Articles about 'anthropology'

The University’s Department of Social Anthropology studies how people live: what they make, do, think and the organisation of their relationships, societies and cultures. Photography is a core part of that research. For social anthropologists, this imagery is not just part of the story, but a source of insight into who people are.

Living for ten months with Q’eqchi’ weavers in the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala, PhD student Callie Vandewiele watched and listened as the women crafted their intricate picb’'l textiles. Her unconventional upbringing helped her to let go of the questions she’d originally set out to answer and follow her research, wherever it took her.

Hunter-gatherers in the Philippines who convert to farming work around ten hours a week longer than their forager neighbours, a new study suggests, complicating the idea that agriculture represents progress. The research also shows that the adoption of agriculture impacts most on the lives of women.

A group of UK and Peruvian researchers have carried out the first detailed study of how rural communities interact with peatlands in the Peruvian Amazon, a landscape that is one of the world’s largest stores of carbon.

Through sound and photography, Cambridge researcher Dr Elizabeth Turk shares her experiences of talking to shamanic healers in Mongolia. Over the past eight years, the social anthropologist has been exploring the increased popularity of nature-based remedies and ‘alternative’ medicine in the wake of the region's seismic politico-economic shifts of recent decades.

Three 11,500-year-old deer skull headdresses – excavated from a world-renowned archaeological site in Yorkshire – will go on display, one for the first time, at Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) from today.

Things structure our lives. They enrich us, embellish us and express our hopes and fears. Here, to introduce a month-long focus on research on material culture, four academics from different disciplines explain why understanding how we interact with our material world can reveal unparalleled insights into what it is to be human.

Every object in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology tells not just one but many stories. The Museum’s collections chronicle two million years of human history, revealing the diversity of human life over millennia and the ongoing dynamism of world cultures in the present. Many individual artefacts reflect histories and cultures that are contested.

Hundreds of objects which tell the story of 100 million of India’s most marginalised citizens – its Indigenous and Adivasi people – are to go on display for the first time in a ground-breaking exhibition at Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) from today.