Anthropology Around the Web, Friday 2/24

Another fine edition of Anthropology Around the Web!

Popular imagination and scholarship alike have long imagined prehistoric Eurasian steppe nomads as highly militaristic and mobile societies of horsemen perpetually threatening the “classic” ancient civilizations such as China, Persia, and Greece. But recent inquiries into the nature of small-scale societies and pastoral economies have challenged this dominating stereotype. PhysOrg.com reports on a piece by WashU’s Michael Frachetti appearing in the February issue of Current Anthropology.

The first line of Savage Minds’s Adam Fish’s advice for job-seeking PhDs and ABDs? “Stop being an Anthropologist”.  

It seems we cannot approach any popular discussion of pleasure or pain (or indeed of anthropology itself) without appealing to the old chestnut of “human nature”. This week on NPR.org’s “cosmos and culture” blog 13.7, anthropologist Barbara J. King concisely argues that this intellectual tack does disservice to the complexities of human life.

In what one might call a human-interest story wrapped around a mini-ethnography in the mainstream press, The Detroit News reported on the complex development of their city’s historic Black funeral home industry.

…and of course, I have to self-plug the second installment of our own Grant Season Journal, penned by foundation president Dr. Leslie Aiello. Exhaustive, in-depth tips that anyone wrestling with grant proposals can’t afford to miss.