Mark Schurr, professor and acting chair of Notre Dame’s Department of Anthropology, is dedicated to research that doesn’t just serve academic ends, but can also do good for the world. At his latest research site — the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Joliet, Illinois — he is exploring what life was like for 17th-century Native Americans and working to determine how to best restore the area to a natural environment that allows visitors to enjoy and learn from the land. 
 

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Notre Dame Department of Anthropology Professors Donna Glowacki and Anna Rivara lend a helping hand on Saturday March 24th for the Faculty Build Habitat for Humanity event.…

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News Article on Professor Jim McKenna and his Irish-American Tap Dance class in Washington Hall.…

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Agustín Fuentes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Endowed Chair in Anthropology, has been selected to deliver the 2018 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Founded by the jurist Adam Lord Gifford, the renowned lecture series invites pre-eminent scholars to address topics related to theology, philosophy, and science. Fuentes is the second consecutive College of Arts and Letters faculty member to be chosen.

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Professor Mark Schurr and his colleague Madeleine McLeester are mentioned in an Associated Press article on their drone collaboration with Dartmouth College, "Old, meet new: Drones, hight-tech camera revamp archaeology".…

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This November, a group of Notre Dame Anthropology undergraduate and graduate students joined a weekend opportunity to visit The Field Museum with Professor Mark Golitko and Professor Rahul Oka, who share professional connections and ongoing expertise with the Field Museum. Senior Anthropology Major, Nicholas Furnari, shared his report.

The Department of Anthropology is delighted that our Anthropology Majors and Minors can continue to share direct experiences with our faculty as part of the close longstanding relationship between our two institutions.

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Agustín Fuentes finds the four predominant arguments that seek to explain human evolution and human nature to be compelling but extremely simplified. Years of research and an emphasis on cross-disciplinary conversations has instead led him to a more complete story of human evolution. Creativity and collaboration, he argues in The Creative Spark, are the most important explanations for why we are the way we are.

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Assistant Professor Mark Golitko is fascinated by social networks — prehistoric social networks, that is. By using elemental chemistry to figure out where archaeological objects like ceramics were produced and how they moved around, he can learn a great deal about the communication patterns of people who lived thousands of years ago.

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Notre Dame researchers suggest that the origin of both colic and SIDS may be related to the gradual emergence of an infant’s ability to voluntarily control the release of air through the vocal track.

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When the Wauja people tell a story about their history and culture, the words they choose convey a deep meaning about the indigenous Brazilian tribe’s interconnectedness to its landscape. Christopher Ball wants to delve into that relationship between language and place. Funded by an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, the assistant professor of anthropology is exploring how the Wauja people use words to create an identity that ties their culture to a nearby river and chronicling that meaning for future generations.

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