#anthropological theory

[chaotic-archaeologist]

so back in 2005-2007 I was an anthropology major, I was told that matriarchies never existed. at the time my professor said that it was kinda sexist that anthropology thought that way. so I wonder if anything has changed since then. I'm not talking about the weird mother goddess cult that hippy 2 wave feminist wanted but like, people who say they are like the muoso (I'm sorry if I spelt that wrong), and other groups. I've heard several native Americans from varrying nation that said their culture was matriarchal, and if modern anthropologist are taught that the experts on society are the people in that society, why do/did anthropologist decided a matriarchal society was impossible. I know this could take a long time to answer so if it's too long for you maybe just some helpful links to an article if you know of one.

So the answer—as always, with anthropology—is complicated.

Saying that XYZ never happened is difficult, given that all it takes is one positive instance to disprove the statement. Yes, there certainly have been (and still are) matriarchal societies. (Please also keep in mind that matriarchal societies aren't inherently better that patriarchal societies based on that one trait alone.)

If I had to guess, what you were told was the product of several theological whiplashes in anthropological theory. And you are indeed correct: some of it has to do with Second Wave Feminism. Archaeology and anthropology have been unfortunately late to the ballgame, and feminism is one of those topics.

Basically, for a long time anthropology was dominated by rich white dudes who believed that men were the center of all anthropological innovations ever (more or less, this is the simplified version). Then in the 80s/90s, Second Wave feminists managed to break into the discipline and the stance went from everything is patriarchal to everything is matriarchal.

"Whoa," said the male anthropologists who were feeling Threatened™ "we don't like that at all." Which results in a second over-correction back to the insistence that there was nothing matriarchal. If I had to guess, this is the general series of events that found its way into your classroom in the mid 00s.

If you fancy a deep dive into a good example of early feminist anthropology, check out The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia by Marilyn Strathern (first published in 1988). Or, if you're not inclined to read the whole thing, just read the very last five pages titled Comparison. Or you can read a review of the book from shortly after it first came out.

Other anthropologists are encouraged to chime in, and especially tell me if I've said something wrong.

-Reid

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Oh! Oh! I'd like to add to this with Shannon Dawdy's notion of heterogeneous time as a good contrast. The idea is that some places have a sense of pastness, meaning a sensed quality of belonging to/being of more time periods than just the present. This is inherently tied to the places' identity, as opposed to non-places which have been deliberately constructed to have no particular identity of their own.

Dawdy also talks about bubble time, which is similar to Proust’s mémoire involuntaire: a moment in which “the past suddenly lives again, like a haunting.” THIS is part of what you are experiencing when you encounter an image, or an object, or a place that throws you back into a certain moment in time, a visceral memory evoked by some sort of stimuli.

See also lieu de mémoire, a term which is generally used to describe places where the past is held intentionally close to the present through a process of collective memory-making, but I would also argue that a computer room from 2007 can also fit the definition of "a physical place or object which acts as container of memory."

Liminal does not mean a place (or object) that feels like it belongs to multiple temporalities at once. Liminality is a sense of in-between-ness or not-belonging, whereas nostalgia relies on associations with other times and imbued pastness.

For further reading on this, I would highly recommend Dawdy's Patina: A Profane Archaeology, particularly chapters 2 and 5.

Taking away the word “liminal” from nostalgia-bait accounts and so-called “aesthetic” webpages. Liminal is for rest stops. It’s for non-places, like parking garages or paths or BETWEEN PLACES. Your computer room in 2007 is NOT liminal, it’s an extremely specific place and time. The word you’re looking for is “nostalgia bait.”

You could also use the word “non-place” for some of these pictures- it is by definition subjective. But again, your family’s living room in 2002 is not it.

[birdantlers]

A heartfelt and grievously expanded-upon update to this—please, please read the whole thing if you can. reblogs much appreciated.

(DISCLAIMER, for all who are saying reasons like abusive parents/legal stuff/toxic ex/triggering memories/page got deleted/job/stalkers/bullying/[[insert any other shitty life thing]], This is not concerning that—personal safety & health ALWAYS comes first, and is worth more than any media ever could be. This is my biggest reason for defending that autonomy. I would be a hypocrite to say I hadn’t deleted triggering posts of mine or ones that got me in trouble with my family.)

it genuinely makes me sad and kinda upset when someone purges all their old art off the internet like. barring harmful content what if someone liked that. What if someone would have. And now nobody will ever know and it's just gone. even people's old invader zim askblogs or whatever getting deleted feels like a micro alexandria to me and that's just something I made up. I wasn't even thinking of a specific one it just stresses me out. Is this the autism I don't get why nobody else seems to freak internally abt it like I do. I see artists whose blogs I've never even looked at go like "man so glad I deleted all my old stuff it's so clean" or saying they throw out art from when they were kids I'm like. how are you not hurling. How is that not distressing that is literally your tree rings why would you do that. I want to see what's out there. people want to see it I promise someone out there likes it

...don't they??? Does everyone get quietly irrationally upset by this as me, or is this just hyperfixation/autism/some amalgam of the two. I'm not a hoarder or obsessive compulsive or anything like that so i wonder..

