Category Archives: Archaeology

A Tale of Two Maps: Ancient DNA and Ancient Hominins

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Adam Van Arsdale

A while back Chris Stringer linked to a wonderful interactive map on twitter. Still being updated, a great resource by ⁦@nickyrozenblatt⁩ mapping published ancient genomes + sources https://t.co/WFCZRNOw8O — Chris Stringer (@ChrisStringer65) December 12, 2018 The map, put together by … Continue reading →

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What I am reading today (5/15/13)

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

Finishing up the semester’s grading and preparing to leave for a little bit of fieldwork, but here is what I am trying to read today: Let’s Abandon Significance Tests – Jim Wood (The Mermaid’s Tale) But now suppose we’ve learned … Continue reading →

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Biological Anthropology fieldwork experiences

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

I have linked previously to Kate Clancy’s discussion of sexual harassment and field work in anthropology. This is an important, though often unspoken, issue within anthropology. Particularly for those subfields that have group, field-site focused research, “the field” is a … Continue reading →

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It’s a scale, scale, scale, scale world (part 2)

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Following on my post from yesterday, I wanted to write a little more specifically about the significance of scale and our session at the AAAs. Paleoanthropological data are produced and address questions at different scales. Consider the following: Fossil – … Continue reading →

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Upcoming AAA meetings

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

I apologize for my blog silence of late. It has been a busy few weeks of writing. Later this week I am headed to the AAA meetings in San Francisco, however, and I will try to provide some updates on … Continue reading →

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Thought of the day: “Modern” human origins

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

The first class I took that really hooked me on paleoanthropology was an undergraduate seminar on Modern Human Origins. The class was wonderful. We read a huge amount of primary literature and for whatever reason, the class, although we were … Continue reading →

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Scales of time and space in prehistory

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Steven Kuhn, talking about the importance of matching scales of explanation with scales of evidence (2012), and citing ecologist Simon Levin (1992): Levin makes a parallel observation about ecological processes: “…if there are predictable patterns that may be observed in … Continue reading →

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Lineages, species and Michigan, part 2

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

I will have to follow up with my own comments later, but I wanted to direct you to Ken Weiss’s follow-up piece to his comments on the single-species hypothesis yesterday. I will make one brief observation, though. Ken writes: But … Continue reading →

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Lineages, species and Michigan

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

One of the posts that I have had in draft form for several months, waiting for the proper motivation and approach to finalize, is titled, “lineages and species in the fossil record.” This week, perhaps, the time and motivation has … Continue reading →

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Early Homo and the carnivore guild

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

One of the topics making the rounds today is the connection between Plio-Pleistocene hominins and their carnivorous contemporaries. Ann Gibbons gets the ball rolling by reporting on recent research by Lars Werdelin and colleagues on the apparent extinction of carnivores, … Continue reading →

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