Four Stone Hearth #83 - The Avatar Edition

Welcome to the newest installment of the four field anthropology blog carnival Four Stone Hearth. As the carnival enters into a new decade there were many wonderful voices clamoring for attention.

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Cultural

Savage Minds offers a few thoughts on the Na'vi from the James Cameron blockbuster Avatar.

USC Anthropologist Nancy Lutkehaus discusses her impressions after working as an adviser on the set of Avatar.

Sheril at The Intersection reflects on the Science of Avatar Part 1 and Part 2.

Mark at Ethnography.com looks at how The growing work of anthropologists with the military parallels the evolution of design anthropology - 15 years later...

I posted a humorous short film that depicts a young Inuit man seeking to do his part to solve the climate crisis.

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Linguistic

Paul R. Frommer discusses the language he created for the Na'vi in the film Avatar.

Music000001 has a series of posts investigating the saturation of tone languages in Africa under the headline The Baseline Scenarios.

Maju at Leherensuge chronicles how Rare Celtic and Phoenician names add credibility to the Iruña-Veleia findings.

Abnormal Interests looks at the difficulties of lexicography in his post "Canonical Selection As An Obstacle To Understanding The Canonical Text".

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Archaeology

Martin at Aardvarchaeology has unearthed the highlights from the latest Archaeology magazines.

At Digging the Dirt, an archaeologist offers some advice on how to enter the field.

Anthropology.net describes the latest discovery of a "Lithic Assemblage Dated to 1.57 Million Years Found at Lézignan-la-Cébe, Southern France".

Could mitochondrial DNA help researchers better understand the mammoths? Heather at The Archaeology Magazine Blog explores the issue in her post "Ghosts of Mammoths Past."

Timothy Webmoor at Archeolog presents an excellent discussion of "'Epistemography' and Archaeological Assembling. A Manifesto for Media."

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Biological/Evolutionary

John Hawks details the new evidence for "Methylation in Neandertals."

Greg Laden explains "Why Human Brains Vary."

Anthropology.net details "A New Homo erectus (Zhoukoudian V) Brain Endocast From China - Free to Access".

At Anna's Bones she explores the question "Why be monogamous when you can pretend to be monogamous?" with her post Wickedly Wired.

Zinjanthropus at A Primate of Modern Aspect describes the latest finding of the "Miocene "Monkey": Pliopithecus canmatensis".

Ad hominin critiques the findings of a recently discovered partial jaw from Guangxi that is claimed to challenge the 'out of Africa' model of modern human origins in his post, "One chin does not a modern human make."

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Applied/Theoretical Anthropology

Krystal at Anthropology in Practice explores how Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow.

Zero Anthropology presents the post "Anthropology and the Rise of the Social Sciences within the Structures of Knowledge - Immanuel Wallerstein" and discusses the prospects for building an anti-imperialist anthropology.

Middle Savagery tells of their experience employing anthropology in Second Life with their post "Ãatalhöyük in Second Life, Fall 2009".

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That does it for this installment of Four Stone Hearth. The next edition will be January 13 at A Primate of Modern Aspect. Until then, keep evolving.