Anyways. reblog if you had a favorite amateur youtube animator in your childhood whose channel got nuked without a trace one day that you still think about.

I wanted to attach this video because it condenses my point very well. A TLDR of sorts. Please watch the whole thing, it genuinely changed the entire way I think about art as a concept.

(2nd vid is "Subjectivity in Art")

“The moment your art touches an audience, the ownership shifts in an irreversible way. [They're] not having an art experience with you and your intentions. They're having an art experience with the art object.

“You can't just burn your past; it's not even your past to burn anymore. It's other people's history as well. Whether or not you like it, that art is already bonded to somebody's soul, and if you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it.”

The digital age makes it very easy to distance or detach yourself from the impact your work has—be it art, fanfic, videos, even memes. Online content is as important to people now as any other media, if not more. But it's also by far the easiest, fastest, and most effective form of it to erase from public access. Media so unbelievably important to people and in general. Yes, you—with the 2010s purple sparkle dog speedpaint. I still think about that speedpaint all the time, because it was the first time i learned that you could draw on a computer, and I thought it was cool as hell. I still do.

I do wish there was a stronger culture of preservation and consideration for this, because every time I see people talk about snuffing their stuff because it doesn't personally resonate with them anymore, I just think ...what about all the people it did?

I've seen lots of people saying "get over it, it doesn't even matter," but it fucking does. It does matter. Even if I didn’t make it, even if I don’t have to deal with being the one who made it, even if I'm naturally inclined to be distressed by it—It still matters. And there’s nothing you could ever say to suddenly make it not matter, because there’s nothing you could ever say to make it not matter to me.

Don't devalue the act of creation. Don't dismiss something you made. It's out there, in people's thoughts and hearts and souls, and that is real. Even if you don't know it. Especially if you don't know it. Especially in a world where physical media is being snuffed out, the internet is constantly dying without any physical remains to recover, social isolation is rampant, and simply because independently produced content online is still media.

Fanfiction can hold equal or greater significance to someone as a book, but you can’t unpublish a book. Authors don’t have a button that can vaporize every copy of their work across all time, but fanfiction authors do. I’m not counting people who download fics either—when you buy a book, that transaction is over. But online, you have the power of unending transaction that can be terminated instantly at your will. The process of publishing fanfic vs. publishing a book may be different, but people’s connection to the art is the same intensity.

So yeah. I do get depressed about the Internet being a constant Alexandria, but the times I get the most depressed is when I click someone's page and see that all their work is gone because they're ‘curating a new aesthetic’ for their page or some shit. Or weeding out all the "ugly" art. Or just went on whatever the hell 'thrill deleting' is, because they just get a kick out of it.

Fuck it—yeah! It upsets me! I’m not wrong to say that. I’m saying it!

Under the cut, because it got long as shit! Also don’t worry the ending is way sappier and more ‘beauty of human nature’ vibe so it’s not all doom and gloom lol

What if that was someone's favorite art of that character. What if someone read that 'cringe oneshot' on the worst day of their life. What if that Warriors meme vid is still burned into a college student’s mind despite being gone for 10 years. What if it's actually not just you and the ones and zeros you rent out to the world—secure in knowing the original will always be on your computer for you to do whatever you want with it.

I really, deeply wish there was more of a general awareness of this, because even though social media can be used like a diary, that’s functionally the opposite of what it is. It’s social media. When you post, it’s no longer in a vacuum, even though you can’t see the real humans that content touches—often deeply.

Media is history. You shouldn’t burn that history just because you personally believe it isn’t worth saving.

Because it’s no longer just your personal opinion. It’s no longer just your personal work. it’s. history. Memory of media is not a suitable replacement for the media itself. If it was, we wouldn’t save anything at all. Nostalgia is an agent of that. The definition of nostalgia is grief for moments of the past that are inaccessible, and the biggest balm for that pain is accessing a physical reminder of those moments. That opinion of yours is no longer personal. It’s weighed against uncountable people across all time that your thing is ALSO personal to. People who would, and will mourn its absence.

How many times have you joined an older fandom only to discover that some of its most popular works are gone? How many times have you routed through random blogs looking for scraps people hopefully reblogged? how many times have you used Wayback machine desperately praying that a fan fiction or a YouTube video will be there? How many times do you look up crunchy old vines or YouTube videos or anime AMV‘s? How many times do you remember old fanfic.net sex that impacted you in middle school, only to shake your head and go ‘probably no point even looking.’

i mourn the absence. No, people can’t and shouldn’t have their agency over what they post revoked, but they should be conscious of that weight. If you’re reading this and getting extremely annoyed, and you’re not in the pink text above,,,, good.

I honestly do hope it gets under your skin. I hope it sits with you. I hope you feel it every time you hit that button, and whether or not you do hit that button—if you hesitate, if you remember this, even spitefully, I’ve done my job. I am howling into the void. And I may not want an answer, but I do want my anguish to be heard and remembered. Because it isn’t me just being melodramatic.

