News by Subject Social & Behavior

It's time to write about Indigenous Australian place relationships in a new way -- in a language that speaks in Indigenous terms first, to convey a rich meaning of Country and best identify its deep ecological and social relevance to Aboriginal people. Flinders University anthropologist Professor Amanda Kearney details the need for this shift in an expansive new research paper that considers themes of species maintenance and place engagement.

Researchers hope put to rest a century-old scientific debate by demonstrating that the low-level organism S. roeseli is capable of decision making. They also offer the video evidence to prove it.

The ancient Romans relied on long-distance timber trading to construct their empire, according to a study published Dec. 4, 2019, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mauro Bernabei from the National Research Council, Italy, and colleagues.

A study of diverse datasets, including pollen, coinage, and funeral practices, reveals that the effects of the late antique plague pandemic commonly known as the Justinianic Plague may have been overestimated.

Researchers can track cultural changes across ancient Africa by tracking the sizes of ostrich eggshell beads, according to a study published Nov. 27, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jennifer Miller of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and Elizabeth Sawchuk of Stony Brook University.

Little is known about the origins of manikins -- small anatomical sculptures thought to be used by doctors four centuries ago -- but now advanced imaging techniques have offered a revealing glimpse inside these captivating ivory dolls. Researchers using micro-CT successfully identified the material composition and components of several ancient ivory manikins, according to a new study.