Anthropology Book Forum

JESSICA BARNES, 2022, Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 296pp., ISBN 978-1-4780-1852-0

Helen Anne Curry — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

n/a

Mexico in Space

Savannah Mandel — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anne W. Johnson's, Mexico in Space: From La Raza Cósmica to The Space Race, released in 2026, is an extensive ethnographic study of Mexico's history with outer space. Relying on two main frameworks and Canguilhem's concept of milieux it produces an interpretation of Mexico’s relationship to space which emphasizes a story of globalization and “planetization”. The Mexican space milieux invokes a multidimensional, situated understanding of outer space with blurred and shifting boundaries.

Pain into Purpose: Mobilizing Emotions in Argentina's Black Resistance Movement, Review

Reed Margolis — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article is a review of Prisca Gayles' Pain into Purpose: Mobilizing Emotions in Argentina's Black Resistance Movement (2024).

review

Melanie Langgle — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

review

UnderBelly Review

Levi Vonk — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Underbelly review

crossing the lines

faith vanvleet — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

crossing the lines

The Untimely Object: Rethinking Time through Object-Oriented Ontology

Haivyn LaSalle — Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Objects Untimely: Object-Oriented Philosophy and Archaeology, Graham Harman and Christopher Witmore argue that objects actively generate time rather than merely existing within it. Drawing on Harman’s object-oriented ontology, the authors challenge both New Materialist celebrations of perpetual flux and archaeology’s linear chronologies. Through close readings of Mediterranean sites such as Corinth, Mycenae, and Troy, they show how objects exert persistent “surface tension,” producing retroactive, topological, cyclical, and generational temporalities that resist conventional historicism. The book offers a metaphysical re-foundation for archaeological theory while extending the ontological turn in anthropology. Objects Untimely is a field-advancing work that will reshape how scholars conceptualize materiality, temporality, and the discipline’s own foundations. It is essential reading for theoretically oriented archaeologists, anthropologists, and philosophers of material culture.