I know I sound that way writing so much, but if my favorite writing YouTuber can drop trow this week and go, "yeah, sorry, all my video essays from less than a year ago that you listen to in the car all the time? I'm "rebranding" my content so i deleted them. besides, my personal views don't really agree align with the analyses i did, or the techniques i taught in them anyway. Sorry if some of the literal tens of thousands of you used them, but I don't want to feel shackled to having youtuber "classics" tied to me”

….then i guess I'm just going to have to sound dramatic! That fucking sucks! Hours of work and knowledge gone! This was a new channel too. It’s very likely there’s no archive of any kind, because who would think someone who worked hard enough to write, record, and edit hour-long videos, would just turn around and nuke it all? I definitely didn’t see it coming, but I did just start a new screenwriting class a few weeks ago, so I’ll tell you at least one person is REALLY missing those fucking videos right now. Because a lot of them were about specifically screenwriting, which I know jack shit about. and that specific person’s pace, editing, and style of breaking down information was the best suited style I found that I could focus on and absorb. There’s no replacement for that. No alternative for his individual perspective. his jokes. his opinions.

No, they may not resonate with him now, but in this decision, he’s put up a big middle finger to everyone who might have. And he has like 100k subscribers! Those are confirmed supporters! Imagine how many silent and untethered observers are feeling this loss right now. Imagine how many will not have it in the future.

If he never posted them at all, we wouldn’t know we had it. It wouldn’t be a loss. But we did. We did have it. Until he decided that no, we didn’t, because he just happens to be the one out of millions of individuals holding the button to burn it in a hundredth of a second.

His personal work, the attachment I had to it, and the ways that it helped me are now just ripped away. I am one person out of millions, literal MILLIONS of people who saw and liked this content before it vanished. The soul has been ripped, the access severed, and by CJ’s (and my) definition, the art is functionally dead. Not for the YouTuber or anyone else lucky enough to save a link or download, but everyone else. From this point until the end of time, even if people even two weeks from now don’t know it. Even if someone who stumbles upon his channel today, doesn’t know it.

We only mourn the concept of Alexandria because we had some kind of scope for what was inside. Yes, maybe you got self-conscious and deleted your 12 year old deviant art account. Do you know who else is doing that?? THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of other twenty somethings who ALSO feel self-conscious about their old socials. Art. Fanfic. One direction fan videos. anything.

Suddenly, an unquantifiable amount of information from your age group—an entire age group in 2012, is. gone. And we will NEVER know what’s been erased from that history. We will NEVER know what could have been significant to us ten years from now. Twenty years from now. A hundred years. A thousand.

You could have deleted a fanfic that would have been someone else’s new go-to panic attack distraction tomorrow. You could have deleted a video someone used to laugh at with their friend who died yesterday. When you delete something, you risk tearing a hole in unknowable personal histories.

The Internet isn’t just a big library of Alexandria. It’s a library containing libraries. And those libraries have their own libraries in those libraries have their own as well. libraries inside libraries, inside libraries, ad infinitum. To conceive the amount of destroyed history on the Internet is crushing.

And I just can’t help but I ask myself how in gods name people can choose to contribute to that, instead of reposting everything to trash heap alts titled “hall of shame” or some shit.

You can offload to alts. Put up disclaimers. Make password locked blogs, or dropboxes, or anonymous imgur dumps. Anonymous reuploads. Orphan fics. Make a playlist or linktree of unlisted videos. Cut off the watermarks. Delete all references to it on your main. Make a dedicated unlisted playlist. make a google drive. Make new portfolio sites. Delete any questions you get about it. Change pen names. Pretend it never existed.

Give a heads up.

Something.

But don’t. kill. the media.

The knowledge that our stuff is going to forever be tied to us is a cross we have to bear, but the responsibility that comes with putting it out there in the first place, can’t be ignored.

Anyway. I'm not trying to start conflict. This is not a bash on anyone, nor a call for witch hunts. Or anon hate, or blocks and unfollows or anything of that nature. I'm not wishing ramifications or hate of any kind on anyone who does wants to do any of this.

I'm also not guilt tripping— I am not saying that you should feel bad. I AM saying why it makes me feel bad. That’s not guilting, it’s a dialogue. One I personally feel is long overdue.

It's me yelling into the void: please consider the real people on the other side of the screen before you hit that button. Realize and know that whatever you're about to erase from history could be the most important thing in the world to someone.

Art is an experience. It's why we revisit it. If art and history simply lived in the matter and code of media, we would only need to look at it once. We wouldn’t put things in museums. We wouldn’t build libraries. We wouldn’t look up vine compilations.

If you're able, consider (and I do mean consider, this is not a call to action) not destroying that. And don’t shrug it off as some pretentious asshole venting on Tumblr. You only need to look in the notes and tags to see that it isn’t just me. it’s never just me, or you, or the pixels.

And even if you do shrug it off, then at least recognize that what you make matters. Whatever you think about it, if it’s out there, that's not your discretion anymore. If a tree falls in the woods and even one person is around to see it, it fucking mattered. Because it happened. Don’t mulch your tree rings if you don’t have to. Because if enough people do it, a whole forest is gone. Media is history, no matter whether you think it’s worth putting in a museum, or only has 30 notes.

