This article argues that a population of relatively affluent retired people in a small Irish town have employed the possibilities of grandparenting to resolve many of the tensions of contemporary kinship. This includes the tension between the obligations of prescriptive relationships as against the voluntarism of friendship. This is considered against a background shift in kinship studies towards a

This article uses reflections on chronopolitical praxis during the period 2006-19 in Bolivia in order to make a more general contribution to the anthropology of time and temporalities. The article proposes the theoretical concept of ‘timerendering’ in order to examine the ways in which time emerged as a pervasive register that mediated and also deepened political, social, and ethnic conflict in Bolivia

Current Anthropology, Volume 63, Issue 3, June 2022.

Current Anthropology, Volume 63, Issue 3, June 2022.

The article examines the process of production and change of place names based on data collected in 2017 among the Okhotsk Ewenki, the easternmost Indigenous community in Siberia, Russia. Through ethnographic and semiotic analysis, we show that Ewenki place names are not simply reproduced, but rather generated and transformed through empathic contact and engagement within a semiotic circle of shared

The non-existence of corporate lineages among Indigenous peoples in lowland South America has been widely accepted since the 1970s. There has, however, yet to be adequate resolution of the question of what are the social formations formerly called ‘lineages’. In this article, I re-examine previous characterizations of A'uwẽ (Xavante) social organization to propose that what were identified as lineages

While there is a growing anthropological interest in professionals as experts and powerful actors, there is little ethnographic inquiry into invocations of professionalism by less privileged communities. This article examines how professionalism in Lebanon was increasingly appropriated by low-income communities in ways not referring to any particular profession or occupational domain. As a locally

Inspired by the fertility and climate change-mitigation properties of the so-called Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs), soil science has devised a technoscientific replica, a soil amendment known as biochar, intended to improve agricultural sustainability and carbon storage in the biosphere. Drawing on fieldwork with Afroindigenous horticulturalists, this article shows, however, that the activation of these

Dating to the pre-Hispanic era, carved stone sculptures of terraced landforms – maquetas – found in the south-central Andes evoke topographic models. The purpose of these maquetas has eluded archaeologists as the lithic landscapes do not correspond precisely to the terrain and could not have served as maps. By centring irrigation as a fundamental concern among communities of the semi-arid western cordillera

Manifestation is a spiritual practice with material gains. It is a way for those involved with spirituality in Sedona, Arizona, to make money as required while maintaining a level of consonance between their economic life and spiritual path. Analysing the entwinement of economics and religion in everyday life, this article contributes to literature on spiritual economies and, more broadly, to the anthropology

This paper deals with the application of deposition analysis to an unusual type of features in the Late Bronze Age settlements in Central Europe. These are long narrow trenches (referred to as ‘long pits’ in this text) with characteristic standard form and alignment, as well as find contents, including high amounts of secondary-burned pottery fragments. In the context of prehistoric research, these

Horses have had a singular impact on human societies. Beyond increasing interconnectivity and revolutionizing warfare, reconfigurations of human-horse relationships coincide with changes in sociopolitical formations. How this occurs is less well understood. This article proposes that relationships of equestrianism transform people and horses reciprocally, generating new possibilities for both species

This article shows that landed property can be an exercise of state sovereignty in micro. I argue that property tightly relates to statehood and that the concept of ‘community’ offers us a lens with which to investigate that relation. Property's ‘communal’ character in Cyprus often transcends individual rights to ownership. A house belongs not to an individual, but to persons in their capacity as members

Prominent places were powerful places. The persistence and stability of prominent places typically depends upon the prioritisation of their physical and visual attributes. Yet if we are interested in the expression of prominence and power, then we should take account of the potential ways that places reached acoustically into the landscape. Acoustics complement visibility since sound like sight helps

The patio, referring to the space outside the roofed houses but inside the fence wrapping around a property and often holding a handful of homes, is loosely defined in rural Dominican daily life. In the borderlands of the Dominican Republic, the patio serves as both a space for cultivating care between family and friends and a safe haven from the state. Spaces of resistance, as this photo essay illustrates

In this photographic essay, I explore the aesthetics and experiences of displacement among peasants in rural northern Sudan who were flooded out of their homes along the Nile during the 2003–2009 Merowe Dam construction project. The radically changing environment shaped people’s perception of displacement as they attempted to stay and revive life in their homeland on the shores of the expanding reservoir

Editor Brandon D. Lundy, Kennesaw State University

This special issue presents a collection of ethnographic and archaeological articles that consider how humans inscribe landscapes with diverse forms of value. From natural resources to real estate markets, from cherished homelands to foreign speculative investment, the way we approach landscapes offers insights into value systems as they map onto and emerge from biophysical terrains. We argue that

Adolescence is a stage of development unique to the human life course, during which key social, physical, and cognitive milestones are reached. Nonetheless, both the experience of adolescence and the role(s) of adolescents in the past have received little scholarly attention. Here we combine a broad interpretative framework for adolescence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers with direct bioarchaeological

