Save the Date for Anthropology!

Blogging About Humankind

To kick off a new season of blogging, the 97th Carnival Edition of Four Stone Hearth -- the bi-weekly showcase for top anthropology blogging -- will appear right here at Zenobia: Empress of the East on 21st July.

What's a Four-Stone Hearth? Well, anthropology is the study of all humankind -- from the very beginning until yesterday's news has wrapped up fish & chips, from the sublimest to the daily grind, from obsidian cores to digital pixels. Anthropologists claim all times and places as their meat & drink. We can narrow that down just a bit: the carnival focuses on four pivotal lines of research:

• archaeology
• socio-cultural anthropology
• bio-physical anthropology
• linguistic anthropology

Each of these pivots is 'a stone in the hearth' (left). As an archaeologist, I might see them rather as menhirs in a field or stellae set on tombs. No matter. The metaphor, like the field, is wide open.

So start sending me notices of the best humankind blogging that you've read so far this summer. And keep up the good work as you come across particularly fine, insightful -- or just plain provoking posts as they appear over the next two weeks.

Feel free to nominate even [or especially!] your own writings as well.

You can email me directly at judith@judithweingarten.com or leave a comment on this post.

If you're not familiar with the anthropology carnival, pop over to the main page of Four Stone Hearth where you'll find some recent carnivals (and the whole kit-and-caboodle dating back to October '06). Did you know, for example, that the 96th edition now up at Testimony of the Spade has everything from the Americans' effort to blast the Van Allen Belts out of the sky (the H-bomb explosion in space could be seen across the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to New Zealand) to a French professor's lecture on "the interiorizing lens of mental illnesss" interrupted by a decidedly external THWAP!! followed by Bang! Bang! Bang! and the demise of a furry bumble bee?

Undoubtedly we, too, shall cover the gamut of groovy activities -- plus whatever else takes Zenobia's fancy -- for the humankind worlds on 21st July. Hold this date!


Illustration (above left): Banda Vigna Vulgaris