Thousands of years ago, a child named onfim doodled on his homework. They’re crude, and everyone has the wrong amount of fingers, and they’re also priceless archaeological artifacts recognizable throughout the world.

the only thing separating Onfim’s doodles and your MS paint Pokémon doodles is time. The only thing separating your old MS paint Pokémon doodles from being a priceless artifacts, thousands of years in the future is time. Your creations are already priceless artifacts. No matter what you do, don't ever, ever deny that. It isn’t blowing up your own ass, it’s artistic and anthropological fact.

The mundane and the supposedly unworthy are often the first things lost to time, and that’s why they’re so precious. That’s why artists who were before their time are scorned first only to be celebrated later. Do you think they knew that was going to happen?? What if they nuked it? Many probably did! But now that’s happening exponentially and instantaneously everywhere, WITHOUT the artist having to destroy their only copy—which makes it way easier and more dismissable.

Sometimes, If you’re revolutionary enough, people will make an effort to preserve your work, but recognized and thoroughly recorded work is rare compared to unrecognized and thoroughly recorded work.

Sometimes something is beloved enough that it would be impossible for it not to go down in history, but even then it isnt a guarantee, and it’s rare. But if van Gogh burned all of his paintings in a fit of despair before his death, we would have no van Gogh. Because he wasn’t respected as an artist in his time, but that wasn’t what defined the worth of his art. The people after him did, because his art was still there for them.

If you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it. If you belittle your art, you belittle the very real relationships and emotions and revisitations people have with the media. You defy the inherent worth and weight of a creation. you created. That's effort. It's passion. No matter how flippant or unskilled or worthless you think it is, it matters. Because at the end of the day, you could have chosen to make nothing at all, and you didn't.

•

Muting notifs

[eleanor-arroway]

times, places, and practices that I want to learn from to imagine a hopeful future for humanity 🍃

the three sisters (squash, beans, maize) stock photo - alamy // anecdote by Ira Byock about Margaret Mead // art by Amanda Key // always coming home by Ursula K. Le Guin // Yup'ik basket weaver Lucille Westlock photographed by John Rowley // the left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin // photo by Jacob Klassen // the carrier bag theory of fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin // article in national geographic // the dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow // braiding sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer // the birchbark house by Louise Erdrich // photo by John Noltner

I'm looking for more content and book recs in this vein, so please send them my way!

[omnybus]

People who claim that ancient civilizations were guided by aliens or possessed advanced technology to build their magnificent structures don't give our ancestors nearly enough credit. Sure, they may not have known what germs are or that outer space existed, but at the same time, they literally invented math. I'm pretty sure they could figure out how to make things out of really big rocks

[magnetothemagnificent]

Just saw someone say that RAMCOA "isn't real and is an antisemitic conspiracy theory" which... I don't know. I think that's dismissive of the pervasiveness of Xian abuse and the actual context of RAMCOA. A lot of Xians are involved in organized cults and traffic/abuse people through various means. At the very least I think there is nuance here. I'd like to hear your take though

For those who don't know the acronym, it stands for Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse, and was coined by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), and organization with a history of past and present abuse and corruption.

It's not real. It's a conspiracy that began in the 1980s and 1990s with the Satanic Panic. Some corrupt psychologists practiced "repressed memory recovery", where they convinced their patients that they were ritually abused by satanic cults as children, but forgot about it due to trauma. In reality, it's actually very easy to convince someone that they remember something, even when it didn't actually happen. There is no nuance. While cults absolutely do exist, there is no underground network of cults (Christian or otherwise) engaging in occult ritual sacrifices and abuses. To assert that there is leans deeply into antisemitic and xenophobic conspiracy.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that certain dissociative disorders aren't real. They've existed before the Satanic Panic and before the epidemic of false memory implanting by psychologists. However, people with trauma disorders are very susceptible to manipulation, especially by mental healthcare professionals. Someone can genuinely believe they were kidnapped by a network of occultists, that doesn't mean it actually happened to them. It also doesn't mean that they're malicious liars- false memories can feel very real, and as we've learned, it's quite easy to convince someone of a memory that didn't happen. People who believe they were victims of these things deserve our compassion- the bad-faith actors are the doctors and therapists who manipulated them, not the people suffering from mental illness.

More reading:

Evidence Against Dr. Colin A. Ross

Dangerous Therapy: The Story of Patricia Burgus and Multiple Personality Disorder

Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend

Martha Ann Tyo v Ross

Satanic Cults, Ritual Abuse, and Moral Panic: Deconstructing a Modern Witch-Hunt

Dutch Investigators Find No Evidence Of Ritual Child Abuse

Supernatural Support Groups: Who Are the UFO Abductees and Ritual-Abuse Survivors?

[snarky-art]

I love theory videos about Zelda stuff but man I really hate a lot of them when they talk about the Zonai. So often they use weighted language such as “primitive” and “less” and terms that we’re really trying to move away from in anthropology and art history since it just isn’t accurate to the way a lot of civilizations were and 9/10 times places the area of comparison on European and Anglo-sphere structures as the main point of reference. There’s also the idea that “progress” and “advancement” is strictly linear, which just isn’t the case.