The relationship between residence, gender and mobility is central to the study of early social complexity. And yet, until recently, it was deemed as archaeologically intractable. The recent combination of strontium data and genomics with other methods has opened up entirely new possibilities for the archaeological study of human mobility, but these advances are not without problems. Theoretical framing

In this paper, I am concerned with the concept of voice and human expressivity, in particular in the case of someone living a life as a host for spirits. Drawing on fieldwork in Zanzibar’s disadvantaged neighborhoods, I describe a case of spirit possession in the domestic sphere in which one’s body becomes the “seat” from where other voices can be heard. My interest lies in the expressive texture of

This report extrapolates from prior research to propose a preliminary framework for approaching extreme groundwater depletion through anthropological analysis of what it terms aquifer aporias—the ecological manifestations of epistemic gaps about aquifer loss. Informed by two years of ethnographic research on aquifer depletion on the High Plains, the essay identifies how aporetic relationships among

In Denktagebuch (Thought diary, 1950-73), Hannah Arendt wrote that acts which cannot be forgiven are beyond punishment and hence cannot be reconciled to. In this essay, I draw from Arendt to further theorize and extend the concept of irreconciliation. I draw together ethnographic material, historical material, documents, media reports, and reviews during this era of irreconcilability which includes

The urbanization of Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BCE led to unprecedented social, economic, and political changes. Tell Brak, located in the Syrian Khabur basin, is one of the best-known early urban sites from this period. Surveys suggest that urban growth at Tell Brak resulted from peripheral expansion driven by the migration of several distinct groups; however, it is not known whether these

González-Ruibal evocatively described a “time of agony” for contemporary ruins between their abandonment, destruction, or incorporation into some formalized heritage regime. Agonal time often escapes recognition as socially meaningful, when in reality it can be a time of deregulated social activity as well as degradation within and beyond the full control of human counterparts. This figuration of the

Professional boxing offers hope of vast wealth and global mobility for aspiring athletes in Accra, hopes bolstered by the understanding that Ghanaians are particularly suited to boxing's attrition. However, when boxers become active in the global industry, they encounter power relations which locate them as cheap, subordinate labour, and stymie their championship hopes. As boxers build lives through

Debates over reconciliation, atonement, forgiveness, and forgetting involve political and personal elements, with substantial investments and commitments. I contrast two perspectives: one stresses unconditional forgiveness independent of atonement; the other reflects on the importance of moral responsibility for the formation of the person. Being held accountable, for Ricoeur, matters for the development

Current Anthropology, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 234-238, April 2022.

Current Anthropology, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 232-234, April 2022.

Current Anthropology, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 232-232, April 2022.

Current Anthropology, Volume 63, Issue 2, April 2022.

Current Anthropology, Volume 63, Issue 2, April 2022.

The study of divination remains of central relevance to anthropology for what it reveals about the relationship between intuitive and reflective cognition. What marks divination out is the reflective elaboration of the role granted to intuitive associations in arriving at verdicts, which produces two distinct forms of divinatory interpretation. Generative interpretation, exemplified by Cuban Ifá, relies

Most post-conflict reconciliatory exercises make it incumbent upon survivors to forgive, and seek closure as a demonstration of ‘moving on’. Various anthropologists have criticized reconciliation and related forms of ‘alternative justice’ extensively but within the framework of maintaining social bonds and the rule of law. In this introduction, I reflect critically on the interdisciplinary scholarship

This essay investigates transnational human rights activist networks seeking justice for war crimes committed during the Bangladesh War of 1971, especially in light of the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Focusing on activists in London, it demonstrates the need to engage with transitional justice initiatives discursively and ethnographically in order to avoid losing sight of the

In Argentina, irreconciliation is created through everyday practices of vigilance against closure and collective struggles against impunity. In this essay, I show how over several decades since the fall of the dictatorial regime (1976-83), human rights activists and laypeople have devised ways to keep the past alive while attending to injustices through embodied collective engagements with the country's

Contemporary justice-making processes often focus on reconciliation or legal retribution, but not on the complexity of victimhood beyond individual subjectivity or refusals of state propositions for social repair. In Colombia, where drug cartels and state-sponsored violence had terrorized the population for over fifty years, it was not forgiveness and acceptance that punctuated the turn of the twenty-first

This essay examines the political uses of photography in the protests of the Tamil families of the disappeared in northern Sri Lanka. Enforced disappearances have long featured as an instrument of state terror. Their lingering effects have been noted as a significant challenge to transitional justice processes in the aftermath of the island's civil war. By examining how protesters make their political

Militarized borders have increased rapidly in the twenty-first century and come to be a global phenomenon. The high border wall built by the United States at its border with Mexico and the electrified fencing at the Hungarian border with Serbia are examples of the infrastructurally advanced Euro-American borders that have become icons of this phenomenon. Yet this tells only one part of the story of

The influence of institutional mandates on knowledge can be seen particularly clearly in the preferences and absences of truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) proceedings. A recent trend in TRCs involves a shift away from the exercise of judicial powers and the quest for justice and towards more concern with affirming the experience of victims or ‘Survivors’. Canada's TRC on Indian Residential

