Lovely detailed description by @haneuljang.bsky.social & @danielredhead.bsky.social of how knowledge & skills are differentially spread through the network of a forager village in DRC. And how this is patterned by own & contact age, kinship and relationship status

I'm super excited to announce that ISBA @isba-bayesian.bsky.social has voted to start a new section on Bayesian Social Sciences! It will be a great way to further collaborations with many disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities. bss-isba.github.io

Portentious nonsense. We've been editing the DNA of plants and animals for thousands of years, and the planet is already littered with our creations

very interesting paper shedding light on circumpolar peoples www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Arrived today. Naturally I opened it immediately and looked at my own chapter. I like it.

The Monarch of the Glen (or Point Reyes, at any rate)

the beginning of the end, perhaps? www.ft.com/content/6611...

It's a great paper ... BUT ... you might get the impression that smoke-dried mummification was common in the New Guinea highlands. It was not. There are only two recorded mummies amongst the Dani (Hubula) people, both of which have (inevitably) become tourist attractions www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually"

Today I came across Kozak et al's remarkable account of the Heta Indians from the forests of Brazil ("The Heta Indians: Fish in a Dry Pond"), based on information gathered in the 1950s. The Heta made ground stone axes, which they made by pecking and grinding suitable stones ...

just learned about the croatian wikipedia coup of 2010 and also this associated headline which might be the best headline ever written

Meanwhile, in Holland

Des traces d'indigotine, teinture bleue, sur des outils de broyage en pierre datant de 34000 ans, trouvés dans la grotte de Dzudzuana, en Géorgie sont la preuve d’une connaissance approfondie des ressources végétales par Homo sapiens. Un usage pas seulement alimentaire phys.org/news/2025-09...

Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):

Excited to announce that the 1st paper from my postdoc is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! Using a large dataset of 3D preserved fossils, we explore the diversification of jaws in early bony fishes. 1/15 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Wikipedia editors trying to fend off the onslaught of AI crap have crowdsourced some telltale signs of LLM-generated writing; it might be handy for editors and proofreaders generally. Thanks to @ellenrykers.com for pointing me to it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

A very special paper where we did something NEW! 🔥combining a large genetic dataset 🧬, a large linguistic dataset 💬, and Bayesian multilevel logistic regressions 📈, counting the effects of areal contact (geographic constrains) 🌎. Genetic admixture explains higher levels of linguistic exchanges...

Dates for your diary (Oct 9-12), particularly if you are interested in textiles and their history and circulation. In Berkeley, CA, free to attend (the way conferences and seminars should be). Pacific Rim theme this year. events.berkeley.edu/ieas/event/3...

A pleasure to arrive in my office this morning and find Stone and Fiber by @chrisbuckley.bsky.social sitting at my desk. As well as being an meticulous material/ethnographic resource, the photographs - many from the 80s - are simply wonderful. This could be a coffee table art-book.

“If every author in the class filed a claim, industry advocates warned, it would "financially ruin" the entire AI industry.” arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Found 13 of my articles illegally used, quickly submitted my name for the class action lawsuit. I encourage others to do the same! Only takes a few minutes and is something concrete to do to resist AI BS.

New paper! ⚡ With Gabriel Aguirre and Marcelo Sánchez, looking at patterns of blowgun types and use across societies of the world. We find areal patterns, similarities mediated by cultural connections, and specific types characterizing distinct branches of the Austronesian language tree. 🎯

Politics aside, to know what the heck is going on in the UK you need the FT, the Guardian and Private Eye

Physical copies of this 71-chapter tome now exist. Do encourage your library to buy a copy…also doubles as excellent door stop! Co-edited with Jamie Tehrani and @rachkendal.bsky.social. @oxunipress.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social

Rock Looked Way Cooler Wet

Join us for our first 2025 public lecture in partnership with Perth Museum. Uncovering Scotland's Earliest Textiles ➕ 7pm - 8pm September 24th 2025 ➕ Admission £7.50/£5.00 ➕ Booking essential through the website below ➕ Location: Perth Museum, Scotland www.culturepk.org.uk/event/uncove...

Apparently the print edition, just published, weighs 4lb, has 1024 pages and costs $210 ... lordeh! academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

Glass beads from the Lake Sentani region on the north coast of Papua, part of bridewealth exchanges. The beads are mostly from China, and include some very old examples (the melon shaped beads). They were brought by trading vessels over the last two millennia. From my book "Stone and Fiber".

Shells, including Nassa, cowrie and bailer shells, were traded into the highlands until recent times. But there is an important subtlety that needs to be added ... trade in the highlands was very different in character to trade on the coasts ... (1/3)

interesting pre-print arxiv.org/abs/2408.07300

“We explain that secular transition happens in three steps: first, public ritual participation declines; second, the importance of religion to individuals declines; and third, people shed religious affiliation” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Raymond Corbey sent me a link to his nice book on Kuba funerary sculptures (bongotols). The book is also a useful reference for Kuba raffia cloths and funerary customs. Free to view online www.sidestone.com/books/death-...

As grant money starts drying up, it's more important than ever not to waste it on paying publishers' open access "article processing fees" when we can host PDFs for free. Tom Morgan and I wrote a paper on this, forthcoming at Science and Public Policy. Accepted draft here: osf.io/preprints/os...

It was an exciting journey led by Sergi! 😃 Here a thread you can find out how the diversification process in arcade games follows the principles of macroevolution and metabolic allometry: including "hat-like pattern" of diversity change and persistence of the 'living fossils'👇 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

Equifinality aside, experimental/field-based studies CAN constrain cultural evolutionary models, but in fairly simple ways (attached is an example) ... doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Re recent posts, I do think it's the job of experimenters/field researchers to evaluate CE models ... I attempted a critical review of some of Richerson and Boyd's models (YOU DID WHAT) in this book chapter ... but I can't say that it has gathered a great deal of interest ... doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...

A weaver's sword (weft beater) in Tengganan, Bali. The close-up view shows the grooves that develop at the striking edge from years of use. This feature is not present on all swords, but when it does it is diagnostic, and has been used to identify archaeological examples

hmmmm

My co-authors, Jana Diesner, @tedunderwood.me, @zoeleblanc.bsky.social, @gworthey.bsky.social and @profdownie.bsky.social, and I are excited to share our paper in @bigdatasoc.bsky.social "Who decides what is read on Goodreads?" on book review sponsorship, open access at doi.org/10.1177/2053....

During the last decade, something changed in the field of Cultural Evolution. It became possible to publish papers that consist purely of modelling (usually agent-based), with no real-world data. I'm not sure that this is a good thing ...

there's always the Physics prize ...

A few days ago I gave a copy of "Stone and Fiber" to Enrico Kondologit, curator of the Museum Loka Budaya in Jayapura, Papua. We are negotiating with the Indonesian govt to get the collection repatriated to the Museum, and eventually to a new museum in Wamena, in the Baliem valley

Now shipping from bookseller's websites

Didn’t want to believe this was true. It’s true.

This is a book chapter I wrote in 2021 that I just got permission to share. It summarizes what is known about the early history of loom weaving and bark cloth in the Asia Pacific region www.researchgate.net/publication/...

My friend Jana Igunma who works at the British Library has found a Burmese ms in the collection that is about cats. Here is a sample

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper

My wonderful wife is talking about Indonesian textile history in Jakarta this afternoon. They made this flyer for her, and it looks like the poster for a movie