an ordinary ethnography

2013-06-10 62,702 notes

youmightfindyourself:

What happens when you pay two monkeys unequally?

this video is more worth it than you can imagine

(via humanisticscience)

Source: youmightfindyourself

205 notes

perscientiamlibertas:

New research links gradual greening of arid areas like Australia’s outback to increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Image: Bruce Doran

Elevated Carbon Dioxide Making Arid Regions Greener

Scientists have long suspected that a flourishing of green foliage around the globe, observed since the early 1980s in satellite data, springs at least in part from the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Now, a study of arid regions around the globe finds that a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” has, indeed, caused a gradual greening from 1982 to 2010.

Focusing on the southwestern corner of North America, Australia’s outback, the Middle East, and some parts of Africa, Randall Donohue of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia and his colleagues developed and applied a mathematical model to predict the extent of the carbon-dioxide (CO₂) fertilization effect. They then tested this prediction by studying satellite imagery and teasing out the influence of carbon dioxide on greening from other factors such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes.

The team’s model predicted that foliage would increase by some 5 to 10 percent given the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration during the study period. The satellite data agreed, showing an 11 percent increase in foliage after adjusting the data for precipitation, yielding “strong support for our hypothesis,” the team reports.

“Lots of papers have shown an average increase in vegetation across the globe, and there is a lot of speculation about what’s causing that,” said Donohue of CSIRO’s Land and Water research division, who is lead author of the new study. “Up until this point, they’ve linked the greening to fairly obvious climatic variables, such as a rise in temperature where it is normally cold or a rise in rainfall where it is normally dry. Lots of those papers speculated about the CO₂ effect, but it has been very difficult to prove.”

He and his colleagues present their findings in an article that has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

The team looked for signs of CO₂ fertilization in arid areas, Donohue said, because “satellites are very good at detecting changes in total leaf cover, and it is in warm, dry environments that the CO₂ effect is expected to most influence leaf cover.” Leaf cover is the clue, he added, because “a leaf can extract more carbon from the air during photosynthesis, or lose less water to the air during photosynthesis, or both, due to elevated CO₂.” That is the CO₂ fertilization effect.

But leaf cover in warm, wet places like tropical rainforests is already about as extensive as it can get and is unlikely to increase with higher CO₂ concentrations. In warm, dry places, on the other hand, leaf cover is less complete, so plants there will make more leaves if they have enough water to do so. “If elevated CO₂ causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves, and this should be measurable from satellite,” Donohue explained.

To tease out the actual CO₂ fertilization effect from other environmental factors in these regions, the researchers first averaged the greenness of each location across 3-year periods to account for changes in soil wetness and then grouped that greenness data from the different locations according to their amounts of precipitation. The team then identified the maximum amount of foliage each group could attain for a given precipitation, and tracked variations in maximum foliage over the course of 20 years. This allowed the scientists to remove the influence of precipitation and other climatic variations and recognize the long-term greening trend.

In addition to greening dry regions, the CO₂ fertilization effect could switch the types of vegetation that dominate in those regions. “Trees are re-invading grass lands, and this could quite possibly be related to the CO₂ effect,” Donohue said. “Long lived woody plants are deep rooted and are likely to benefit more than grasses from an increase in CO₂.”

“The effect of higher carbon dioxide levels on plant function is an important process that needs greater consideration,” said Donohue. “Even if nothing else in the climate changes as global CO₂ levels rise, we will still see significant environmental changes because of the CO₂ fertilization effect.”

This study was funded by CSIRO’s Sustainable Agriculture Flagship, Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, the Australian Research Council and Land & Water Australia.

