Search

Video: Anthropology, Colonialism, and the Exploration of Indigenous Australia

Page

In 1938–1939, Harvard University funded an expedition to Australia aimed at understanding how colonization had affected Indigenous peoples and their physiology, and at informing government policy as it shifted from segregation to assimilation. Led by...

Video: Conserving the Great Apes in a Changing World

Page

Conserving species, particularly the “charismatic megafauna,” has been a focus of conservation efforts for many decades. With a growing human population, the protection of any single species—compared to the conservation of a landscape or ecosystem—can...

Video: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Page

In A Fool’s Errand (Smithsonian, 2019), Lonnie Bunch shares the vision and leadership he brought to the realization of the National Museum of African American History and Culture—a dream shared by many generations of Americans. Bunch’s deeply personal...

Video: Souvenir, Art, or Anthropology?

Page

When is a photograph a souvenir? A work of art? Anthropological data? How can tourist photographs, produced to appeal to foreign visitors of “exotic” lands, become scientific data? Based on his studies of the Peabody Museum’s collection of early...

Video: Origins of the Silk Roads

Page

Approximately 4,000 years ago, the peoples of China and Eurasia gradually began to develop networks of interaction and exchange that radically transformed the cultures of both regions. These networks eventually gave rise to the Silk Road trade routes...

Troubling Images: Curating Collections of Historical Photographs

Page

Speakers Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph A.B.P. and Principal Fellow Decolonising Photography at University of the Arts London Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums Ilisa Barbash, Curator of Visual Anthropology...

Video: Traces and Tracks: Journeys with the San

Page

For nearly three decades, Paul Weinberg has travelled to Namibia, Botswana and South Africa to document the lives of hunter-gatherer communities, the San (Africa’s first people) and their struggles to hang on to their land, culture, and values, as they...

Video: The Cinema of Patience: Reflecting on N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman

Page

Thirty years after its release, N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman remains an exemplar of ethnographic filmmaking. Directed and edited by John Marshall and Adrienne Miesmer, the film documents the life of N!ai, a Ju/hoan woman and the harsh realities of...

Video: The Other American Revolution: Archaeology and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680

Page

Why is one of the most successful Indigenous rebellions in the Americas nearly unknown? In 1680 the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico rose up against their European colonizers. For the next twelve years the Pueblos lived free from Spanish oppression, a period...

Video: The Allure of Collecting Arms and Armor

Page

From dynastic armories and curiosity cabinets to Gothic Revival castles, private collections, and modern museums, armor and weapons have been methodically collected, studied, and preserved for their artistic and historical importance, beginning in the...

Video: The Amazonian Travels of Richard Evans Schultes

Page

Richard Evans Schultes—ethnobotanist, taxonomist, writer, photographer, and Harvard professor—is regarded as one of the most important plant explorers of the twentieth century. In 1941, Schultes traveled to the Amazon rainforest on a mission to study how...

Acerca del Museo Peabody

Page

Nuestra misión El Museo Peabody de la Universidad de Harvard conecta a las personas con el patrimonio cultural que custodia. Nos comprometemos a amplificar las voces y los conocimientos de las comunidades indígenas, descendientes y de la diáspora para...