Winifred Creamer, a professor of anthropology at Northern Illinois University, offered an anthropological perspective on the famous Hollywood archaeologist Indiana Jones in a recent NPR piece titled, "Indiana Jones: Saving History or Stealing It?" Creamer stated, "Indiana Jones walks a fine line between what's an archaeologist and what's a professional looter.”

Newsweek magazine covered issues surrounding the U.S. military’s Human Terrain System this week with an article profiling several civilian anthropologists employed (or previously employed) in the Pentagon’s $40 million program. AAA president Setha Low responded to the article with the following letter.

Nadia Abu El-Haj was the focus of a recent Atlantic Monthly article about Abu El-Haj's controversial bid for tenure at Columbia University last fall.  The Atlantic Monthly article also quotes AAA President-Elect Virginia Dominguez, who served as Abu El-Haj's advisor.

Susan Brownell of University of Missouri was profiled for her research on China’s sports culture and the Beijing Olympics in a recent Wall Street Journal article. In the article, Brownell, formerly a nationally-ranked U.S. track-and-field athlete counters stereotypes of China as an “evil medal machine” and explains China’s sporting tradition of horse racing, wrestling and martial arts.

The National Academy of Science announced in late March the discovery of the oldest gold jewelry made in the Americas, recently discovered in a burial site near Lake Titcaca in Southern Peru. Anthropologist Mark Aldenderfer of University of Arizona described the discovery as “a complete shock” in an Associated Press article. Heather Lechtman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the discovery, described the design as “very interesting for such a very early piece of jewelry.”

Robin Nagle, a professor at New York University and “anthropologist in residence” at the New York City Sanitation Department, was profiled in the New York Times for ethnographic research on the world of garbage collection. The article, "No Trash Talking at This Museum to the Clean Team" describes Nagle’s work developing “Loaded Out: Making a Museum,” a six-week sanitation museum, which she developed with the help of her NYU students. 

Jennifer Jackson, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, brought a linguistic perspective to discussions on Barack Obama's "race and unity" speech by analyzing his oratorical strategies in a recent U.S. News and World Report interview.  < Read more.

Bill Bass, a retired professor of anthropology at University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville, and founder of the Body Farm research facility at UT, was spotlighted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution for his work with the "Body Farm" novels, a crime series, which Bass and writer Jon Jefferson co-author under the pseudonym Jefferson Bass. The writing team's upcoming book is titled, "The Devil's Bones."  

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley and founding director of Organs Watch, spoke in early February at the first international UN Forum on Trafficking in Humans, where she called attention to the sale and theft of human organs for transplant surgery and the role of transplant surgeons in collaborating with criminal organ trafficking networks. This news story was covered by the Associated Press. < Read More 

Daniel Halperin, senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, was spotlighted in Time and Newsweek magazines last December for his breakthrough research on male circumcision and HIV transmission. Halperin's research on "male circumcision for HIV prevention," was listed as Time Magazine’s Top Medical Breakthrough of 2007. It was also listed as #15 in Discover magazine’s Top 100 Science Stories of 2007.  < Read More

Ted Bestor, chair of the anthropology department at Harvard University and an executive board member of the AAA, was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes on January 13 in "The King of Sushi," a segment on the global tuna trade and the crisis of overfishing. < Read More

Robert Leopold, director of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, published a review of Dana Milbank’s recent mock ethnography, “Homo Politicus: The Strange and Barbaric Tribes of the Beltway.” Leopold describes Milbank’s satirical depiction of the Potomac Man as a “cheerfully wicked account.” < Read the review