MSU Department of Anthropology < ANTHROPOLOGY • Follow 2h • 0 ... The Department of Anthropology is saddened to announce that former anthropology department chair Lynne Goldstein passed away yesterday. Goldstein (PhD Northwestern 1976) moved to MSU from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She served as MSU department chair from fall 1996 through summer 2006 and retired in August 2018. Lynne was founding director of the Campus Archaeology Program (CAP), which was named one of the winners of the 2017 Governor's Awards for Historic Preservation in recognition of people and organizations who have preserved Michigan's vital historic and cultural resources. She served as the editor of American Antiquity, the journal published by the Society for American Archaeology, and received numerous awards from that organization, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Lynne was also a 1992 recipient of a President's Award for Exceptional Service to the Profession by the American Anthropological Association. She is best known for her contributions to mortuary studies, as well as her work in Illinois, Wisconsin and in the Great Lakes region, particularly at the Aztalan site. The department sends its heartfelt condolences to Lynne's family and those who knew her best.

Photo of Lynne Goldstein

This is sad. Lynne Goldstein was an amazing archaeologist and formidable mentor. RIP 🏺🧪

Screenshot of a PDF of the published article. Title: "The tie that binds us? Challenging the primacy of DNA in kinship studies and re-centring community in defining human connections across time"

DNA is not the same as kinship.

Our perspective paper argues that treating genetics as the ultimate proof of identity or family can:

• erase community-defined relationships
• reinforce Western biases
• and even cause real harm in policy + research

Special Issue: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🌸 Kinship Trouble isn’t a crisis—it’s an opportunity: to rethink kinship through collaborative and interdisciplinary research across archaeology, ancient DNA, and socio-cultural anthropology. With @pennybickle.bsky.social & Maanasa Raghavan @genscapelab.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Next Innovation in Higher Education: Vibe-Teaching™ As the associate vice provost for the Office of Asynchronous Online Courses for Student-Centered High-Impact Learning (OAOCSCHIL, an office we crea...

"In lieu of learning outcomes, we now ask whether students have a warm sense of what learning might feel like and whether they can recall, with confidence, that they took 'chemistry.' If so, we mark that as 'exceeds expectations.'"

1/ Good morning, Europe! Now that you're awake, I'll make a little thread about what we are doing in this paper!

This is part of a special issue on kinship in archaeology ed by @pennyend.bsky.social, Sabina Cvecek and Manaasa Raghavan. All the articles and the three commentaries are very worthwhile

Hot off the press!! New open access special edition of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal on "Kinship Trouble". www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

All papers are open access, and the papers, I think, really capture this dynamic moment in studies of past kinship.

A skeleton discovered in a Dutch church may belong to musketeer d'Artagnan Human remains found in a church in the Netherlands could be those of d'Artagnan, one of the legendary French swordsmen who inspired the novel The Three Musketeers.

Human remains found in a church in the Netherlands could be those of d'Artagnan, one of the legendary French swordsmen who inspired the novel The Three Musketeers. n.pr/47xN0dL

Stone Age woman was buried like a man, revealing flexible gender roles 7,000 years ago in Hungary A study of 125 skeletons from two Neolithic cemeteries in Hungary has revealed that men and women had clear gender roles — but sometimes those roles were fluid.

Gender roles in Neolithic Hungary may have been more flexible than researchers previously expected. 🏺🧪

Katherine Amato, 2026 Mid-Career Research Award. Dr. Amato combines primatological, physiological, and microbiome data to address questions about how the microbiome functions and interacts with different hosts and environments to affect fitness and health. She has also developed and assessed methods for obtaining data from non-invasive samples from wild primates.

Join us in congratulating our outstanding members who have received the prestigious AABA annual awards for 2026.

The 2026 Mid-Career Research award recipient is Katherine Amato from Northwestern University !

The NSF Bio Anthro Program DDRIG, Cultural Anthrpology DDRIG, and Archaeology DDRIG have all been archived (as of yesterday afternoon). Please speak with your grad students and plan accordingly. To say I am angry and depressed about this is an understatement.

a blue background with pink rays and the words big news ALT: a blue background with pink rays and the words big news

The results are in!
79% of the ISBA membership voted for the next host of ISBA12...

And ISBA 12 will be hosted by:
The University of Burgos (Spain)!!!