Source

(via scinerds)

Source: sciencedaily.com

2013-06-05 14 notes

quatemases:

Parade Helmet à l’antique, French, ca. 1620-1630

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Source: quatemases

2013-06-03 247 notes

rhamphotheca:

How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked

We are not biologically identical to our Paleolithic predecessors, nor do we have access to the foods they ate. And deducing dietary guidelines from modern foraging societies is difficult because they vary so much by geography, season and opportunity.

by Ferris Jabr

Proponents of the Paleo diet follow a nutritional plan based on the eating habits of our ancestors in the Paleolithic period, between 2.5 million and 10,000 years ago. Before agriculture and industry, humans presumably lived as hunter–gatherers: picking berry after berry off of bushes; digging up tumescent tubers; chasing mammals to the point of exhaustion; scavenging meat, fat and organs from animals that larger predators had killed; and eventually learning to fish with lines and hooks and hunt with spears, nets, bows and arrows.

Most Paleo dieters of today do none of this, with the exception of occasional hunting trips or a little urban foraging. Instead, their diet is largely defined by what they do not do…

(read more: Scientific American)

(images: illustration by Marissa Fessenden, graphic by Jen Christiansen)

(via jangojips)

Source: rhamphotheca

2013-05-30 849 notes

ancientpeoples:

Terracotta Vase in the Form of a Lobster Claw

ca. 460 BC

Greek, Classical

Because so many aspects of Greek life depended on the sea, a vase in the shape of a lobster claw is not surprising. It is, however, exceptional and may be a variant of the askos—a bag-shaped oil container provided with a vertical mouth and strap handle. The Dionysiac iconography of the lobster claw suggests that it was a novelty item used at symposia (drinking parties).

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

(via zomganthro)

Source: ancientpeoples

2013-05-11 26 notes

We are, in sum, incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture.

— Clifford Geertz - The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man. (1966)

(via vinciboy)

Source: anthmusings

2013-04-28 2 notes

Here is Today

A look at time…

2013-04-25 60 notes

Archaeological News: Bureaucracy, Meat Production Crucial To Building Egypt's Pyramids

archaeologicalnews:

(ISNS) — Of the Seven Wonders of the World only one remains standing: the 4,500-year-old pyramids of Giza in Egypt. How an ancient civilization organized the people, the supplies and the infrastructure to put up something that huge and long-lasting remains mostly a mystery and the topic of…

Source: archaeologicalnews

2013-04-18 249 notes

centuriespast:

Dance headdress representing an eagle and its chicks

Tsimshian

British Columbia

circa 1875

National Museum of the American Indian

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Source: centuriespast

2013-04-16 464 notes

theolduvaigorge:

Inuit carved figures (20th century):

Top: Caribou; antler (Canada, Nunavut, Pelly Bay; 1954)

Second row: Seagull with fish, Inuki; ivory (Canada, Baffin Island, Nunavut; ca. 1951)

Third row left: Seal ; ivory (United States, Alaska; 20th century)

Third row right: Seal; Walrus ivory (Canada, Baffin Island, Nunavut; 18th-19th century)

Fourth row: Seal; Caribou antler and ink (Canada, Baffin Island, Nunavut; ca. 1952)

Fifth row left: Walrus, Annawakalook; ivory and ink (Canada, Baffin Island, Nunavut; ca. 1950)

Fifth row right: Wolf; antler (Canada, Nunavut, Pelly Bay; 1954)

Bottom: Bear, Marion Wenaka; ivory (United States, Alaska; 20th century)

See also:

Auger, E.E. 2004. The Way of Inuit Art: Aesthetics and History in and Beyond the Arctic. MacFardland Press.

Crandall, R.C. 1999. Inuit Art: A History. MacFarland Press.

Graburn, N.H.H. 1987. “Inuit Art and the Expression of Eskimo Identity,” American Review of Canadian Studies 17(1).

Graburn, N.H.H. 2004. “Authentic Inuit Art Creation and Exclusion in the Canadian North,” Journal of Material Culture 9(2):141-159.

Graburn, N. 2004. “Inuksuk: Icon of the Inuit of Nunavut,” Art et Représentation 28(1):69-82.