The fields that are used in academia for these areas of study were founded by white men in Europe using eugenics or the ideology that would go on to be the basis of eugenics as a reference point. It’s based in highly problematic (to say the least) structures and we’re working on deconstructing that.

I just wish more people who aren’t as familiar with these fields knew that so I could better enjoy the videos and so the videos themself could actually have things of substance instead of a misplaced idea of “less tech like what the Hylian’s and Shiekah used means they were dumber and less advanced” when if we’re going to use our understanding of the current field of study, it just means they most likely just had different priorities and also just because the structures we’re looking at are made of stone instead of metals doesn’t mean they’re less “advanced”

Media and its relation to our reality and society is cyclical and the reinforcement of those ideas to a larger audience who doesn’t know better is harmful for real world reasons and also isn’t a viable way of analyzing things even if it’s “just a video game,” even if that is the way Nintendo intended it since they have a huge imperialist past that’s still ingrained in their culture to this day and is reenforced by the same things I’m critiquing in this post.

I dunno I’m just tired lol

[shitpostingkats]

So was anyone going to tell me Nasch's kingdom had a name, or was I just expected to learn about The United Lands Of The Poseidon Ocean by randomly browsing the wiki trying to put together a proposed timeline of the Barian emperors in order of death?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Colin Wright

Published: Oct 2, 2023

On September 25, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) announced that they were cancelling a panel discussion titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology,” originally scheduled as part of their annual conference in Toronto from November 15–19. The cancellation and subsequent response by the two organizations shows the extent to which gender ideology has captured academic anthropology.

The panel would have featured six female scientists, specializing in biology and anthropology, to address their profession’s growing denial of biological sex as a valid and relevant category. While terminological confusion surrounding the distinction between sex and gender roles has been a persistent issue within anthropology for decades, the total refusal of some to recognize sex as a real biological variable is a more recent phenomenon. The panel organizers, eager to facilitate an open discussion among anthropologists and entertain diverse perspectives on a contentious issue, considered the AAA/CASCA conference an optimal venue to host such a conversation.

The organizations accepted the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel without incident on July 13, and planned to feature it alongside other panels including those on politically oriented subjects, such as “Trans Latinx Methodologies,” “Exploring Activist Anthropology,” and “Reimagining Anthropology as Restorative Justice.” Elizabeth Weiss, a professor of anthropology at San José State University, was one of the slated panelists. She had intended to discuss the significance in bio-archaeology and forensic anthropology of using skeletal remains to establish a decedent’s sex. While a 2018 article in Discover titled “Skeletal Studies Show Sex, Like Gender, Exists Along a Spectrum” reached different conclusions, Weiss planned to discuss how scientific breakthroughs have made determining the sex of skeletal remains a more exact science. Her presentation was to be moderate; she titled it “No Bones About It: Skeletons Are Binary; People May Not Be,” and conceded in her abstract the growing need in forensics to “to ensure that skeletal finds are identified by both biological sex and their gender identity” due to “the current rise in transitioning individuals and their overrepresentation as crime victims.”

Despite having already approved the panel, the presidents of the AAA (Ramona Pérez) and CASCA (Monica Heller) unexpectedly issued a joint letter on September 25 notifying the “Let’s Talk About Sex” presenters that their panel was cancelled. They claimed that the panel’s subject matter conflicted with their organizations’ values, jeopardized “the safety and dignity of our members,” and eroded the program’s “scientific integrity.” They further asserted the panel’s ideas (i.e., that sex is a real and important biological variable) would “cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.” To ensure that similar discussions would not be approved in the future, the AAA/CASCA vowed to “undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings.”

The following day, the panelists issued a response letter, expressing their disappointment that the AAA and CASCA presidents had “chosen to forbid scholarly dialogue” on the topic. They rejected the “false accusation” that supporting the “continued use of biological sex categories (e.g., male and female; man and woman) is to imperil the safety of the LGBTQI community.” The panelists called “particularly egregious” the AAA/CASCA’s assertion that the panel would compromise the program’s “scientific integrity.” They noted that, ironically, the AAA/CASCA’s “decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign.”

I spoke with Weiss, who expressed her frustration over the canceled panel and the two presidents’ stifling of honest discussion about sex. She was concerned about the continual shifting of goalposts on the issue:

We used to say there’s sex, and gender. Sex is biological, and gender is not. Then it’s no, you can no longer talk about sex. Sex and gender are one, and separating the two makes you a transphobe, when of course it doesn’t. In anthropology and many topics, the goalposts are continuously moved. And, because of that, we need to stand up and say, “I’m not moving from my place unless there’s good scientific evidence that my place is wrong.” And I don’t think there is good scientific evidence that there are more than two sexes.

