moneduloides is hosting the 58th edition of Four Stone Hearth, and he’s gone through the great effort of going out to gather good blogging from all four fields of anthropology. I’ll highlight one post from each area, but there’s plenty more next to the hearth.

Here’s a blog I didn’t know, Ethblography, with the fun title, Don’t twitter on my internet and call it lifestreaming. Bite-sized blandness over substantive writing, and fieldwork on new technology/communication in Spain. A great mix.

On the linguistic side moned tracked down this site documenting oral histories of disability in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Return to Chauvet Cave is a new book on the incredible art work done 30,000 years ago in France.

And here we have competing ideas about the extinction of Neanderthals.

So go on over for a dance by the moneduloides hearth.

Mind, Brain and Science

A Blog around the Clock, The Open Laboratory 2008 – And the winners are…
The selections for the best science writing of the blogosphere during 2008

Edge, The World Question Center 2009: “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”
151 prominent scholars and public figures give their answers

Channel N, Video of the Year 2008
The best online videos of 2008 related to science, brain, mental illness and more. A powerful and useful selection

The Dana Foundation, Eric Kandel on the Year in Neuroscience
The Nobel prize winning neuroscientist covers the best of the past year

Ed Yong, Not Exactly Rocket Science Review of 2008
Ed chooses some of his favorite stories from the past year, going from animal behavior to neuroscience

Mind Hacks, A very rough guide to highlights of 2008
Personal highlights from Vaughan about the past year, from the funniest to the most overdue decision

The 2008 Weblog Awards
The best blogging in English in a variety of categories

Anthropology

Martin Rundkvist, Best of Aard
Aardvarchaeology covers some of the best posts his site has to offer

Jay Sosa, Savage Minds Rewinds… The Best of 2008
The cultural anthropology blog gives us its best blogging of the past year

Greg Laden, Year in Review
The anthropologist covers his best stuff from 2008

Alexandre Enkerli, My Year in Social Media
The Disparate review of the past year of Alex’s blogging, through the lens of social media

Dienekes P., 2008 in Review: Ethnicity Strikes Back
Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog covers genetic anthropology work during the past year, with a focus on “application of microarray technology to the problem of inferring ethnic ancestry.” A controversial topic, and the comments really show that.

Thadd Nelson, Top ten Pseudo-Archaeological Subjects of 2008
Archaeoporn takes on the top hoaxes, media mash-ups, and other pseudo-archaeology of the past year

Maximilian Forte, The Two Terrors of 2008: End of Year Post
Open Anthropology covers its critical anthropology for the past year, with a focus on the global war on terror and the global financial meltdown and a summary of its most successful month ever

Jon Swift, Best Blog Posts of 2008 (Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves)
Jon hosts his annual best from bloggers who share his blogroll (it’s a conservative blog with a liberal blogroll policy). Some good reading focused mainly on politics and culture, but with plenty more thrown into the mix as well

Mark Dingemanse, One year of ideophones
The Ideophone wraps up some of the best sound symbolism around, explored through a variety of cultures and settings, as well as comments on language and language processing

Testimony of a Spade is hosting Four Stone Hearth the New Year edition. It opens with a great poem, here’s a snippet:

In bleach’d forbidding robes array’d
stern January treads the wold,
within his icy hand a blade
of lethal might – the cruel cold

Continuing the artistic theme, I’d have to say my favorite is Archaeologizing Watchmen. The graphic novel Watchmen (calling it a grown-up comic book doesn’t do it justice) is, in my opinion, one of the finest pieces of storytelling of the past couple decades.

You can also check out some Guitar Hero too.

Plus illustrations, google earth, Neolithic alcoholic beverages, Neanderthals, microbes and plenty more. So enjoy the New Year’s Four Stone Hearth.

Highlight Health is hosting Grand Rounds 5.14 Holiday Edition. So please head over and revel in the gift of medical blogging.

In the holiday spirit, there is a gift guide for those without a home this Christmas, a short Christmas list of evolution books, and other goodies.

After that comes the list of all your favorite medical topics and areas. I found this version easy to access, with a lot of great reads, so enjoy the latest Grand Rounds.

John Jackson, professor of communications and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, writes regularly over at Brain Storms: Annals of the Mind, hosted through The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has some great posts, and as I searched for anthro blogs to hopefully include in The Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008, I found Jackson’s other blog, From the Annals of Anthroman.

Both Jackson’s blogging at Brain Storms and Annals of Anthroman represent public anthropology and communication at the highest level, so I do hope you check his writing out. Here’s the post An Election Irony, on how John McCain turned into the racial candidate. And Spike Lee on Spike Lee is also a great read about Jackson’s course on Spike Lee at UPenn, including a visit from the master filmmaker himself.