As youth from the Levantine diasporas resettle in what is nominally their homeland, they compose narratives of home at the intersection of finding their place and the constant movement of their existence. Their homemaking efforts delineate places of belonging where these youth position themselves in a double relative location: the intersubjective (in relation to others) and the subjective (in relation

This paper investigates the ways in which the nationalist narrative of the statist archaeology in Iran has contributed to the dominant nationalist discourse in systematic attempts to erase any evidence of the existence of a “non-Aryan” past in the Iranian plateau. Sponsored by the state, ethnoracial archaeological studies in Iran have functioned as a powerful instrument for constructing a desired past

Both music and love are conspicuously absent from the public soundscapes of Hargeysa, Somaliland. But behind closed doors, people listen to love songs. In doing so, these lonely love sufferers and love hopefuls make sense of various challenges. Using accounts from a cross section of Somalilanders, I show that these solitary listening practices open into uniquely intimate and transformative opportunities

Cattle traction was a technological innovation that made a significant impact on production, individual and household wealth, and social organisation. Despite ongoing debates regarding the origins and extent of the harnessing of cattle power among early agropastoral societies, only a few studies have attempted at addressing this matter systematically. In Neolithic Çatalhöyük, several studies have explored

What games did the inhabitants of ancient southern Africa play to enrich their lives during the Iron Age (500–1900 CE)? We address this question by drawing from archaeological fingerprints of board games (tsoro/mufuvha) documented at farmer and forager sites in different parts of southern Africa. The typology of games and their spatial locations in the archaeology were compared with historical and

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered our associational life and relationship to public space, revealing deadly inequities in access to health care and other resources, particularly in communities of color. In Harlem and other areas of New York City that are experiencing neoliberal redevelopment, the response to the pandemic has also rearticulated public spaces, introducing new and diverse

Death—the image of the skeleton—has long been the symbol of a strong Mexican state. But, like most symbols, it has many faces. Nowhere is this more evident than in Oaxaca, where tourists flock to attend joyful Day of the Dead celebrations while the cult to La Santa Muerte, a sanctified death, is growing strong. Through the ethnographic lens of this image, I approach other representations of the slain

This article explores the shared histories of blood groups, racial conceptions, and linguistics in the late twentieth-century Portuguese colonial science of anthropobiology in Oceania. It follows the work of making “indigenous languages” that went along with the work of making “blood groups” in a late form of colonial anthropology. It focuses on the case of the Timor Anthropological Mission (Missão

For many years, scholars have sought to track and explain how objects come to have layered, contested, and evolving meanings over time. This article examines the potential contributions and limitations of a palimpsest theory of objects to help explain such meaning-making practices. A palimpsest is a tablet or parchment from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make space for another

This essay explores the everyday experience of time within the frame of captivity. Through a series of photographs jointly produced by the incarcerated men at Rapa Nui’s carceral facility—the so-called happiest prison in the world—and me, I describe how the quotidian constraints of a captured present are themselves eventful and how this can critically compromise one’s continuity in time. From the reflections

John Speth and Katherine Spielmann’s 1983 article “Energy Source, Protein Metabolism, and Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence Strategies” has provoked substantial research and debate during the past four decades. Their study has led to new insights concerning hunting and fishing, plant foraging and management, land tenure, and human health. In so doing, it has helped us challenge a number of orthodoxies in

Low, open, circular platforms were built in residential areas at sites across the Maya lowlands during the Preclassic period (c. 1000 BCE – 300 CE). These structures were probably used for ritual performances, such as dances. Here, we describe three examples excavated at Ceibal, Guatemala. We argue that round structures were used in supra-household rituals that created overlapping communities between

Abstract not available

Most archaeological research of Later Stone Age (LSA) herding in southern Africa focuses on origins, while the complex socio-economic motives have been largely unexplored. This paper investigates evidence for herd management strategies by incorporating ethnohistoric and existing faunal data. We used ternary plots to statistically compare theoretical kill-off patterns (meat, milk, social risk reduction)

In 1969, in the name of development modernity and Canadian unity, the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau undertook the most extensive land expropriation in the history of the country, to build the largest airport in the world, Mirabel. The Canadian government expropriated approximately twelve thousand people and ninety-seven thousand acres of land for the project. Mirabel was a dramatic failure,

The question whether Europe's Christian churches and monasteries are “religious” or “secular” distracts us from something far more significant: Europe's historical participation in systems of enslavement and expropriation. While these solid buildings seem to demand that we pay attention to them in their “density,” such a focus overlooks their role in reaffirming the boundaries and morality of the dominant

In this paper, a gender approach attempts to address social organization and its variability in the Linearbandkeramik (LBK). By comparing burial goods with the sex and age of the individuals, with data on origin, nutrition and health, and examining the sexual division of labor, we aim to determine the variability in social organization from 5500 to 4900 BCE in an extensive area that encompasses the