The consequences of male-biased sex ratios
Seminar
Abstract Pauline’s research deals with how culture and institutions shape institutions and economic behaviour. Her recent projects focus on the origins and persistence of gender roles. In this webinar, Pauline will discuss some of her work on the effects of biased sex ratios using 18th and 19th…
Foragers or farmers? Dark Emu and the Debate over Aboriginal Agriculture
Seminar
Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu, which has been a publishing phenomenon in Australia, argues that Aboriginal people were not ‘mere’ hunter-gatherers in 1788, but were farming. This article sets the argument of the book within the context of a long-term debate in archaeology and anthropology about…
Blood ties: Kinship, reciprocity and love on heritage breed farms
Seminar
Fantasies of human mastery over nature are difficult to sustain as a 125 nanometre virus wreaks havoc across the globe, while the ecological crisis highlights the detrimental impacts stemming from the domination model’s prevalence in recent history. Within the agricultural sector, the livestock…
Bones, stones, and the prehistory of the Arabian Peninsula
Seminar
Summary The Arabian Peninsula, situated between Africa and Eurasia, is an important yet understudied region for understanding hominin evolution across the continents. With an interior dominated by hyper-arid sand seas (or ergs), it’s hard to imagine early humans and non-desert adapted animals…
“Here I can Like Watermelon”: Culinary Redemption among African Hebrew Israelites
Seminar
Every May, The African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC), a transnational millenarian group with its headquarters in the Israeli desert town of Dimona, celebrates its most important festival: “New World Passover”. Commemorating their exodus from “the land of great captivity” (the US) to Israel, the…
“Our village name is spreading like fire”: Gold fever in a Sepik society, PNG
Seminar
When the Awiakay discovered gold on their land, a cascade of dramatic changes shook their society to its roots. The village all but emptied out with so many going to the bush to pan for gold on one of the two creeks where small-scale mining camps were set up. But when one young man became sick…
Quantifying the shape of growth
Seminar
Abstract The process of ontogeny plays a fundamental role in the emergence, magnitude and patterning of adult sexual dimorphism. Untangling the complex interaction between shape, size and age over the course of ontogeny is potentially difficult due to the large morphological variability in size…