Dear readers, either the blogs have been quiet this week or I’m missing some, which you can rectify by sending me links at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.
The most shocking, terrible news in anthropology this week was the Islamic State’s murder of archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad for refusing to reveal the location of artifacts from Palmyra that had been moved for safekeeping. Archaeologist Kristina Killgrove posted a tribute to him on her Forbes blog: Archaeologists Respond to the Murder of Khalel al-Asaad at Ancient Palmyra
An exhibit at the National Geographic Museum uses Indiana Jones as an entry point to dispel myths about archaeology… it even uses the arguably non-canonical fourth installment (#notmyindy) to explore alien astronaut pseudoscience. The Geek Anthropologist’s review: “It Belongs in a Museum”: Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology Review
The blog How to Anthropology isn’t advocating laziness in the post How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read; instead, it’s about how to keep up with our immense reading load and deal with imposter syndrome
Somatosphere tells the story of Kelly, a US soldier in Iraq who experienced what she felt to be a near brush with death (rather than a near brush with murdering an Iraqi civilian), to look at the “fog of war” as a morass of confusion structured by guidelines that both empasizes and removes individual responsibility: “He Didn’t Blow Us Up”: Routine Violence and Non-Event as Case
The Guardian reports on a salvage ethnographic project: Racing to Record Indigenous Languages Under Attack from “Onslaught of English”
I love hearing people talk about their career trajectories, so I appreciated this post on Anthropologizing, which profiles three researchers who use anthropological methods to let companies know what users need and want: Getting Into User Experience Research: 3 Senior Practitioners Share Their Stories
Are anthropologists crazy? This post on Ethnography.com looks at the craziness of anthropology as a field and the ways that it can make celebrities of groups like the Ju/’Hoansi through an exploration of the careers of ethnographers Gene and Mary Long: Ethnography as a Contact Sport: The Mla Bri and the Long Family of Phrae Thailand
When did Homo sapiens leave Africa and spread around the world? This Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog post radiates with vindication, as a new article suggests that the date of ~70,000 years ago needs to be revised: Rethinking the Dispersal of Homo Sapiens Out of Africa