The ASPR is excited to be able to host the ASPR Junior Fellowship for the second year in a row this year, and after a competitive round of applications, the Program Board selected two finalists to join us on campus in the fall. They will be joining Margot Louail and Kayla Worthey as ASPR Junior…
Harvard Summer Program in Kenya: Year 2
Media and content from the second season of the Harvard Summer Program in Kenya will be added to this page as it becomes available! Click here to view content from last year’s season. Turkana Lullaby Project by Joel Lim…
Summer Updates: Christina Warinner
ASPR affiliate Tina Warinner has been keeping busy in this summer with writing, talks, conferences, and more! See below for more information about what she has been up to. Here is Tina just before her presentation at the Nobel Symposium in Stockholm, Sweden. Her talk was titled “The archaeology of microbes and the future of…
Extinction of Paranthropus boisei
A team of researchers has been studying fossilized teeth from the famous Omo Kibish site in southwestern Ethiopia—a place already known for preserving some of the earliest remains of Homo sapiens. By carefully examining the dental evidence, they’ve uncovered fresh insights into how our ancient relatives lived, adapted, and even what they ate. Teeth are…
New Understandings From Ancient Spanish Teeth
Archaeologists studying human remains from El Portalón, a cave site in Atapuerca, Spain, have uncovered surprising details about how prehistoric communities lived, ate, and evolved. Instead of relying only on bones or artifacts, the researchers analyzed hardened dental plaque—also called calculus—taken from individuals who lived thousands of years ago. Though it may look like nothing…
Dental Plaque and Human Prehistory
When most of us think of dental plaque, we picture a dentist scolding us for skipping floss. But for archaeologists, hardened plaque—known as dental calculus—is proving to be one of the most valuable records of ancient life. These tiny crusty deposits on prehistoric teeth preserve genetic material so well that they can reveal what people…
ASPR at the 2025 Society for East Asian Archaeology Conference
At the Society for East Asian Archaeology (https://seaa-web.org/) 10th International Conference in Aberdeen Scotland last week, hosted by Harvard Anthropology Department alum Prof. Joshua Wright (PhD ‘06), the American School of Prehistoric Research, Harvard Anthropology, and East Asian Archaeology more broadly was well represented. The photo shows the mid-conference tour trip to the site of Burghead…
Joel Lim
I am Joel Lim, an undergraduate from King’s College London pursuing a degree in History and Political Economy. My interests lie broadly in history, with a particular focus in economic history. Few months back, a found out about the Harvard summer program online and was immediately intrigued by it. The opportunity to engage with fields such…
The Turkana Lullaby Project
The Lullabies That Tell the Turkana Story See below for an article about lullabies written by members of the Turkana tribe in northwest Kenya. This project was undertaken by Joel Lim, an undergraduate student from King’s College, London, and Karen Choi, a Harvard University undergraduate. Both Joel and Karen participated in the 2025 season of…