about it (including Philippe Bourgois, Paul Farmer, Didier Fassin, George Marcus, and Laura Nader).


https://books.publicanthropology.org/an-anthropology-of-anthropology.html


This link can be used by anyone, anytime, anywhere to freely download the book. Please forward this link to interested colleagues and students.


If you lose the link, you can readily obtain it from the new, updated publicanthropology website at www.publicanthropology.org.

Public Anthropology: An Open Access Series

c/o 45-045 Kamehameha Hwy., Kaneohe, HI 96744


= APPENDED NOTES =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [some comments by well-known anthropology colleagues]
Starting with a critical state of the art, he then defends and illustrates an alternative paradigm, which would involve a radical transformation of the way in which the academia considers its responsibility toward society. Rich in numerous case studies,

==========careerism in which quantity has replaced quality, in which creativity and path-breaking ideas have become a relic of the past.  Borofsky makes a strong plea for redirecting anthropology into the world beyond the academy that is our object of study in order to produce knowledge that has a real impact on others

==========at a time when it needs to convey its insights to those beyond the discipline. It needs to ask big questions that matter to others. Rob Borofsky asks why cultural anthropology falls short of this potential. In his search to answer this question, he challenges the university-based contexts that shape the field—what == Note: jirei? if not rooted on campus then what alt vantage points.

==========written almost nothing about conditions of work, patronage, funding, institutional hierarchy in the academy—that is, the power relations under which anthropological writing is actually produced. Robert Borofsky is one of the few who's had the requisite courage to do so.

==========Borofsky catches a sea change in the discipline's perception of itself.

==========inclined to agree on the paramount need for the field to work at building an explicit consensus about what an anthropology degree signals to the world and also agree that the standards of accountability we set for ourselves go well beyond biblio-metrics to include the ways in which our work contributes to a more just and sustainable global community.  EDWARD LIEBOW, Executive Director of AAA

==========the faith that Rob Borofsky places in what anthropologists can do in bringing professional and activist roles together—what I   termed   in the 1990s 'circumstantial activism'—for the benefit of both publics and anthropology.

==========moving past the "do no harm" seemingly neutral stance of the academy, to a more proactive "do good!" model of anthropology with no apologies.

==========He asks tough questions about individual accountability, ethics, and self-interests. Has anthropology made real intellectual breakthroughs in recent decades? He confronts anthropologists asking them to reassess and to renew our social contract with the public good

=========="Reach out to others or else become irrelevant!" is Rob Borofsky's take home message for American cultural anthropologists. He believes the discipline has shot itself in the foot: producing abstruse publications on topics of little value to the broader world, read only by an insular anthropological audience, and written primarily for the sake of narrow professional advancement.

=========="The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame." Sir Salman Rushdie, British-Indian novelist and essayist
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Wednesday, February 6, 2019

linguistic anthropology> Project online to record all the many languages rooted to a place

[excerpt from article linked, below] ...2019 is the UNESCO International Year of Indigenous Languages. What is Wikitongues doing in coordination with it?

The International Year of Indigenous Languages (#IYIL2019) was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly as a way of making 2019 a platform for promoting linguistic diversity and the recent groundswell of activism to sustain it. This was accomplished thanks to the hard work of indigenous activists who spent a long time lobbying for this level of recognition. UNESCO is stewarding the year-long campaign, since they’re the branch most concerned with cultural preservation. Wikitongues was brought on board to help bridge the gap between UNESCO and the grassroots organizations, so we helped build a coalition of civil society organizations from the around the world to amplify the spirit of the year.

Wikitongues will be working to encourage people to use their languages publicly, especially online, so we’ll be designing and copromoting fun and creative social media campaigns that do just that, such as the Mother Language Meme challenge, which is self-explanatory, or Indigenous Language Challenge, which encourages nonindigenous people to learn indigenous languages in solidarity, and indigenous heritage speakers to reclaim their ancestral languages. 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The wiki-tongues project, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wikitongues-documenting-languages
=-= See also, 2007, K. David Harrison, When Languages Die
<>Similarly eye-opening is the story of his LivingTongues.org research center, (Iron Bound Films) The Linguists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Linguists
<>Then also, see PBS.org, Language Matters (2015), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Matters_with_Bob_Holman 
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Saturday, February 2, 2019

museum care - how to clean a totem pole

Major caretaking of collection of totem poles in NYC at the American Museum of Natural History, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-conserve-totem-poles
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Thursday, January 3, 2019

ancient human DNA as window on distribution and timeline of related peoples

At the end of 2018 this article provides recap of major insights produced or suggested from labwork on samples of ancient human remains. 