Weiss was not the only person to object. When I broke news of the cancellation on X, it immediately went viral. At the time of writing, my post has more than 2.4 million views, and the episode has ignited public outcry from individuals and academics across the political spectrum. Science writer Michael Shermer called the AAA and CASCA’s presidents’ letter “shameful” and an “utterly absurd blank slate denial of human nature.” Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke University, described it as “absolutely appalling.” Jeffrey Flier, the Harvard University distinguished service professor and former dean of the Harvard Medical School, viewed it as “a chilling declaration of war on scholarly controversy.” Even Elon Musk expressed his disbelief with a single word: “Wow.”

Despite the backlash, the AAA and CASCA have held firm. On September 28, the AAA posted a statement on its website titled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology: Session Pulled from Annual Meeting Program.” The statement reiterated the stance outlined in the initial letter, declaring the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel an affront to its values and claiming that it endangered AAA members’ safety and lacked scientific rigor.

The AAA’s statement claimed that the now-canceled panel was at odds with their first ethical principle of professional responsibility: “Do no harm.” It likened the scuttled panel’s “gender critical scholarship” to the “race science of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” the main goal of which was to “advance a ‘scientific’ reason to question the humanity of already marginalized groups of people.” In this instance, the AAA argued, “those who exist outside a strict and narrow sex/gender binary” are being targeted.

Weiss remains unconvinced by this moral posturing. “If the panel was so egregious,” she asked, “why had it been accepted in the first place?”

The AAA also claimed that Weiss’s panel lacked “scientific integrity,” and that she and her fellow panelists “relied on assumptions that ran contrary to the settled science in our discipline.” The panelists, the AAA argued, had committed “one of the cardinal sins of scholarship” by “assum[ing] the truth of the proposition that . . . sex and gender are simplistically binary, and that this is a fact with meaningful implications for the discipline.” In fact, the AAA claimed, the panelists’ views “contradict scientific evidence” about sex and gender, since “[a]round the world and throughout history, there have always been people whose gender roles do not align neatly with their reproductive anatomy.”

There is much to respond to in this portion of AAA’s statement. First, it’s ironic for the organization to accuse scientists of committing the “cardinal sin” of “assuming the truth” of something, and then to justify cancelling those scientists’ panel on the grounds that the panelists refuse to accept purportedly “settled science.” Second, the panel was organized to discuss biological sex (i.e., the biology of males and females), not “gender roles”; pivoting from discussions of basic biology to murkier debates about sex-related social roles and expectations is a common tactic of gender ideologues. Third, the AAA’s argument that a person’s “gender role” might not “align neatly” with his or her reproductive anatomy implies the existence of normative behaviors for members of each sex. Indeed, this is a central tenet of gender ideology that many people dispute and warrants the kind of discussion the panel intended to provide.

The AAA’s statement made another faulty allegation, this time against Weiss for using “sex identification” instead of “sex estimation” when assessing the sex of skeletal remains. The AAA claimed that Weiss’s choice of terminology was problematic and unscholarly because it assumes a “determinative” process that “is easily influenced by cognitive bias on the part of the researcher.”

Weiss, however, rejects the AAA’s notion that the term “sex determination” is outdated or improper. She emphasized that “sex determination” is frequently used in the literature, as demonstrated in numerous contemporary anthropology papers, along with “sex estimation.” Weiss said, “I tend not to use the term ‘sex estimation’ because to estimate is usually associated with a numeric value; thus, I do use the term ‘age estimation.’ But just as ‘age estimation’ does not mean that there is no actual age of an individual and that biological age changes don’t exist, ‘sex estimation’ does not mean that there isn’t a biological sex binary.” She also contested the AAA’s claim that anthropologists’ use of “sex estimation” is meant to accommodate people who identify as transgender or non-binary. Rather, she said, “sex estimation” is used when “anthropologists are not 100 [percent] sure of their accuracy for a variety of reasons, including that the remains may be fragmented.” But as these methods improve—which was a focus of her talk—such “estimations” become increasingly determinative.

After making that unfounded allegation against Weiss, the AAA further embarrasses itself by claiming that “There is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification,” and that sex and gender are “historically and geographically contextual, deeply entangled, and dynamically mutable categories.”

Each of these assertions is empirically false. An individual’s sex can be determined by observing their primary sex organs, or gonads, as these organs determine the type of gamete an individual can or would have the function to produce. The existence of a very rare subset of individuals with developmental conditions that make their sex difficult to assess does not substantiate the existence of a third sex. Sex is binary because are only two sexes, not because every human in existence is neatly classifiable. Additionally, while some organisms are capable of changing sex, humans are not among them. Therefore, the assertion that human sex is “dynamically mutable” is false.

Weiss appropriately highlights the “false equivalency” inherent in the claim that the existence of people with intersex conditions disproves the binary nature of sex. “People who are born intersex or with disorders of sex development are not nonbinary or transgender, they are individuals with medical pathologies,” she said. “We would not argue that because some people are born with polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), often seen in inbred populations, that you can’t say that humans have ten fingers and ten toes. It's an absurd conclusion.”

