Anthropology, Harvard University

04/14/2026

Harvard Anthropology invites you to our upcoming seminar with MIT’s Admir Masic:


“Unfinished in Pompeii: Insights into Ancient Roman Self-healing Concrete Technology”

Discover how the Roman architectural revolution—powered by hydraulic cement—reshaped the ancient world, and how its legacy might inspire more sustainable building practices today. Drawing on rare evidence from an active construction site frozen in time by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, this talk bridges archaeology, materials science, and engineering to explore the remarkable durability of ancient Roman concrete and its self-healing properties.

📍 Tozzer Building, Room 203

📅 Thursday, April 16 | 3:00 PM

All are welcome — we hope to see you there.

04/14/2026

What happens when anthropology meets robotics? 🤖🚶

In a new feature from The FAS Current, Professor Ryo Morimoto invites students to do something unexpected: walk across campus with a robot.

The assignment isn’t just about technology—it’s about paying attention. By observing how people respond to robots in everyday spaces, students explore questions of ethics, social interaction, and what it means to share our world with machines. As robots increasingly move into public life, anthropology offers essential tools for understanding how humans adapt, react, and relate.

Read more at the link in our bio!

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Special thanks to Christy DeSmith for her coverage of this story!

04/14/2026

We're excited to share a new feature on Professor Jason Ur from our colleagues at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS)! 🔍

Jason Ur, our Stephen Phillips Professor of Archaeology and Ethnology, has spent the last several years turning the same tools he uses to map ancient cities in Iraq (drones, ground-penetrating radar, geospatial databases) toward a history much closer to home. His research has uncovered nearly 50 unmarked graves in Cambridge's Old Burying Ground, likely belonging to enslaved people who lived and worked in Harvard faculty households in the early 1700s—many of them never given a formal headstone.

The spatial patterns he's found across more than 20 Boston-area cemeteries tell a consistent and sobering story of segregation in death, just as in life. It's a powerful reminder that archaeology isn't only about the distant past.

Head to the link in our bio to read the full IQSS story.

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Cover Photo: Jason Ur at the gravestone of Joseph Lamson, "my favorite gravestone carver"

All story content credit to IQSS and writer Courtney Hayes.

04/14/2026

A fresh chapter for the Zooarchaeology Lab 🦴✨

Assistant Professor Shayla Monroe is bringing new life to this “hidden gem” inside the Peabody Museum, transforming it into a more welcoming, organized, and student-centered space for research and teaching.

Home to over 1,300 animal specimens and a globally significant collection built by Richard H. Meadow (Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Zooarchaeology Laboratory), the lab is supported by Lab Manager Jesse Wolfhagen and continues to expand hands-on learning opportunities for students.

Monroe emphasized: “This space is very important to our discipline… it deserved more resources.”

From identifying bone “modifications” to exploring how humans and animals have shaped each other across time, the lab is more dynamic than ever—and connects closely to Monroe’s broader teaching, including Anthropology of the African Holocene.

🔗 Read more at The FAS Current (link in bio)

Story and photo credit to: Christy DeSmith, Jeffrey Yang, and Stephanie Mitchell.

02/13/2026

Final day of the exhibition "Chain Reactions".

01/23/2026

12/23/2025

What’s beneath Harvard Yard?

Undergraduate researchers are uncovering material traces of Harvard’s earliest years as part of the Harvard Yard Archaeology Project, now in its 20th anniversary season.

Learn More: https://anthropology.fas.harvard.edu/news/2025/12/harvard-gazette-digging-old-harvard

11/07/2025

We're pleased to share news from The Harvard Crimson featuring Professor Jason Ur and Johns Hopkins University professor (formerly a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University) Aja M. Lans, who are mapping racial segregation in the Old Burying Ground cemetery to uncover colonial burial trends in New England.

"Ur and Lans presented their research findings on the enslaved individuals buried there at an event hosted by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture last week.

The Old Burying Ground, which is located across the street from Harvard Yard, served as the burial site for many prominent Cambridge families and past Harvard affiliates, including Henry Dunster and John Leverett, for approximately 200 years since its establishment around 1635.

But people enslaved by Harvard affiliates, including two enslaved women named Cicely and Jane, are also buried in the cemetery — along with Charles Lenox, a free 18th century Black entrepreneur who worked for the University, and his daughter, Susan.

Ur and Lans are investigating the Old Burying Ground and other cemeteries around Massachusetts to research the history of slavery and burial practices in colonial New England.

Their research has found that the burials of Black individuals were all located on the outskirts of the site, with many lacking headstones or proper identification."

Continue reading:

Harvard archaeology professor Jason Ur and Johns Hopkins professor Aja M. Lans presented their findings on the enslaved individuals buried in the Old Burying Ground cemetery across from Harvard Yard last Wednesday.

09/22/2025

All are welcome to join us for our next Seminar Series talk this Thursday, 9/25 at 3:00pm in Tozzer Rm. 203!

Pablo Gutierrez from the American School of Prehistoric Research (Harvard University), will present “Navigating through wadis and tombs: Landscape archaeology and ancient nomadism in the Northeastern Horn of Africa.”

Abstract:
Landscapes as well as nomadic pastoralists are difficult to define, ever-changing and on the move. But it is this elusiveness what make them fascinating. Difficult to trace due to their constant seasonal movements in search of foraging areas and water, nomadic pastoralists left few material traces. This characteristic makes these societies a real challenge for archaeologists around the world, and the nomads of the Horn of Africa are no exception. Roamed by pastoralists since at least the third millennium BC, the Northeast Horn (Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, eastern Ethiopia and southern Eritrea) today hosts one of the most resilient and rich pastoral populations in the world. For centuries, pastoralists have wandered following wadis, paths, and trade routes, shaping a vast funerary landscape in which Neolithic burial grounds, cairns, mosques and Islamic tombs coexist in a complex palimpsest. In order to understand this Gordian Knot, a highly reliable methodology has been developed and applied over the past five years in field surveys and mapping, using remote sensing and GIS spatial analysis to help us navigate this turbulent and yet fascinating sea of wadis and tombs.

09/09/2025

Hello, Harvard Anthropology friends! We're pleased to reconnect with the start of a new academic year.

For those local to our campus, we invite you to join us for our first installment of Harvard Anthropology’s Fall 2025 Seminar Series!

Our very own Rowan Flad, John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology (Harvard University), will present “Elephants in Bronze Age Central China – Megafauna / Human relationships as seen through material culture.”

This is an in-person event. All are welcome to attend. For a full lineup of upcoming seminars and events, visit the “Events” page on our department website:

https://anthropology.fas.harvard.edu/calendar

08/08/2023

The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University seeks to appoint a tenure-track professor in the Anthropology of Japan (Social/Cultural/Linguistic). We seek a scholar with excellent Japanese language abilities whose research is conceptually sophisticated, firmly grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, and will shape cutting-edge areas of significance. The tenure-track professor will be expected to teach a range of offerings, from introductory undergraduate lecture courses to graduate seminars. Competitive applicants will be prepared to teach foundational courses in the methods, theory, and history of the discipline, in addition to their fields of specialization. More information here: https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/12526. Please note applications due Sept. 15th, 2023.

The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University seeks to appoint a tenure-track professor in the Anthropology of Japan (Social/Cultural/Linguistic). We seek a scholar with excellent Japanese language abilities whose research is conceptually sophisticated, firmly grounded in ethnographic fieldwo...