When news of the novel coronavirus broke out, those us in Kenya, where I'm located, thought it would go away without ever causing havoc we have seen. After all, Africa has had its own share viral outbreaks, such as Ebola, bag mixed fortune, but emerged out these outbreaks. In any case, previous outbreaks Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute (SARS) left unscathed. We were wro...

Although their customary role is the identification of decomposed human remains, forensic anthropologists are frequently called upon to provide evidence for or to testify about the circumstances that surrounded a particular death. The literature is ambiguous and contradictory about the role of anthropologists in death investigations. Relying upon traditional distinctions, we present three cases...

Mithen begins his book by first posing and then answering the question, ÒWhy ask an archaeologist about the human mind?Ó As he describes, there are many fields of study that can contribute to the discussion of the human mind. These include psychologists, philosophers, neurologists, primatologists, biological anthropologists, social anthropologists, and computer scientists. Mithen argues that pe...

Medical anthropologists are involved in the control of several infectious and parasitic diseases throughout the world, but only recently have anthropologists (or any social scientists for that matter) conducted field studies on high mortality emerging diseases such as Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF). HEWLETT and AMOLA (5) provided the first systematic medical anthropological field study of Ebola ...

Some anthropologists have suggested prehistoric Old and New world contacts. Meggers, Evans, and Estrada are the most recent advocates, and their hypothesis of a landfall by Japanese fishermen on the coast of Ecuador seems to have been the causa belli of the attack by John Rowe on "doctrinaire diffusionism." In a response to Rowe, Jett and Carter (1966) suggest his level of absolute proof is the...

Kinship used to be described as what anthropologists do. Today, many might well say that it is what anthropologists do not do. One possible explanation is that the notion of kinship fell off anthropology’s radar due to the criticisms raised by Needham and Schneider among others, which supposedly demonstrated that kinship is not a sound theoretical concept. Drawing inspiration from epidemiologic...