One author, David Reich, has compared the powers of this new technology to the breakthroughs offered by Carbon 14 dating of organic materials excavated. Instead of induction and deduction from the layering of deposited materials to estimate dates, now some precision was possible. In the same way, DNA offers a sharper view of relatedness of peoples ancient and modern; it allows previous conclusions about (paleo) archaeological locations to be revisited, too.

Reich's 2018 book, Who We Are and How We Got Here, offers chapter by chapter visions of the past in various corners of the world.
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Thursday, August 16, 2018

linguists? English spelling quirks... what if

quoting from boingboing.net today: what if English were to follow the Dutch example 200 years ago when they changed spellings to get rid of exceptions to the rule, so that each spelling combination had only one pronunciation.


Japanese is a hard language to learn, but one of the easy parts is its generally phonetic consistency. English is also hard language to learn, and it's made harder because letters and letter combinations are pronounced differently depending on the word they are in. An example that illustrates this is "ghoti," a made up word that is pronounced "fish." The "gh" is pronounced like the "f" sound in "tough," the "o" is the "i" sound in "women," "ti" is the "sh" sound in "fiction."

Aaron Alon made a video that shows what English would sound like if each vowel had one, and only one, pronunciation. The result sounds like an American pretending to have a weird pan-European accent.     https://youtu.be/A8zWWp0akUU
youtu.be
Learn more about Aaron Alon's music, writing, and films at aaronalon.com.


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Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Looking for Iron Age locations

The dry summer days show off structures ordinarily not visible at ground level, or even like this from the air when all is well watered at other seasons and even during the summer of a typical rainfall year. Here are a few structures in the vicinity of Eire's giant New Grange stone building of millennia ago, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mythicalireland/41635425520/in/explore-2018-07-16/


No doubt these will contribute to the mapped locations and finds across the hilltops through the British Isles around the time that implements and weapons of iron overtook the weaker points of bronze (admixing copper with tin) and before that the artifacts of copper alone.


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Thursday, July 12, 2018

dry weather reveals subsurface structures (aerial view; drone uses)

Low tide lines in the long-term water cycle, as well as droughts bring opportunities for Space Archaeologists and aerial spotting of human activity in places normally obscured by water tideline or surface vegetation. Here are examples of crop marks in the fields around Wales:


Cropmarks 2018 (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales)
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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

anthro eye in the private sector - seeing what people say & do

The power of empirical, fieldwork-based observation and participant-observation has been recognized in companies big and small, USA and other countries' businesses.
This June 2018 radio story features a conversation with future anthropologists seeking possible careers away from campus settings. The time mark for the Anthropology segment is 4:13 to 7:01

~~from Marketplace featuring Rebekah Park (ReD) and Elizabeth Briody (Cultural Keys).
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/06262018-us-edition
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Sunday, June 10, 2018

ancient role of grandmothering - radio story, June 2018

Babysitters, tuber-diggers: Studies show the rise of grandmas helped babies thrive — and evolve

For decades, a "man the hunter" theory of early humans prevailed, with the image of societies and interactions revolving around bagging big game. But new research suggests that women likely brought home a lot more food. When grandmothers were added to the mix, babies ate better and may have developed better social skills to manage their multiple caregivers.

"Human children are adapted for cooperation … in ways that apes aren't," says a psychologist.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2018

language, identity, existential environment

Perils of speaking (and speaking about) Tibetan language and society; whether linguistic fluency, social proficiency, or cultural literacy,

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Friday, May 11, 2018

what happens when country shifts print from Cyrillic to Latin-based alphabet

Kazakhstan's commitment to change, following the 1928 example of Turkey's own shift from Arabic script to Latin-based alphabet.

www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180424-the-cost-of-changing-an-entire-countrys-alphabet

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Thursday, February 15, 2018

thinking like an anthropologist - why? how?

Early February release of "How to Think like an Anthropologists" by Matthew Engelke.

Radio segment discussion by Barbara J. King, http://wuwm.com/post/how-think-anthropologist-and-why-you-should-want


and screenshot attached from eBook page with cover and blurb.

Thanks to author Engelke for bringing anthro to wider and wider audiences!

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Wednesday, January 3, 2018

migrating from NE Asia to North America - news story

Two infant remains from the last Ice Age excavated in Alaska; DNA patterns suggest many Asia linkages and various branches sometime after settling in N. America, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/03/575326694/ancient-human-remains-document-migration-from-asia-to-america

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Wednesday, September 6, 2017

annual whale hunt - contrasting documentary viewpoints

Japan Times (7 Sept 2017) gives a good overview of "Whale of a Tale," the newly released story with builds in local villagers point of view for the annual killing in the Taiji cove that was forcefully presented by the lenses of "The Cove." Excerpt of online news article follows, with URL to full article and movie URL.

