The final throws of a new Ph.D.’s job search?
No, this week Archaeolog hosts Four Stone Hearth and the next series of their blog carnival. The Fourth Stone Hearth is a “blog carnival that specializes in anthropology in the widest (American) sense of that word”. This carnival spans this four-field model, including submissions ranging from salvage archaeology using historical sources to ideas of human evolution. Questions relevant to archaeology are raised concerning the deep time of what it is to be human, and some frank assessments of where we think we come from. Archaeologists have a credible tradition of ethno-archaeology, or modeling ancient human behaviour from observations of the contemporary. Analogical reasoning at its best. Science Studies students of Shirley Strum and Latour’s work will recognize an ‘ethnography’ of the social relations of bonobos. And a final piece gets reflexive about how we think about evolution and the evolution of these ideas.
Harbour of the Sheaf Kings – Martin Rundkvis starts us off with some salvage archaeology on the island of Djurhamn, part of the Stockholm archipelago. Using historical sources describing Gustaf Eriksson and the importance of a once flourishing harbour town, Dr. Rundkvis surveys ahead of a tourist development project.
In a series of three pieces, Eric Michael Johnson raises questions about the evolution of love and hate:
The Sacrifice of Admetus – How the evolution of altruism reveals our noblest qualities.
Why Chimpanzees Make Bad Suicide Bombers – The evolution of spite is the evil twin of altruism.
Brooding Angelmakers – Offspring abandonment in the ancient and natural world.
Bonobos and the Politics of Human Nature – With a title evoking a Strum-Latour collaboration, Frans de Waal responds in the ongoing debate over human destiny – and if humans are genetically destined to love and hate.
The Evolution of What We Think About Who We Are – In a final piece, Brian Switek looks at the ebb and flow of scholarship, and reviews of how our view of human evolution has evolved.
Look for Four Stone Hearth’s next carnival at Hominin Dental Anthropology.