Southern Africa is in the news: South Africa’s recent elections have seen the ruling African National Congress lose its majority in parliament for the first time since apartheid ended in 1994, producing a much more volatile political scene, while Zimbabwe confronts ongoing economic turmoil, and an armed insurgency continues in the far north of Mozambique. […]
Read MoreIf you have been following the news in the past months, you may have read that Democrats in the United States reported that the White House under Donald Trump failed to report gifts received by the former president from foreign nations. Moreover, other gifts went missing. Similar stories have also made the news in Brazil. […]
Read MoreI wrote Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future, to provide students with a complete and easily understandable overview of the most important stages of human anatomical, behavioral and cultural evolution. Understanding the origin story of humanity offers us a new perspective on the present-day challenges facing our species, and I aim with […]
Read MoreThe question of where numbers come from is perhaps one of the last great mysteries of our time. Today, numbers are seemingly everywhere, and yet, they are nowhere to be found in nature. Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato thought that numbers were universals, eternal concepts that were in a sense real, albeit differing substantially in […]
Read MoreWhat does an anthropology of the senses entail? What part do the senses play in everyday life in Asia across a variety of historical and contemporary contexts – stretching from the pre- to post-colonial and including the transnational? How are the senses connected to a range of everyday life domains that comprise religion, morality, foodways, […]
Read MoreThe return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2021 shed a renewed spotlight on the fate of the country’s ethno-religious minorities. In September and October of 2021, the two remaining Jews living in Afghanistan left Kabul. By January 2023, all but a handful of Sikhs and Hindus living in the country had […]
Read MoreToday’s media increasingly serves us clickbait climate histories. Headlines prompt us to read how the city-states of the Maya collapsed because of drought, how massive empires like that of the Neo-Assyrians or Akkadians buckled from the pressures of aridity and famines, or why Genghis Khan’s armies were successful due to abundant rains across Mongolia. Such […]
Read MoreThis book, initially published in French as ‘L’art égéen’ (two volumes, Paris 2008-2014), provides a history of the artistic output accompanying the development of Aegean civilisations, from the Neolithic (c.7000 BC) to the end of the Bronze Age (c.1050/1000 BC). During this long period, the Aegean world sees a remarkable development of artistic creations and […]
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