    The anthropological foundational ideas of point of view and context are well illustrated by both documentaries.

EXCERPT
..."Quite simply, I was fascinated by the controversy," Sasaki tells The Japan Times, "but I was also pained by what I felt was a very one-sided way of viewing things.
     "'The Cove' showed us what the Taiji fishermen were doing to dolphins in a way that made any counter-arguments difficult if not impossible. As a filmmaker based in the United States, I knew that using hidden cameras and bypassing authority is a very effective way to make a documentary, but I wouldn't call that journalism. And there were a lot of misleading passages and untruthful depictions in that film.
     "And as a Japanese I could understand how the people of Taiji felt betrayed and outraged. Their response was to try and cover things up, or put up a wall of silence and hope the foreigners would go away. Well, the foreigners were never going away. Unless the Taiji locals spoke up about their side of the story, things were going to get worse."
     Sasaki dedicated six years to meticulous research and interview and says she now feels like something of an expert on cetaceans, the scientific classification for sea mammals.
     Taiji has gotten a little wiser, too. It has gradually opened itself up to overseas media and protesters that routinely visit the town. In fact, all the attention has given the local economy a bit of a boost — what could be more appropriate for the digital age than "outrage tourism"? Also, last month Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen visited the town of Klaksvik in the Faroe Islands with hopes of forging a sister city relationship. Fishermen there share the same practices and methods of hunting.

google map link
flickr, photos search
movie page, www.okujirasama.com 

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Thursday, June 22, 2017

film - So Long Asleep: bringing some of the 1940s forced laborers' mortal remains back to Korea

---[Pr. David Plath writes, 6/2017] 

So Long Asleep (60 minutes) follows an international team of East Asian volunteers as they excavate, preserve and repatriate the remains of Korean men who died doing slave labor in Hokkaido during the Asia-Pacific War. On the 70th anniversary of the end of the war we travel with them as they carry 115 sets of remains on a pilgrimage across Japan and over to Korea for reinterment in the Seoul Municipal Cemetery. Using a dark past to shape a brighter shared future the project offers an upbeat model for remembrance and reconciliation that could be adapted widely.
     The film and the repatriation project are featured in a 4-page special segment of the Spring 2017 issue of Education About Asia.
     See the DER website to view a trailer. Dialogue is in English, Korean and Japanese; in the DER edition the dialogue carries English subtitles. Separately, project participants have prepared editions with subtitles in Korean and in Japanese. For the Korean version, contact Professor Byung-Ho Chung (bhc0606at gmail) and for Japanese contact Professor Song Ki-Chan (kichans at hotmail).


An extended essay by Pr. Chung about the project appears in Asia-Pacific Journal; Japan Focus online magazine, as well, http://apjjf.org/2017/12/Chung.html



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Tuesday, March 21, 2017

nanotechnology to trace antiquities

Story about microscopic particles suspended in water and applied to cultural relics that attract smugglers and buyers.
Maybe just the news of this fingerprint tracking feature will dampen the interest of smugglers; or they will will use an expendable person to take the risk?
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/21/520922468/archaeologists-in-syria-use-data-water-to-confound-antiquities-smugglers


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Friday, February 17, 2017

Sonic Japan - audio recordings around the society

Sound recordings bring listeners up close to the immediacy of the context and events at hand. The Sonic Japan project has collected a variety of settings to let you explore the many cultural places around the society and language of the Japanese islands. Thanks to the initiative of colleagues in Australia, Japan, and the USA, this project has taken full form. Details of method, funding, contributors and links to follow via Twitter, Facebook, or the collection itself at Soundcloud can be found at http://sonicjapan.clab.org.au/about and this website also groups the recordings to browse by map, by places list, and by cultural theme. The soundcloud address is https://soundcloud.com/sonicjapan/
soundcloud.com
Sonic Japan is a collection of sound recordings made in Japan that enables listeners to traverse an array of themes pertaining to everyday life through a ...

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Tuesday, February 7, 2017

anthropology in 10 minutes or less (Youtube channel)

https://www.patreon.com/Anthropologyin10orLess

blurb: 

Anthropology in 10 or Less: Your Basement Based Source for Anthropological Inquiry

My name is Michael Kilman and I am an anthropologist. I lecture at several universities and last year, after searching YouTube for Anthropology Videos, I realized that someone needed to make them. As a result, as of January of 2017 I launched a new YouTube Series called Anthropology in 10 or Less. 

