New database highlights underrepresented scholars of African archaeology
Helina Woldekiros, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, helped launch a database that aims to make undercited work more accessible to scholars, students and the public.
Digging deep
Anna K. Behrensmeyer never set out to be a pioneer, but she has broken new ground in the field of paleontology, supported diversity in STEM and torn down barriers along the way.
McDonnell Foundation awards Roediger $750,000 for memory research
Henry “Roddy” Roediger and James Wertsch, both in Arts & Sciences, will use a grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to encourage the interdisciplinary study of collective memory.
New evidence supports idea that America’s first civilization was made up of ‘sophisticated’ engineers
New evidence discovered at Poverty Point in northern Louisiana by anthropologists in Arts & Sciences challenges previous beliefs about how pre-modern hunter-gatherers behaved.
’Til the cows come home
New research led by archaeologists at Washington University in St. Louis shows that meat and dairy played a more significant role in human diets in Bronze Age China than previously thought. The analysis also suggests that farmers and herders tended to sheep and goats differently than they did their cows.
Wealth, status could not shield 19th-century families from parasitic infection
New research conducted by Theresa Gildner, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, suggests that parasitic disease was likely widespread in New England during 19th century, even in remote rural areas and in wealthy households.
Highlands hunt for climate answers
Two Washington University scientists are reconstructing past climate and cultural shifts in the Peruvian Andes. Today, such high-altitude parts of the tropics are warming faster than the rest of the globe. What Bronwen Konecky and Sarah Baitzel discover could help predict how this delicate ecosystem might be affected in the future.
Digging deep to discover why Cahokia collapsed
Arts & Sciences archaeologists excavated around earthen mounds and analyzed sediment cores to test a persistent theory about the collapse of Cahokia, the pre-Columbian Native American city once home to more than 15,000 people.
A tale of two forests could reveal path forward for saving endangered lemurs
To figure out how to best support two endangered species — black-and-white ruffed lemurs and diademed sifakas — scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are joining up with researchers at the Saint Louis Zoo, Missouri Botanical Garden and Madagascar-based collaborators for an innovative research effort under the Living Earth Collaborative.
A Simpler Life
Synthetic Biological Experiments
A Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen, assistant professor of sociocultural anthropology in Arts & Sciences, follows practitioners as […]
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