What the viral TikTok “how often do you think about the Roman empire” did not ask was what people imagine when they think of the Roman world. When I ask my first-year students to jot down three instant associations with the Roman world, the top three unmistakably includes marble, emperors, and war. We are conditioned […]
Read MoreIn the last few decades, archaeology has undergone a technological revolution. From high-resolution LiDAR to advanced radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA analysis, our “toolbox” has never been more sophisticated. Yet, a fundamental question remains: despite these advancements, have we actually made progress in understanding the behavior of early humans? Our new book, [TRACES OF THE […]
Read More‘You have to understand the context’ is perhaps one of the most common intellectual reflexes of our time. Historians insist on historical context, literary critics on textual context, psychologists on environmental context. Across the humanities and social sciences, we’ve become thoroughly contextualist in our thinking. Yet we rarely pause to ask where this commitment came […]
Read MoreThe world is currently experiencing a period of intense convulsion, where the structures of race and white supremacy have moved to the very center of global cultural politics. In 2023, the police killing of Nahel Merzouk in France sparked weeks of protests that many viewed as a tipping point for Black and Brown populations relegated […]
Read MoreGeneral audiences are accustomed to imagining medieval culinary practices through those of the elites — in shows, films, and novels, where little attention is given to the habits of common people. Perhaps as a contrast to the material wealth of aristocrats, society tends to picture ordinary individuals from the Middle Ages as dirty and uncivilised, […]
Read MoreMy book, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Early American Linguistics, addresses an audience of interested scholars and potential readers with the following concentrations: My book may also be of interest to a broader audience wishing to learn about the intricacies of nineteenth-century comparative studies in linguistics, the social sciences, and other disciplines, foremost natural history. In […]
Read MoreSocial groups dominate public discourse. The news, social media, scientific reports, and everyday conversations all refer to groups of every kind: women, conservatives, Muslims, immigrants, Nigerians, lawyers, and a virtually endless list of others. In their own contexts, each of these categories makes sense. We know, roughly, whom each term describes. But when we stop […]
Read MoreNebulae are those star nurseries familiar through the fabulous Hubble images like the one above. Languages are also born – indeed every language is reborn, quite literally in the nursery. In my new book The Interaction Engine, just like the astronomers I turn the focus not onto language itself but onto the systems that gave […]
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