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Stories by website or magazine

Stories by date

2024
Archaeology - Sacred Fire of the Sasanian Empire
Science - 'The hobbit' may have shrunk early, evolved from a tall human ancestor
Discover - Family Ties
Science - Modern Blackfoot people descend from an ancient ice age lineage
Science - Stone Tools in Ukraine were left by Europe's first known humans
Smithsonian - Ancient Iberians Ingested Red Dust Loaded With Mind-Altering Mercury
Science - 'Landmark paper' shows why ice age Europeans wore jewelry
Science - Stronger monsoons may have carved a path for early humans out of Africa
Discover - Primate Genome Database Could Unlock New Insights For Humans
Discover - Locks of Ludwig
Discover - Mummy-Making, Unwrapped
Discover - A History of Horseback

2023
SAPIENS - Anthropologists on Palestine
Smithsonian - book review Of Time and Turtles
Archaeology - Ice Age Cannibalism
Archaeology - Paleolithic Pathfinders
Discover - Who are the Keepers of Academic Skeletons? (Oct cover story)
Science - New language database narrows search for first speakers of Indo-European
Science - Worldwide survey kills the myth of 'man the hunter'
Archaeology - Rise of the Persian Princes (July/August cover story)
Science - Review of The Ghost Forest
Discover - The Archaeology of Flavor
Archaeology - Bird Brains
Archaeology - Jungle Realm of the Snake Queens
Discover - Shackleton's Ship Found After a Century-Long Search
Discover - Bolivian Urbanites
Discover - Denisovan Tooth in the Tropics
Discover - The Neanderthal-Sapiens Timeshare

2022
Science - Prehistoric carvings depict showdowns between humans and beasts
Smithsonian - Review of Fresh Banana Leaves
Science - Sacrificed monkey suggests peaceful ties between ancient Mesoamerican powers
Smithsonian - Why Prehistoric Herders Didn't Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds
Science - No music training? No problem: Even novices intuit complex music theory
Science - Female lineages anchored Pacific for islands for 2000 years
Smithsonian - The Monkeys and Parrots Caught Up in the California Gold Rush
Atlas Obscura - How Orangutans Changed Their Behavior After Devastating Fires
Science - Archaeologists uncover oldest ochre workshop in East Asia
Smithsonian - Fish Bones Found in Razed California Chinatown Reveal Complex 19th-Century Trade Network
Discover - Ancient Humans Had Pets, Too
Discover - DNA in Unlikely Places Helps Piece Together Ancient Humans' Family Trees
Discover - 2021's Hottest Fossil Was Actually Found Over 85 Years Ago
Discover - Africa's Earliest Human Burial Comes to Light
Science -Spit Take: Even young infants know we only swap saliva with the ones we love
Archaeology - Turning Salt into Gold

My writing nook in Somerville, MA.

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2021

Smithsonian - Why This Ancient Civilization Fell Out of Love with Gold for 700 Years
Smithsonian - Book review of The Premonition
Discover - Fixing Forensics (November cover story)
Atlas Obscura - Why Were Human Sacrifices Buried Beneath Ancient Korea's 'Moon Castle'?
Smithsonian - Human Remains From the Chilean Desert Reveal Its First Farmers Fought to the Death
Atlas Obscura - Archaeologists Are Seeing Cave Art in a New Light
Discover - The Anthropocene's Ancient Origins
Archaeology - Rise of the Kings of Tonga
Smithsonian - Archaeologists Propose 4,500-Year-Old Burial Mound Was World's First Military Memorial
Atlas Obscura - French Polynesia's Teti'aroa Has Been an A-Lister Retreat for Centuries
Atlas Obscura - Loved or Loathed: Can Madagascar's Aye-Aye Survive Superstition?
Smithsonian - Why Did Ancient Indigenous Groups in Brazil Hunt Sharks?
Science News - No more cuddly selfies with our ape cousins, top conservation body warns scientists
Science News - Tooth tartar could uncover drug habits of ancient people

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2020

Smithsonian - Ancient European Hunters Carved Human Bones Into Weapons
Science News - Shrine of decapitated heads suggests violence against foreigners in ancient Mexico
Discover - Chipped Teeth Offer Evolutionary Clues
Discover - Nope, This Skull Was No Baboon
Discover - Forest Islands Amid a Grassland Sea
Audubon - Rulers of the Upper Realm, Thunderbirds are Powerful Native Spirits
Audubon - Journey Complete, Scott Edwards Looks Back on His Cross-Country Bicycling Trip
Discover - An Athletic Evolution
Smithsonian - Monkeys' Attraction to Burned Grasslands May Offer Clues to Human Ancestors' Mastery of Fire
Science News - Sacred site reveals how Indigenous people resisted colonial forces for 130 years
Audubon - Meet the Harvard Ornithology Professor Biking Across the Country
Discover - More than Child's Play
Discover - Brew's from a Cave Grave
Discover - The Lemur and the Lioness
Discover - A Matter of Life and Death
Discover - Lots o' Motza!

My squirrel friend helps me write. Her name is Sanjob.