On September 29, the AAA posted a Letter of Support on its website, penned by anthropologists Agustin Fuentes, Kathryn Clancy, and Robin Nelson, endorsing the decision to cancel the “Let’s Talk About Sex” session. Again, the primary motivation cited was the panel’s opposition to the supposed “settled science” concerning sex. The authors disputed the panelists’ claim that the term “sex” was being supplanted by “gender” in anthropology, claiming instead that there is “massive work on these terms, and their entanglements and nuances.” They also reiterated the AAA’s false accusation that the term “sex determination” was problematic and outdated. Nonetheless, the canceled panel could have served as a prime venue to discuss these issues.

In response to these calls for censorship, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) issued an open letter to the AAA and CASCA. FIRE characterized the groups’ decision to cancel the panel as a “retreat” from their scientific mission, which “requires unwavering dedication to free inquiry and open dialogue.” It argued that this mission “cannot coexist with inherently subjective standards of ‘harm,’ ‘safety,’ and ‘dignity,’ which are inevitably used to suppress ideas that cause discomfort or conflict with certain political or ideological commitments.” FIRE implored the AAA and CASCA to “reconsider this decision and to recommit to the principles of intellectual freedom and open discourse that are essential to the organizations’ academic missions.” FIRE’s open letter has garnered signatures from nearly 100 academics, including Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Princeton University’s Robert P. George. FIRE invites additional academic faculty to add their names.

The initial letter and subsequent statement by the AAA/CASCA present a particularly jarring illustration of the undermining of science in the name of “social justice.” The organizations have embarrassed themselves yet lack the self-awareness to realize it. The historian of science Alice Dreger called the AAA and CASCA presidents’ use of the term “cardinal sin” appropriate “because Pérez and Heller are working from dogma so heavy it is worthy of the Vatican.” Indeed, they have fallen prey to gender ideologues, driven into a moral panic by the purported dangers of defending the existence of biological sex to people whose sex distresses them. The AAA/CASCA have determined that it is necessary not only to lie to these people about their sex but also to deceive the rest of us about longstanding, foundational, and universal truths about sex.

Science can advance only within a system and culture that values open inquiry and robust debate. The AAA and CASCA are not just barring a panel of experts with diverse and valid perspectives on biological sex from expressing their well-considered conclusions; they are denying conference attendees the opportunity to hear diverse viewpoints and partake in constructive conversations on a controversial subject. Such actions obstruct the path of scientific progress.

“When you move away from the truth, no good can come from it,” Weiss says. The AAA and CASCA would be wise to ponder that reality.

==

I miss the days when anti-science meant creationists with "Intelligent Design," flat Earthers, and Jenny McCarthy-style MMR anti-vaxers.

It's weird that archaeologists are now denying evolution and pretending not to know how babies are made. Looks like creationists aren't the only evolution-denial game in town any more.

[maddest-scientist-ms]

Dwarfs love and cherish their beards do much because countrary to popular beliefs, they grow extremely slowly and only after dwarf reaches maturity, about like a sentimeter a year, perhaps slower. As dwarfs live really long without aging, like hundreds of years, for them the beard is almost the only way to determine the age of each other somewhat precisely, as bodies and faces of a 50 years old dwarf and a 250 years old dwarf aren't all that different - Both seem to be in the prime of their life, while wisdom and experience differ drastically.

Therefore because of how slowly it grows and how important it is for proper in-species communication, cutting or losing it is completely unthinkable. Looking younger intentionally doesn't really matter when you'll stay at the same relatively young state for centuries, other hygienical concerns aren't really all that grave, and losing chunk of your beard will undo big chunk of your charm and reputability when talking with dwarfs who don't know you personally and will think you're way younger than you're actually are.

[aleck-le-mec]

It's wild to me how some able-bodied people only think of disabled culture as a concept and they haven't ever actually experienced it. To me the biggest tell that somebody has never experienced disabled culture is their lack of knowledge about something I call Societal Manufactured Disability Theory.

This theory posits that an aspect of disability is manufactured by societal norms, stigmas and labeling.

People with disabilities like myself will tell you that people do treat you differently based solely upon the fact that you are disabled. When my hand writing is too messy to read do to Dysgraphia people assume I'm not trying hard enough to be neat, and if I'm lazy enough to slack with hand writing I must always be lazy. When I tell people I have Dyslexia they think I'm less intelligent, unable to read or incapable of understanding the written word. When I tell people I have a connective tissue disorder which is an invisible disability they think I'm a liar, scheming to take resources away from "real disabled people".

The societal norm here in America is to push forward, laziness is not an option we see it repeatedly in the rhetoric surrounding young people. News sources constantly talking about how "no one wants to work these days" or "young people are taking everything for granted".

There is a huge stigma around having Dyslexia that most people don't notice. In American society where we have a 79% literacy rate it is expected that you can read, so when you can't or you have trouble people think you have a lower IQ. Dyslexia can be genetic so I'm actually a fourth generation Dyslexic from my dad's side with all of them men being the ones to pass it down. My dad has always said that my great grandfather had no support for his Dyslexia, nobody cared and in fact the term Dyslexia was only coined in 1887. When my dad went to school they attempted to alleviate some of the symptoms of Dyslexia by making him watch his hands as he crawled on the floor, believing that the root of the problem was in a lack of eye coordination. To this day I and many other Dyslexics will avoid talking about our diagnosis because of the stigma behind it. I have had many experiences in my life where as soon as people learn that I am Dyslexic they assume that I can't spell anything or that they need to read everything to me. That's what stigma does, it makes people hide away just so they can live in peace and be respected.

