archaeology | Platypus

Does Everything Belong Back Home? Rethinking Repatriation in the Brazilian Context

 Amanda Domingues  October 28, 2026

Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.

The process of repatriation—or the return of artifacts to their origin communities around the world—has taken center stage globally, drawing intense interest from anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and museum professionals. It remains as much a domestic (within nations) discussion as an international one. The debate plays out on both scales because there exist at least two opposing views on who owns cultural heritage. One side argues that cultural objects form a national cultural heritage—a view known as cultural nationalism (Merryman 1986). In contrast, those who advocate for a cultural internationalism view these objects as part of a shared human culture that belongs to all humanity. From this international perspective, an artifact’s country of origin or current location does not matter because cultural property belongs to “everyone” (Appiah 2009). Therefore, protecting and preserving it becomes everyone’s interest and responsibility. (read more...)

Tracing the Legacy of Human Resilience in the Debris of Ancient Campfires

 Aylar Abdolahzadeh  June 8, 2026

این محتوا همچنین به زبان انگلیسی موجود است.

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In the summer of 2015, I was a first-year graduate student when I joined a field project at La Ferrassie, a Neandertal’ site tucked into the Périgord region of southwest France. We camped in the backyard of the late Harold Dibble’s dig house in the small town of Carsac-Aillac, where the morning air smelled of walnuts and apple trees, and the sunset turned the golden bales of hay into glowing embers each evening (Fig 1). (read more...)

What’s in a Name?

 Faridah Laffan  April 27, 2026

Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.

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“My Dear Sir,” wrote Henry Fox Talbot one Wednesday in late 1870, “I am informed by Mr. Cooper that a new Society under your auspices is going to be…formed for the promotion of Egyptian and Assyrian Archæology and Biblical Chronology…It will perhaps be difficult to devise a suitable name for the Society, that of Syro-Egyptian being preoccupied. Perhaps Egypto-Chaldæan would do – I know nothing of the Syro-Egyptian beyond its name, but I suppose from the fact of your promoting a new society, that you think the Syro-Egyptian a failure.” Talbot was a British aristocrat and a scholar of Assyrian cuneiform, writing to Dr. Samuel Birch, keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. The two men had corresponded about Assyrian antiquity for almost twenty years, working to decipher cuneiform texts stamped into ancient clay tablets. Birch’s response was swift. His new project would combine the Syro-Egyptian Society with another organization, the Chronological Institute, to create an expanded journal for “researches connected with Biblical lands.” (read more...)

Platypod, Episode Two: Ableism in Anthropology and Higher Ed

 Laura Heath-Stout, Rebecca-Eli Long  August 9, 2022

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In this episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Laura Heath-Stout (Brandeis University) and Rebecca-Eli Long (Purdue University). They discuss their research and experiences of ableism in academia, anthropology, and higher ed, in general. This episode was created with the participation of Laura Heath-Stout (Brandeis University, speaker), Rebecca-Eli Long (Purdue University, speaker), Kim Fernandes (University of Pennsylvania, host), Svetlana Borodina (Columbia University, host), Gebby Keny (Rice University, sound editor), and Angela VandenBroek (Texas State University, CASTAC web producer). The transcript of their conversation (edited for comprehension) is available below. (read more...)

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in Epistemologies – The Line Between Bodies and Ideas?

 Nathan Klembara  May 31, 2022

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A recent trend in the sciences is the attempt to create inclusive research spaces, as evidenced by the formation of new diversity, equity, and inclusion (hereafter, DEI) initiatives, guidelines, and hiring practices. Archaeology, a field science that has long grappled with discriminatory, dangerous, and exclusionary research conditions, has also made strides to create safe and equitable spaces. However, the very epistemic foundations and practices of the discipline are yet to reflect the orientation toward inclusion. In today’s archaeology, the concepts of “data,” “methodology,” and “rigor” (among others), which form the bedrock of scientific endeavor, still reproduce the dominant Western views of science that at their core are fundamentally heteronormative. Those theoretical approaches in archaeology that are directly concerned with minority identities, values, and politics (e.g. Critical Race Theory, feminist theory, Indigenous studies) continue to be marginalized. The marginalization of these theoretical approaches is an unfortunate development because many of these works challenge the epistemic core of what we do as researchers. They have the potential to transform what we think of as good research, not just what this research produces. (read more...)

Alchemy, Metallurgy, and Modern Chemistry in Post-Medieval Europe: An Intersection of Archaeological Science and the History of Science

 Yi-Ting Hsu  November 2, 2021

What is the first image conjured up in your mind by the word “alchemy”? Influenced by popular culture, it is tempting to picture: somewhere in Renaissance Europe, in a dark dungeon, groups of alchemists fiddling with crucibles over some “book of secrets,” on a quest for the philosophers’ stone, and in pursuit of “transmutation” (i.e. making gold). The exclusivity and secrecy behind alchemy seem to suggest alchemy was the opposite of enlightenment, progress, and modern science. However, there are increasing numbers of studies indicating otherwise (e.g. Martinón-Torres and Rehren, 2005; Martinón-Torres, 2012; Mongiatti, 2009; Veronesi et al., 2021). The practice of alchemy could be more scientific, methodical, and industrial than people have previously imagined. In fact, before 1753, the words “chemistry” and “alchemy” were synonymous (Martinón-Torres and Rehren, 2005). (read more...)

Assembling an Actor-Network Theory Archaoelogy

 Eduard Fanthome  March 18, 2021

When I first thought of putting Science and Technology Studies (STS) and archaeology in conversation, several aspects of this conversation seemed obvious. Given that things and human interactions with things are central to both fields of inquiry, I thought that it would largely be a discussion about epistemologies and the way that the “social,” as a field of action, is constructed by both disciplines. (read more...)

Neolithic Plumbing: The Landscape is a Machine

 Scott W Schwartz  December 4, 2019

Water is, among its many attributes, fluid. Left to its own devices it runs, spills, flows, leaks, crashes, and splashes. Holding H2O still is nearly impossible above 0°C. An ambitious enough goal in water management is containment and, if lucky, control. Mastery over the whims of water is of paramount concern today across a number of socio-environmental spheres—coasts flood, deserts desiccate, Flint contaminates, and California incinerates. The various infrastructural and political hydrology problems posed by Anthropocene conditions have inspired a number of technocratic and neoliberal solutions (e.g., the $118 billion storm surge gates in New York or monetization of dehydration in Africa). A brief look at archaic relationships between water and society, however, suggests conceptual alternatives to such high-energy and high-cost survival designs. Two such examples are examined below: the gravitational plumbing at the Neolithic* site of Smerquoy in the Orkney Islands and the Persian yakhchāl, a pre-Alexandrian ‘icebox’. These (read more...)