Sabina Cveček  - Archaeological Institute of America AIA National Lecture Program Lecturer Sabina Cveček

🌟 Excited to hit the road soon as part of the Archaeological Institute of America’s National Lecture Program — honored to be one of this year’s National Lecturers! bit.ly/4n9YrgN I'll speak and meet colleagues in #Milwaukee (WI), #Spokane (WA) & #NewOrleans (LA)! @archaeological.org #archaeology

Come work with us! SUNY Cortland is hiring a tenure-track bioanthropologist with experience in #bioarchaeology and #Forensic Anthropology jobs.cortland.edu/postings/10331 #academia #jobs #anthropology

Come work with us! SUNY Cortland is hiring a tenure-track bioanthropologist with experience in #bioarchaeology and #Forensic Anthropology jobs.cortland.edu/postings/10331 #academia #jobs #anthropology

🦣🍖🧬 Fully funded 3-yr PhD in palaeogenomics & bioinformatics! Help me push non-model palaeogenomes beyond their limits @DTU in Denmark.

Start: Feb 2026 (flexible)
Application deadline: 24 Oct 2025

For details click here: tinyurl.com/BioExtPhD

Reposts appreciated 😁

🚨 I am hiring!

Join me at Masaryk University as a postdoc researcher in human #bioarchaeology & #isotope analysis. Work on past mobility, diet & funerary practices using cutting-edge lab facilities.

⏳ Apply by 1 June 2025
📍Brno, CZ
🔗 euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/339250

NEH Announces $9.55 Million for 68 Humanities Projects

#NEH finally released its list of Spring awardees. Congrats to all the recipients, but the fact that only 18 #SummerStipends were awarded is beyond disappointing. #FundNEH #FundNEA #FundNSF www.neh.gov/news/neh-ann...

One’s sex biology is important and plays a major role in how any given individual engages with gender and other cultural dynamics of their society. But it is neither simple nor uniform, nor binary. It’s biocultural. A🧵...

Time to catch up on the past week’s news about science and medicine in the US. Whew. 1/10

So far, Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias have come out against this piece which means you know with 100% certainty that Ed is correct and you should listen to what he’s saying

Alternative history isn’t a jumble of fringe theories—it’s a deliberate ideology designed to sow distrust in history and archaeology in order to replace them with its own "hidden truths." To do this, it preys on people's credulity, spinning myths of lost civilizations and advanced ancient tech.

For those of you who applied for Summer Stipend Grants via #NEH last fall, I have heard from them via email that the program will announce in the next few weeks. #Grants #SummerStipend

One reason these “pronatalist” proposals won’t work is that they’re organised around a family model that is highly unusual & involves relatively novel gender roles.

Petition to have “traditional” family values renamed: Conservative? Novel? Unnatural…?

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Proud that my institution's president signed this

Call for Applications: Design Workshop on Bridging Archaeological Synthesis and Machine Learning - CfAS Apply now to participate in a Fall 2025 workshop that brings archaeologists, heritage managers, and data scientists together to explore how machine learning can contribute to archaeological data synth...

Through the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis we are leading a workshop focused on the future of machine learning approaches to archaeological synthesis, and cultural heritage. Have a look at the call that was just circulated.

AI industry giants owe their existence to taxpayer-funded, open research, but many have abandoned this collaborative model. I spoke to The Atlantic about how US science and tech leadership was built on shared knowledge. When companies hoard research, innovation suffers and accountability declines.

[1] One of the strange things about BlueSky is realising that American users, in general, don’t realise that Europeans have an in-depth knowledge of the US. Many of them assume we know as little, as they do about us.

The logical endpoint of the arguments, promoted by the "heterodox" crowd, that peer review is "censorship" & academic freedom is equivalent to freedom of speech 👇 Science dies, because science depends on evaluation of evidence (peer review) & criticism of bad ideas (not counter to academic freedom)

Illustration of a child holding an umbrella over a cat. The text reads "Mental health is shaped by more than just the mind. housing jobs inequality education"

New WHO #MentalHealth guidance provides all countries with practical tools to strengthen policies & services.

It tackles social factors that affect mental health like poverty & housing, ensures people with lived experience have a voice, & promotes rights-based care.

Learn more: bit.ly/4lgVjjk