HELLO AGAIN!
With this issue, we come to the end of an exciting year for our young Society. I am proud of our Society’s activities and specifically of our journal and all its contributors. We have again a series of very exciting articles waiting for you. Sam Passmore, for example, introduces Kinbank, a new database that collects the various kin naming schemes across the world. We use kinship terms to navigate our close social environment. For example,
your father’s brother’s son is your cousin. As is your mother’s sister’s daughter. But did you know that this is not universal across different cultures, languages, and societies? Sam discusses the potential use cases of the database. It might help us, for example, to better under-stand how language reflects or even affects social organisation and social behaviour. Simon Carrignon and María Coto talk about their modelling work on the spread of Roman amphorae and what this can tell us about Mediterranean trade. Aside from these research articles, we also report on the recent conference of the Cultural Evolution Society in Tempe. If you followed the conference on Twitter you might have seen Kate Cross’ haikus, a famous short poem that originates in Japan. We have asked her why she writes and publishes them, and how she is damn good at it. Our Agony Aunt asked for your opinions on how to strike the right balance between life and work. And finally, we have an exciting interview with Catherine Hobaiter on receiving an ERC Starting Grant to secure her future work on chimpanzees. As always, I hope you enjoy reading Cultured Scene as much as we enjoy writing it. I wish you and your families happy holidays and a grand start into 2019. See you on the other side!
About the author
Post-doctoral Fellow at UPenn