Anthropology

When the climate changed, when crops failed and famine threatened, people in ancient history responded.

Four WSU faculty have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences and two others were chosen to serve on the academy’s leadership board.

$60,153 awarded to support projects focusing on faculty professional goals to advance universitywide arts and humanities initiatives.

By Will Ferguson, College of Arts and Sciences

PULLMAN, Wash. – A team of scientists including researchers from Washington State University has shown for the first time that nicotine residue can be extracted from plaque, also known as “dental calculus”, on the teeth of ancient tobacco users.

The findings, published this week in the journal Nature, have profound implications for contemporary society, as inequality repeatedly leads to social disruption, even collapse, and the United States currently has one of the highest levels of inequality in the history of the world.

Guest lecture on the development of conditions and characteristics of moral thinking about mindfulness in America, Oct. 27, 12:10-1 p.m.

The process of communicating information is known among anthropologists as cultural transmission, and there was a time when it did not exist, when humans or more likely their smaller brained ancestors did not pass on knowledge. Luke Premo, an associate professor of anthropology, would like to know when that was. Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, he and three colleagues challenge a widely accepted notion that cultural transmission goes back more than 2 million years.

PULLMAN, Wash. – The importance of cacao and macaws in trade and ritual in the ancient Southwest will be discussed by a visiting anthropologist at 4:10 p.m. Monday, April 3, in Todd Hall 130.

By Will Ferguson, College of Arts & Sciences

PULLMAN, Wash. – Washington State University archaeologists are at the helm of new research using sophisticated computer technology to learn how past societies responded to climate change.

By Eric Sorensen, WSU science writer

PULLMAN, Wash. – While the popular notion of the American Thanksgiving is less than 400 years old, the turkey has been part of American lives for more than 2,000 years. But for much of that time, the bird was more revered than eaten.