Topic description and stories

Vision in the field: Photography from social anthropology

23 Jan 2024

The University’s Department of Social Anthropology studies how people live: what they make, do, think and the organisation of their relationships...

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Britain's first colonial anthropology experiment revealed

12 Jun 2021

A new exhibition at MAA examines the pioneering ethnographic archive assembled by Britain’s first colonial anthropologist, Cambridge alumnus...

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The unschooled anthropologist working with Q'eqchi' weavers

24 Sep 2019

Living for ten months with Q’eqchi’ weavers in the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala, PhD student Callie Vandewiele watched and listened as the women crafted...

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Agta family relaxing in the late afternoon

Farmers have less leisure time than hunter-gatherers, study suggests

21 May 2019

Hunter-gatherers in the Philippines who convert to farming work around ten hours a week longer than their forager neighbours, a new study suggests...

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Travelling to a peatland area with the Urarina.

The cultural significance of carbon-storing peatlands to rural communities

21 May 2019

A group of UK and Peruvian researchers have carried out the first detailed study of how rural communities interact with peatlands in the Peruvian...

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Buyankhishig criss-crossed the hillside before making offerings of vodka and milk. Then, beating her drum and chanting, she invited her ancestral spirits to enter her body.

Ailing bodies, angry mountains, healing spirits: shamanic healing in Mongolia

18 Jan 2019

Through sound and photography, Cambridge researcher Dr Elizabeth Turk shares her experiences of talking to shamanic healers in Mongolia. Over the...

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One of the three Mesolithic deer skull headdresses from the new exhibition

Mysterious 11,000-year-old skull headdresses go on display in Cambridge

21 Jun 2018

Three 11,500-year-old deer skull headdresses – excavated from a world-renowned archaeological site in Yorkshire – will go on display, one for the...

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All the things

Living in a material world: why 'things' matter

18 Oct 2017

Things structure our lives. They enrich us, embellish us and express our hopes and fears. Here, to introduce a month-long focus on research on...

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Necklet worn by a royal bodyguard, gifted in 1902 by Apolo Kagwa, Katikiro of Uganda

Two million years of human stories

12 Oct 2017

Every object in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology tells not just one but many stories. The Museum’s collections chronicle two million years...

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A head-hunter's skull from Nagaland which was worn on the chest of a Konyak warrior who had captured an enemy head.

Another India exhibition gives voice to India’s most marginalised communities

08 Mar 2017

Hundreds of objects which tell the story of 100 million of India’s most marginalised citizens – its Indigenous and Adivasi people – are to go on...

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Rougier Gabon

‘Traditional authority’ linked to rates of deforestation in Africa

24 Nov 2015

New analysis reveals a strong correlation between precolonial institutions in Africa and current levels of deforestation. Researchers suggest that...

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Knowing me, knowing you

20 Oct 2015

What can museum collections tell us about people and their stories? On Sunday 25 October 2015, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will host...

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