Exploring humanity’s diversity and driving global change
The Department of Anthropology advances knowledge through participatory fieldwork and comparative perspectives, addressing the biological, cultural, and environmental interplay of the human experience.
Subfields
Socio-cultural & Linguistics
Biological
Archaeology
Medical
Featured News
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MSU Anthropology team assists Lansing police with investigation of human remains
Lansing police brought in an MSU Anthropology team to assist after human remains believed to be several years old were found in Lansing on Saturday, according to WLNS. The Medical Examiner’s Office is working to identify the remains, and the investigation is ongoing. Dr. Joe Hefner, associate professor of anthropology and a board-certified forensic anthropologist,…
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MSU research finds collection bias does not mask human skeletal variation
Forensic anthropologists build and test their methods using documented skeletal collections: curated sets of human remains where the donor’s age, sex, ancestry and other identifying information are known. But those collections have never been random samples of the population. Historically, they drew from unclaimed bodies, which skewed toward poorer and marginalized communities. Today, most come…
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MSU anthropology senior Megan Berry finds big questions in archaeology’s smallest fragments
A summer sorting microscopic fragments led anthropology senior Megan Berry to an unexpected interest