Philips, R.B and Steiner, C.B.1999. Unpacking Culture - Art and Commodity in colonial and Postcolonial Worlds. University of California Press.

Pupchek, L.S. 2001. “True North: Inuit Art and the Canadian Imagination,” American Review of Canadian Studies 31(1-2):191-208.

Ray, D.J. 1996. A Legacy of Arctic Art. University of Washington Press.

(Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).

(via ljspillowbook)

Source: theolduvaigorge

2013-04-15 131 notes

BEL ESPRIT: Team reports on abuse of students doing anthropological fieldwork

bellaesprita:

University of Illinois anthropology professor Kathryn Clancy is one of four researchers to report on the psychological, physical and sexual abuse of students during field studies at remote sites in the field of biological anthropology. The team presents its findings at the 2013 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

College athletes are not the only ones who sometimes suffer at the hands of higher ups. A new report brings to light a more hidden and pernicious problem – the psychological, physical and sexual abuse of students in the field of biological anthropology working in field studies far from home.

The report is based on an online survey and telephone interviews that, in a period of less than two months, elicited accounts of abuse from dozens of women and men working in the field of biological anthropology.

This is a first attempt to systematically document the harassment, abuse or assaults young researchers sometimes face in the course of doing anthropological fieldwork at remote sites, said University of Illinois anthropology professor Kathryn Clancy, one of four researchers to present the new findings at the 2013 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology.

Most students and postdoctoral researchers consider field research a stepping stone to a better career, Clancy said.

“This is something that most biological anthropologists, cultural anthropologists and archeologists see as a fairly necessary experience,” she said. “Some people can do an entirely lab-based project or a computer modeling project or a local project, but most of us need to go into the field.”

The team recruited subjects through outreach on social media and websites devoted to researchers in biological anthropology. They heard from 122 men and women, more than half of whom had experienced or witnessed sexual harassment, physical abuse or sexual assault at the hands of site managers, project directors or peers living and working at field research sites. The researchers defined sexual assault as “any kind of inappropriate physical contact, unwanted physical touching, assault, all the way up to rape,” Clancy said.

“Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing junior women being targeted by senior men,” Clancy said. “59 percent of respondents have experienced sexual harassment. Women are 3 times more likely to experience harassment than men. And 19 percent of respondents have been sexually assaulted.”

The perpetrators of the harassment and assaults were usually men, but some women also abused their students. One female site director, for example, refused to let women leave the work site to urinate.

The researchers did not directly ask the respondents if they had been raped, but some of the respondents volunteered that they had been raped by research leaders or peers at fieldwork sites. Others reported that they had witnessed the systematic targeting of junior members of the research team for harassment or assault.

Such working conditions can have devastating effects on the health and wellbeing of those who are targeted and those who witness the abuse, Clancy said. They also force students to choose between their career goals and their desire to speak up for themselves or others.

Clancy and her colleagues noticed that larger, more organized research sites tended to have fewer incidents of abuse, harassment or assault than smaller, less formal fieldwork sites. Those who worked on teams that included women in leadership positions also reported less harassment and abuse. Some respondents said they noticed an uptick in abusive behavior when female leaders were absent.

“The larger a field site, the more organized you have to be, so you’re more likely to actually have ground rules or a code of conduct, or a chain of command that prevents people from feeling they can get away with bad behavior,” Clancy said.

The researchers are proposing that funding agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health require the same kinds of protocols and oversight of researcher safety in the field that are routine in the laboratory.

“If we want to fund a postdoctoral researcher, we have to write a postdoc mentoring plan so that we prove that this postdoc isn’t just going to be a lackey for us and that we’re actually going to mentor them and train them and help them get a job,” Clancy said. “I have to make sure my students have access to certain kinds of vaccines if they’re working with blood. We have to go through Institutional Review Boards to protect our research subjects. We have to go through animal protocols to protect our animals. But we don’t have to protect our researchers in the field.”

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign