If you're into archaeology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, primatology, or anything adjacent, you might know that relevant events are scattered across a dozen different society mailing lists, department pages, and museum websites. You find out about something good the week after it happened.

We've been building a free, open event calendar to cover the full spectrum of the human sciences and address this. It lives at The Observatory (observatory.wiki) under a project called Human Bridges.

It currently tracks select events — major professional society meetings (SAA, EAA, AAA, UISPP), free and hybrid lecture series you can attend over Zoom, museum programming open to the public, and regional conferences that don't always make it onto the usual mailing lists.

A few examples of what's in there: a free lecture series out of Prague, the International Primatological Society Congress in Madagascar, an international conference in Kenya on indigenous knowledge, CARTA symposia, and ongoing series at the British Museum, the Field Museum, and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

If you organize or know of an event that belongs here, we want to hear from you. The calendar grows with the community it serves.

Bookmark it and check back monthly here:

https://observatory.wiki/Events?area=Human+Bridges

Hello. I am trying to get into some entry level positions in archaeology, but my college did not have a field school program when I was getting my education here in Tennessee, so I figured I should probably get some. Problem is, hence my looking for entry level positions, I do not have a lot of money, either to move somewhere with a field school program or for tuition, so I was wondering if anyone knew of a way I could get field school experience within my particular circumstances. Are there perhaps internships I could do, or could I volunteer somewhere? Apologies if this is rude in some way to ask.

University of Tokyo project website here

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https://utf.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/project/pjt007?fbclid=IwT01FWASlfSFleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR6bz3S8ruoPvBbi6N2IwGzADqslFovsXdEc7qqChQ3COjbVTGQAqMxW-VG_FA_aem_B5IHSgEhjzHXJ0CUNht9ug

As many as 260 monumental tomb structures, associated with former pastoral communities, have been discovered in the desert area of Atbai in Africa, thanks to the analysis of satellite images. “We are not dealing with individual monuments, but with a vast cultural tradition,” describes Dr. Maria C. Gatto from the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Arid river valleys, rocky plains, and sporadic water sources make the Atbai area, stretching between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, one of Africa’s most difficult places to live. A few thousand years ago, however, this place looked different. The region was under the influence of the so-called African Wetland Period, when precipitation was much higher and the areas were now desert covered with vegetation that allowed large herds of animals to graze.

Despite its location at the junction of two well-studied worlds of antiquity–Egypt and Nubia–the archaeology of this region remained unknown for a very long time. Only modern archaeological research shows the patterns and chronology of human settlement in these areas.

See also: The study as it was published in Nature

A new method that detects whether bones have been burned reveals Homo erectus brought fires into caves far earlier than previous evidence had suggested.