Anthropology

  1. Archaeology

    A child’s ornate necklace highlights ancient farmers’ social complexity

    The intricate necklace, reconstructed by researchers, was found on the remains of a child buried about 9,000 years ago in a Middle Eastern village.

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  2. Chemistry

    How Benjamin Franklin fought money counterfeiters

    Researchers are confirming some of the techniques that Benjamin Franklin and his associates used to help early American paper currency succeed.

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  3. Humans

    Lauren Schroeder looks beyond natural selection to rethink human evolution

    Paleoanthropologists studying the fossil record have long focused on natural selection, but other processes play a big role too.

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  4. Archaeology

    How Asia’s first nomadic empire broke the rules of imperial expansion

    New studies reveal clues to how mobile rulers assembled a multiethnic empire of herders known as the Xiongnu more than 2,000 years ago.

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  5. Archaeology

    Indigenous input revealed early hints of fiber making in the tropics

    To decipher marks on nearly 40,000-year-old stone tools and figure out what they were used for, researchers turned to the Philippines’ Pala’wan people.

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  6. Anthropology

    Fossil marks suggest hominids butchered one another around 1.45 million years ago

    Researchers disagree whether new evidence of stone tool marks on a hominid leg bone reflects ancient cannibalism or perhaps some other, undetected behavior.

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  7. Anthropology

    These ancient flutes may have been used to lure falcons

    Seven bird-bone flutes unearthed from a site in northern Israel are about 12,000 years old and may have been used as bird calls.

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  8. Anthropology

    Homo naledi may have dug cave graves and carved marks into cave walls

    Proposed discoveries of humanlike activities by these ancient, small-brained hominids have elicited skepticism from some researchers.

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  9. Chemistry

    19th century painters may have primed their canvases with beer-brewing leftovers

    Several paintings from the Danish Golden Age contain remnants of brewer’s yeast, barley and other grains commonly used to brew beer.

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  10. Science & Society

    Anténor Firmin challenged anthropology’s racist roots 150 years ago

    In The Equality of the Human Races, Haitian scholar Anténor Firmin showed that science did not support division among the races.

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  11. Archaeology

    A prehistoric method for tailoring clothes may be written in bone

    A punctured bone fragment was probably a leatherwork punch board. Perforated leather sewn together may have been seams in clothing.

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  12. Science & Society

    The Smithsonian’s ‘Lights Out’ inspires visitors to save the fading night sky

    The exhibition examines how light pollution harms astronomy, ecosystems and human cultures. But it also offers hope.

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