It is extremely common for people with invisible disabilities to be labeled as liars, this is mostly due to a lack of education and representation. The general public's idea of disability is limited, but the truth is that disability is one of the most dynamic aspects of human beings. Invisible and dynamic disabilities make up the majority of disabilities; in fact, 1 out of every 3 Americans is in fact disabled. When people see me, a young, healthy-looking man, they never think I'm disabled. If I tell them I am, they may think I am lying. People generally do not like liars, and having such a label attached to your name can be detrimental to your social integration.

You can see that none of those setbacks I mentioned are symptoms of my disabilities. The perceived deviance, stigma, and labeling are not things you'll find on a medical report. However, they do harm me socially and potentially medically when it comes to stigma; these things disable me. Thus, part of my struggle as a disabled person is manufactured by society itself, in the norms we hold and the way we treat others.

I have come to that conclusion repeatedly, as have almost every other disabled person. It's a conclusion that is often reached in the community as a whole. However, it is in able-bodied culture where these stigmas, labels, and perceived attacks originate. So, if someone is completely averse to accepting the Societal Manufactured Disability Theory, it suggests that they have probably never fully been a part of any aspect of disability culture.

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Hey

Hope you are doing well 😊

Would you like to answer a question regarding the anthropological theories? Since, you are from anthropology student I guess you have studied it in uni.

I have not studied anything related to anthropological theories or sociology in the past.

I have to self-study (I do not have a professor since it's something like self learning course) the anthropological theories.

Well, can you tell me how do we understand those theories in a simple manner. The book is so complicated. We just learn everything they say? And then every theory is being criticised. It's all jumbled in my head.

Hi there dirtling! I'd be happy to take a stab at answering your theory related questions. If there's something that I don't know, chances are someone in anthro/archaeoblr has some good insight too.

-Reid

[daydreamerwonderkid]

Can't believe I have to say this, but here we fucking are.

New Rule: If you spam me with conspiracy bullshit, I'm blocking you.

Edit: This is not about the movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire. This is about the actual conspiracy theory and the people who genuinely believe in it.

[limelocked]

having thoughts about the ancient city on this day

because like troy, this thing has layers

i got done with my observations in the flatworld and went to look at how it actually generates and ive learned this:

1 there is no wool from the original inhabitants (gray) outside of the heavily fortified walls and the hidden redstone room, that means no wool in the sauna, ice box, barracks, tall ruins etc

2 the creature in the statues is different from the warden, it looks like warden concept art but for our purposes thats not the warden, thats something else, if it was the warden then it wouldve been changed

3 the warden doesnt live here. let me rephrase that; in the deep dark dev diary video there was talk about how the sculk was like an organism and i think that tracks what with the catalyst eating the souls of the dead but that also means the following: sculk shriekers, not the ancient city, is what calls the warden, the warden defends the sculk not the city

oh lime, you say, why then be the ancient city covered in this fleshy moss

lemmi lay out the timeline

1 the ancient city people live in unwalled cities, or at least the walls dont look like they do now, the city centers as we see them today have three paths up to the.. dias? but only one is accessible due to the walls, they have some way to access the nether to get soul sand and they are very peculiar about refrigerating their items and keeping themselves clean.

there may have been a guardian mob like the iron golem for these people, one that had rounded ears

2 the sculk comes. how it arrives is unknown but it feeds on the dead and dying, it envelops blocks it likes and covers the rest in veins outside the flesh. the ancient people build walls that are insulated in wool, the walls are imposing and threatening in nature and divides the city into quarters, it cannot contain the spread, people still die. they start tinkering with redstone hoping to find something that stops the advance.

there may have been a construct like the iron golem that had its blocks enveloped by the sculk, its ears changed to antena

3

Death.

sculk by its nature is a sign that an area is no such place of honour. sculk by its very nature denotes the ancient city not as a historical landmark but as a graveyard covered with the corpses of its people.

eventually the people who lived there either die or relocate the cities are abandoned we mourn

there may have been a guardian of a city that is now a guardian of the flesh, a warden to a self made jail full of people that will die at the will of a hungry being so large and unknowable yet also so quietly peaceful

4 much later, the people who made the mineshafts (probably not following the age old proverb of never digging too deep) discover the ancient city and start exploring it with none of the caution that the late ancient people had. many die. they set up many camps and fortifications, it takes them a while to even learn that wool will save them. many die. soon they abandon whatever ideas they had about the city and either die or leave this cursed place full of death.

[creature-wizard]

"""Progressive""" conspiracy theorists will be like "archaeology and anthropology are tools of colonialism!!!" and then advocate the most racist pseudohistory white people came up with.

[anglerflsh]

can you believe he's a history major