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2019

Discover - Stuck On You
Discover - Getting Naked
The Conversation - Plague was around for millennia before epidemics took hold
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing - Stress
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing - Monkeys
Discover - Are the Oldest Fossils Real - Or Just Rocks?
Discover - The World is Our Niche
Discover - To Sleep, Perchance to Evolve
Discover - Ancient DNA Starts Answering Archaeology's Big Questions
Discover - Drove Uncovers Ancient Irish Henge
Discover - Finding a Barrow Barley
Discover - Ancient Ice Reveals Insights into Roman Empire

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Between 2018 and 2020 I wrote an online series of explainers, covering fundamental topics & classic tales from Anthropology for Discover:

• The Modern Lives of Ancient Symbols
• Which Ancient City is Considered the Oldest in the World?
• "What's the Coolest Thing You've Ever Found?"
• The Six Most Iconic Artifacts
• The Ancient History of Board Games
• Why Ancient Toys are Elusive Artifacts
• How did Ancient People Keep their Food from Rotting?
• Archaeologists Have Long Sought - But Never Found - The Very First Wheel
• The Earliest Toilets
• How Archaeologists Know Where to Dig
• These Ice Age Humans Somehow Survived North of the Arctic Circle
• Monte Verde: Our Earliest Evidence of Humans Living in South America
• How Scientists Know Our Human Ancestors Ate Insects
• Evolution Could Explain Why Having a Girlfriend Makes Men More Attractive
• Homo heidelbergensis: The Answer to a Mysterious Period in Human History?
• The Sima Hominins: An Ancient Human Cold Case
• The Australopiths: Our Ancient, Ape-like Forefathers
• The Denisovans: New Finds are Illuminating the Mysterious Ancient Humans
• Meet Homo naledi: The Mysterious Human Cousin
• Meet Homo floresiensis: The Real-life Hobbits of Indonesia
• How Humans' Unique Cooking Abilities Might Have Altered Our Fate
• Just How Many Extinct Types of Human Did Our Ancestors Meet?
• Drunken Monkey Hypothesis: Was Booze an Advantage for our Ancestors?
• The Search for the World's Oldest Alcohol
• Prehistoric Medicine: How Archaic Humans Cured Themselves
• We May Have Domesticated Ourselves
• Humanity's Early Ancestors Were Upright Walking Apes
• Running Made Us Human: How We Evolved to Run Marathons
• The Human Brain Has been Getting Smaller Since the Stone Age
• Why Do Humans Have Wisdom Teeth That Need to Be Removed
• The Grandmother Hypothesis Could Explain Why Women Live So Long
• When Did Humans Start to Get Old
• Can Men Tell When Women are Ovulating?
• Scientists Still Stumped by the Evolution of Human Breasts
• Neanderthals Were Inbreeding. Did it Help Cause Their Extinction?
• Ancient DNA from Africa
• Why Did Darker and Lighter Skin Evolve?
• Why Humans Lost Their Hair
• Why We Still Can't Read the Writing of the Indus Civilization
• What the Earliest Texts Say about the Invention of Writing
• How Humans Invented Writing - Four Different Times
• How Did Language Evolve?
• How Language Allows Scientists to Get Inside the Head of a Chimpanzee
• What Studying Primate Communication Tells Us About the Evolution of Human Language
• The Ongoing Debate Over Neanderthal Language
• How Superstitious Europeans Scared Away Witches
• Why Are Some Religions More Popular than Others?
• The Human Brain Evolved to Believe in Gods
• How We Know Ancient Humans Believed in the Afterlife
• Chimps Know Death When They See It
• Neanderthal Brains: Bigger, Not Necessarily Better
• Ancient Pets Got Proper Burials
• When is it OK for Archaeologists to Dig up the Dead
  

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2018 - 2016

Discover - Hopeful Monsters: What Defines a Species
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing - Neanderthals
Discover - Something Stirs: What Will Happen as Permafrost Thaws
Discover - The Great Aztec Temple
Discover - A Brush with a Feathered Foe
Discover - Stone Cold Science (how archaeologists study stone tools)
Discover - Unraveling a Secret (Inka khipu)
Discover online - Bronze Age Teens Ate Dogs to Become Men
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing about Ancient DNA
Discover online - Untangling the Ancient Inca Code of Strings
The Conversation - DNA dating: How molecular clocks are refining human evolution's timeline
The Guardian Science blog network - Why we're closer than ever to a timeline for human evolution

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Summer of 2016 I was a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, writing for Discover Magazine. My clips:

• Meet the Denisovans
  
• Flossing - What Is It Good For?
• Greenland Sharks are Old, but 400 Years Old?!
• Your Nose May Have Drugs in it, the Antibiotic Kind
• Biodiversity Below 'Safe' Limits?
  
• Blame Your Subpar Fitness on That Neanderthal DNA
• Super-Smeller Mice Could Detect Explosives, Disease
• Baby Cadavers Prized by Victorian Anatomists
• Neander-TAL or Neander-THAL?
• Top 100 Year In Science Stories:
  • #4 - Oldest Human DNA Revises our Family Tree
  • #16 - We Are All Africans
  • #24 - Finding China's Great Flood
  • #28 - A Bone to Pick About Philistines
  • #43 - Birds Sleep During Flight, Too
  • #54 - Skin Deep Evolutionary Link
  • #66 - The Nose Knows Antibiotics
  • #68 - Our First Date Out of Africa
  • #75 - Poster Critter for Climate Change
  • #80 - Greenland Sharks Can Live 500 Years and Counting
  • #88 - A Fossil from the Heavens