Topic description and stories

Folding ‘Trompe l’oeil’ fan, English, c.1750

How we fell in love with shopping

20 Mar 2015

An exhibition of ‘treasured possessions’ from the 15th to the 18th centuries reveals how we first fell in love with shopping, and takes us back to an...

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Traffic in Ulaanbaator

Mongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation

27 Feb 2015

In two separate books, anthropologists Dr Franck Billé and Dr Christopher Kaplonski look at the identity of Mongolia, a country that stands at a...

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Stourbridge Common

Stirbitch: mapping the unmappable

16 Jan 2015

Dr Michael Hrebeniak describes himself as inveterately curious about people and places. His fascination for a messy patch of Cambridge, best known...

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A chimpanzee uses a stone to crack a nut

Opportunity, and not necessity, is the mother of invention

12 Nov 2014

When food is scarce, tool use among non-human primates does not increase. This counterintuitive finding leads researchers to suggest that the driving...

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Cedric Price, in a portrait which appears in the exhibition.

Anti-building for the future: The world of Cedric Price

10 Nov 2014

The life and work of Cedric Price, the unconventional and visionary architect best-known for buildings which never saw the light of day, is being...

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Detail from the cover image of “The English and Their History”.

Stability, unity and nonchalance: What does it mean to be English?

06 Nov 2014

An epic new history of England offers some eye-catching conclusions on Englishness – suggesting, among other things, that a “remarkable” level of...

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Dancing at the opening of a stupa in Shatta village

Creating a shared resource for the endangered culture of the Kalmyks

21 Sep 2014

Almost four centuries ago, ancestors of the Kalmyk people trekked across central Asia to form a Buddhist nation on the edge of Europe. Today Kalmyk...

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Animal, vegetable, mineral: the making of Buddhist texts

12 Jul 2014

The wide-ranging objects on display at Buddha’s Word, an exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, show how Tibetan book makers used...

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Unfolding the untold stories of an object d’art

02 Jun 2014

Art historian Dr Meredith Hale reveals that a 17th-century screen, commissioned by the Viceroy of Mexico for a palace designed to impress visitors...

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From athletes to couch potatoes: humans through 6,000 years of farming

08 Apr 2014

Research into lower limb bones shows that our early farming ancestors in Central Europe became less active as their tasks diversified and technology...

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Delegation from Tagai State College in front of the Torres Strait display at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Museum embarks on cultural exchange

25 Nov 2013

From 11 – 14 November 2013 the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, welcomed five students from the Torres Strait Islands. The...

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The importance of university museums

22 Nov 2013

University of Cambridge museums are among those highlighted as examples of best practice in a new report focusing on the outstanding contributions...

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