This show will explore the four fields of Anthropology, which include: Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistic Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology. Each episode will focus on a specific topic within these four fields and cover the topic in less then 10 minutes, making Anthropology more accessible to the general public and as a teaching tool, or study tool for students.  
www.patreon.com
Follow Michael Kilman on Patreon: Read posts by Michael Kilman on the world's largest platform enabling a new generation of creators and artists to live out their passions!


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Friday, January 13, 2017

accents on website, finding yourself

It seems like everyone else has an accent, but from their point of you it is you yourself who sounds *not from around here." The project described here lets users hover across the many languages there.
article source credit, http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-interactive-map-hear-accents-around-world/

=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=
There are many websites that exist just to stoke your curiosity. Localingual is one of them.

Land on the website and a colorful world map takes up your screen. There is no mention of what exactly this map is for, but let your mouse travel around the map and ratchet up your speakers. Travel to any country in the world and listen to the unique accents of that country!

Localingual

The website came from the mind of a world traveler. David Ding is a former Microsoft engineer fascinated by dialects and languages. His backpacking trips allow him to experience both. So he took this interest and started the site as an encyclopedia for languages:

My dream for this site is for it to become the Wikipedia of languages and dialects spoken around the world.

...[truncated]

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Thursday, October 6, 2016

maps showing USA pronunciation boundaries

These 22 slides show mapped representations of various diagnostic words like "law-yer" versus "loyer" for an attorney-as-law, for example.
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Friday, September 23, 2016

putting archaeology online - "virtual tudors"

The high value ship, The Mary Rose, has formed an online source for getting to know the  period and place from which it comes.

[excerpt]

A skull, the team add, can offer a number of insights. "You can estimate the sex of an individual, you can estimate the ancestry of an individual and you can certainly diagnose the pathology of an individual: things like scurvy and a number of other conditions," said Nick Owen, a sport and exercise biomechanist also from Swansea University.


At the heart of the project is a technique known as photogrammetry. For each of the skulls, around 120 high resolution photographs were painstakingly taken from many different angles, with the in-focus sections digitally stitched together to produce the final, state-of-the-art, 3D models.



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Friday, July 29, 2016

death & dying - video, Australia

This short video impression of the old cemetery for the town of Ballart, Australia, in service 1840 - 1920s, is densely packed with cultural meanings.
In particular the use of space and material culture particular to the people, place and time can be seen on display.
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Sunday, May 29, 2016

language sources of swearing - Quebec's French

The Delightful Perversity of Québec's Catholic Swears - The Canadian province has expletives like no other.

[excerpt]     ...The sacres is the group of Catholic swears unique to Québec. There are many of them; the most popular are probably tabarnak (tabernacle), osti or hostie or estie (host, the bread used during communion), câlisse (chalice), ciboire (the container that holds the host), and sacrament (sacrament). These usually have some milder forms as well, slightly modified versions that lessen their blow. "For example, tabarnouche and tabarouette are non-vulgar versions of tabarnak, similar to 'shoot' and 'darn' in English," says Polesello.

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Monday, February 22, 2016

marking languages still vigorous today

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/international-mother-language-day-2016/
This year's day for Mother Languages.

On the other side of the human patrimony ledger is the erosion of spoken languages and environments/livelihoods they derive from; see these notes taken from K. David Harrison's book, When Languages Die, to get a taste of this subject.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

time culture - attitudes in cultural landscapes

excerpt from article about regulating and calculating time in ways different to broadcast news media and everyday consumer worlds, 

...within Arizona, which recognizes Mountain Standard Time year-round, the case gets more confusing for anyone traveling through the Hopi and Navajo nations. Both nations are in the same area–in fact, the Navajo nation completely surrounds Hopi territory, and both nations have enclaves within the other.

This arrangement might not have much of an impact time-wise, except that the Navajo nation uses daylight savings time, while the Hopi nation, along with the rest of Arizona, does not. Essentially, it'd be possible to drive through each outlying city and change time zones five times, all within two hours.


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Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Tribal Lands - map project for North America

This same idea would work well among all indigenous peoples displaced, disoriented, or distopic these past 500 years since global flows of people, ideas, money, material culture, diseases and species got started:

The 9 minute backstory of how the Tribal Nations Maps came to be,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0coKPtbP3is, Aaron Carapella's project to chart the placenames and locations of the people living in North America before immigration started in the 15th century.
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