anthropoclock

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I took this picture and people are liking it on pinterest so here!! Have some pretty paris architecture!

#literally taken on an iPhone 6 4 years ago #Paris #photography #dark acamedia #architecture

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anyone know how to get rid of entire paragraphs (without mourning them due to an unhealthy emotional attachment) because you accidentally spent over half of your archaeology paper talking about glaciers?

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Another list of things that happened in a class! High school latin edition:

Musical chairs while our teacher sang to us about latin verb tenses

This kid bringing in a block of wood at 8am and sanding it for the entire length of class

My classroom job being to flick the lights on and off really fast whenever we watched a cartoon from the 70s

Only being allowed to swear in Latin (there were English swears in the plays we read out loud??) because our teacher was hyper-religious

(I saved the best for last!!!) Cleaning ancient Roman coins with dish soap while watching “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1966) and then having soapy water spilled on my light wash jeans, effectively making it look like I had pissed myself

#latin #high school #classes #archaeology #anthropology #history #help i think that last point is the first and only original experience i'll ever have #drying my pants in a washroom at 8:15 in the morning

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Moments from my godforsaken archaeology class now that it’s over:

“Neanderthals are disco fabulous!!!”

“Designer backpacks.”

“SKULLS ARE METAL.”

“Wanna discuss your opinion on the subject?” “Uh. Not really.”

“Otzi’s in a freezer.”

“…coconuts.”

University really is something.

#archaeology #classes #university

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Phenomenological Archaeology

Y'know those tumblr posts that are like

"Every time I carry a laundry basket on my hip I'm transported back to the 1400s"

When I was little, I used to CRAVE this feeling. I loved history (still do), and these little sentences always made me feel like I was part of history: connected to the stories of all those who have come before.

Well flash forward 7 years or so and I'm in an archaeology lecture learning about phenomenology.

Phenomenology is the use of feelings in deciphering archaeological finds and sites (or non-sites...landscape archaeology things). For example, let's say I find the ruins of a castle. I stand at the doorway and think "Wow! This architecture is cool! The people of the past probably thought this architecture is cool too!".

This is 100% my oversimplified explanation (if you're into this type of stuff and want a better explanation, Christopher Tilley is the main person involved in this approach). I'll also leave a big quote at the end to explain better.

Anyways, I think it's so cool that there's an approach to archaeology that's about how humans have always been humans, and that we all feel emotions and interact with our environments in similar, human ways.

In short, yeah. If I put a laundry basket on my hip and feel productive and inspired to do my laundry, then I think that's valid archaeological thinking. And a great way to get my laundry done.

Extra explanation, for those interested:

Warning: this quote is from Wikipedia (I promise I don't normally do this but this is a relatively uncommon approach and academic article availability is rough off-campus)

"In The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Archaeology (2004), Christopher Tilley proposes that all people who seek to engage with and understand a non-neutral 'humanized' space have a human body, and will therefore engage with the landscape in similar ways. By paying close attention to, and documenting, their bodily engagement with the archaeological site and landscape, Tilley says that archaeologists can use phenomenology to better understand prehistoric humanized space. Phenomenological methods therefore include approaching a place from different directions, experiencing it from every angle, spending time there, and exploring its relationships to other landmarks such that one starts to develop “a feeling for the place.”[4] Tilley says that this process allows one to make observations one never could have otherwise. Phenomenological methods are therefore highly reliant on the archaeologists own senses of sight, smell, and hearing as they enter and move about the landscape that they are studying."

#archaeology #archaeological theory #phenomenology #anthropology #academia

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Much blood flows

I'm bored but not bored enough to write a long post, so here's the only Latin sentence I remember from when I took classes in high school:

multus sanguis fluit

It means "much blood flows", and you'd think my Latin textbook would've used this in some cool context (like to describe a gladiator event), but no. They used it to describe razor burn.

#latin #classics #cambridge latin course #linguistics #linguistic anthropology #ancient rome #cambridge latin

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"Altered Consciousness" and Cave Art - The Entoptic Phenomena

I've made it through midterms and it's finally anthrop-o'clock!!

I want to start my blog with something I find really...REALLY...fascinating. I was presented this idea in an archaeology class and it's stuck with me since.

OK so let's begin with the fact that cave art is largely a mystery. There've been plenty of theories trying to explain it, but it is prettttty difficult to figure out what was happening in the minds of Palaeolithic peoples. If only there was some, chemically constant, comparative explanation we can study in the minds of people today....OH WAIT!!

The human nervous system, when hallucinating, creates uniform geometric shapes (uniform meaning that if we both hallucinated, our shared brain chemistry/biology would make us see the same types of shapes). This is the Entoptic Phenomena, and some of the shapes ("Entoptic forms") created by the human mind have been found within cave art.

This leads into the discussion of shamans, who are credited with creating this entoptic cave art. Shamans deal with rituals, which has led some anthropologists to believe that cave art was part of rituals in which people would induce a trance-like state and paint the forms they were seeing.

Here's some of the entoptic forms compared to cave art!

Photo Source: Sayin, H.U. (2014). Does the nervous system have an intrinsic archaic language? Entoptic images and phosphenes. Neuroquantology, 12, 427-445.

References

Art, Shamanism, and Entoptic Images. Altered states the origin of art in entoptic phenomena. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/My%20Documents/Cave%20Art%20and%20Trance.htm 

Lewis-Williams, J. D., Dowson, T. A., Bahn, P. G., H.-G. Bandi, Bednarik, R. G., Clegg, J., Consens, M., Davis, W., Delluc, B., Delluc, G., Faulstich, P., Halverson, J., Layton, R., Martindale, C., Mirimanov, V., Turner, C. G., Vastokas, J. M., Winkelman, M., & Wylie, A. (1988). The signs of all times: Entoptic phenomena in upper palaeolithic art [and comments and reply]. Current Anthropology, 29(2), 201–245. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743395

#anthropology #archaeology #neuroscience #psychology #biology #palaeolithic #academia #cave painting #biological anthropology #cool stuff

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OK, HI. 

I'm very new to Tumblr but here I am! Sometimes, I've noticed, what captivates people most on this platform are stories on the human spirit: about who we are, where we come from, and how...despite a difference in time...we've always been silly little beings who are here. Here existing, feeling, and sharing life together. There isn't anything more beautiful, and, as an anthropology student, I want to bring more of these stories to your attention. Even if no one ever comes along on this little mission with me, I'll be here, having fun, existing, feeling, and sharing my passion with the great big world. Yours, Forever anthropologically (still working on an outro, don't judge), Enna

#anthropology #humanity #idontknowhowtousetumblr #education #archaeology #linguistic anthropology #biological anthropology #cultural anthropology #culture #science #social science #history