Magazine
May-June 2003
May-June 2003
Volume: 91 Number: 3
Two thousand years ago the people of West Mexico buried ceramic artifacts, such as this mother-and-child figurine, along with their dead in subterranean tombs. The artifacts provide some of the most valuable information we have about the lives of these ancient people, but the production of modern forgeries has hindered archaeologists' attempts to understand the culture. In "The Ancient Ceramics of West Mexico," Robert B. Pickering and Ephraim Cuevas describe new ways of authenticating these artifacts. (Photograph by R. Wicerk/Denver Museum of Nature and Science.)
In This Issue
- Art
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Communications
- Computer
- Engineering
- Environment
- Ethics
- Evolution
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Policy
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Technology
Science in 2006, Revisited
Lewis Branscomb
Anthropology Biology Chemistry Physics Technology
From grid computing to genomics, the science fiction of 1986 is fast becoming science fact. There remains equal reward in the signal and in the noise.
The Ancient Ceramics of West Mexico
Robert Pickering, Ephraim Cuevas
Anthropology Chemistry
Corpse-eating insects and mineral stains help a forensic anthropologist and a chemist determine the authenticity of 2,000-year-old figurines
The Kindness of Strangers
Robert Levine
Anthropology Sociology
People's willingness to help someone during a chance encounter on a city street varies considerably around the world
Foresight in Genome Evolution
Lynn Lynn Caporale Caporale
Evolution
Selection favors a certain amount of predictable variation in genomes, a capacity that protects populations
