Chris Buckley
@chrisbuckley.bsky.social
580 followers 420 following 280 posts
Anthropologist with interests in cultural evolution, phylogenetics, classical methods, weaving. Interface of archaeology and ethnography. Author of "Stone and Fiber: Daily life in the Baliem valley, Papua".
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chrisbuckley.bsky.social
What do non-southeast Asian scholars offer to southeast Asian studies? The answer (which I suspect could apply anywhere) is perspectives that are not rooted in ethnonationalism link.springer.com/article/10.1...
What Does the History of Prehistoric Archaeology in Mainland Southeast Asia Tell Us? Statistical Analysis of Scholarly Publications from 2000 to 2023 - Archaeologies
The past 20 years have witnessed profound changes in prehistoric archaeological research in mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA). Based on publication data from related research results—including journal article, book, book section/conference paper, and thesis—this paper provides a bird’s-eye view of how the field of prehistoric archaeology has developed over the past 20 years and, in particular, the role of local and international scholars. The findings show that Western scholars, who remain active in this field, have had a comprehensive and far-reaching influence on the discipline of prehistoric archaeology in MSEA. Local and international scholars have remarkably contrasting interests in terms of research topics, as local scholars are deeply invested in revealing the intricate threads of their own histories and cultures, while international scholars traverse regional boundaries and engage in macro-level discussion to explore scientific questions. This diversity is also found in their journal selection preferences, with local scholars focusing on local journals and international scholars preferring high-impact international journals. The analysis of institutional cooperation also shows diversified international cooperation and a growing local cooperative practice. This study provides a broad perspective from which to examine the development of research on prehistoric archaeology in MSEA over the last two decades and to deepen our understanding of the state of the field in this region.
link.springer.com
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
In Berkeley? Come hear me talk about weaving in southeast Asia, the Pacific and the Americas (including a new, unpublished phylogeny). At the Sutardja Dai hall in UC Berkeley, Thursday 9th Oct at 1.40pm, free entry and no need to register. Full program here: indd.adobe.com/view/8a5cf75...
Chris Buckley will be talking about the history of weaving in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region flyer for 9th Annual conference of silk road textile studies
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
strange ... but I'm guessing anything to make an extra $ from old content
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
that's pretty recent ... I was thinking of stuff from the 60s and 70s and earlier
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
depends how old ... useful to get digital copies of pre-digital material
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
Souvenir of my time working for an NGO in Lhasa in the early 2000s. This is a large blanket made by nomadic Tibetans from yak or goat hair. Woven in narrow strips, sewn together
Tibetan yak hair blanket, woven by nomads
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
I don't know what their offenses were, but this seems extreme
insidehighered.com
Purdue to Send Professor, Grad Student and Alumni Into Space https://bit.ly/4nNTN8y

#EDUSky #HigherEd #AcademicSky
Five Purdue community members smile for a photo.
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
Depends where the garlic comes from: southern Europe (=mild), no problem. Northern Europe (=pungent), nope.
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
Spotted this boat on Flores. I wonder what it's for?
A fishing boat called Fortuna
Reposted by Chris Buckley
Reposted by Chris Buckley
robinryder.bsky.social
I'm super excited to announce that ISBA @isba-bayesian.bsky.social has voted to start a new section on Bayesian Social Sciences! It will be a great way to further collaborations with many disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

bss-isba.github.io
Home - BSS-ISBA
bss-isba.github.io
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
Portentious nonsense. We've been editing the DNA of plants and animals for thousands of years, and the planet is already littered with our creations
jumherrera.bsky.social
Ayer, en MAR Museo Provincial de Arte Contemporáneo, vimos el corto de Max De Esteban (@max_deesteban en IG) "Lamb of God" (2024). Trata el dilema bioético de la edición génica, principalmente para la creación de órganos humanos en otros animales.
Gran trabajo de #arte y #SciComm
(TRAILER)
LAMB OF GOD
vimeo.com
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
Arrived today. Naturally I opened it immediately and looked at my own chapter. I like it.
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
The Monarch of the Glen (or Point Reyes, at any rate)
A deer at Point Reyes
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
It's a great paper ... BUT ... you might get the impression that smoke-dried mummification was common in the New Guinea highlands. It was not. There are only two recorded mummies amongst the Dani (Hubula) people, both of which have (inevitably) become tourist attractions www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Earliest evidence of smoke-dried mummification: More than 10,000 years ago in southern China and Southeast Asia | PNAS
In southern China and Southeast Asia (collectively, Southeastern Asia), Terminal Pleistocene and Early to Middle Holocene (ca. 12,000 to 4,000 cal....
www.pnas.org
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
"software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually"
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
the Heta (hunter-gatherers) used them in the same manner as Asmat foragers and Papuan highland farmers, for felling trees, striking the trunk at a steep angle and shaving the trunk inwards gradually. The handles were used as digging sticks.
Two Heta men using axe handles as digging sticks
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
and by axe-makers of the European Neolithic. The head is bulbous to resist breakage, slightly back-curving so that the blade contacts the work face rather than the head of the handle ...
Illustrations of axes from the European Neolithic
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
a form that is the same as that used by the Asmat and some west highland Papuan groups that used axes, such as this example from the Hubula (image from Stone and Fiber: Daily Life in the Baliem valley, Papua) ...
A large stone axe with a wooden handle, made by Hubula (Dani) people. From the book "Stone and Fiber: daily life in the Baliem valley, Papua" by Christopher Buckley
chrisbuckley.bsky.social
this is the same as the technique used until recently by coastal Papuans in the Sentani region for making greenstone blades for bridewealth exchanges. Highland Papuans tended to use knapping followed by grinding. The Heta hafted their axes in wooden handles with bulbous heads ...
Heta man carrying an axe