Biological Archaeologists: We Dig Bones!

More JPAC

2010-08-12T20:34:00.002-04:00

Just a JPAC update. A team is on the Tarawa Atoll in the South Pacific looking for remains of WWII marines.

The CNN article has the mandatory Indiana Jones reference, which pops up whenever anyone talks about archaeology in the media. FYI CNN, while I love Indiana just as much as the next person, he was an old school archaeologist (read: treasure hunter). This kind of behavior is not exactly what we are taught in schools, in fact my professor would probably frown on me accidentally blowing up sites, causing cave ins, and giant rock balls to crush important ceremonial rooms.

Military looks for WWII dead in South Pacific

By Ted Rowlands, CNN

August 12, 2010 8:29 p.m. EDT

Gregory Fox, bottom, helps dig for human remains on Tarawa, where U.S. and Japanese troops fought in 1943.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

As many as 450 U.S. Marines may be buried on Tarawa atoll
A joint civilian-military team hopes to find, return their remains
More than 1,000 U.S. men died in the November 20, 1943, battle
If remains are found, specialists will match them to troops missing in action

RELATED TOPICS

Betio, Tarawa Atoll (CNN) -- Archaeologist Gregory Fox is the U.S. military's version of Indiana Jones, but looks more like Jerry Garcia than Harrison Ford.

Fox travels the world digging for his version of treasure -- the remains of missing U.S. service personnel who died in battle.

"One month you're freezing your butt off on a mountain worried about altitude sickness, then you're somewhere wishing you had air conditioning," Fox says, shovel in hand, next to a fresh hole he and a team of Marines are digging in the South Pacific.

"It's basically a promise by the U.S. government that they will do everything in their power to bring their fallen warriors home, and that's the way we roll."

Fox is part of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, a unique team of nearly 400 civilian and military personnel. The unit is two-thirds military and one-third civilian, with each branch of the military represented. While search teams comb the world for remains, specialists back at JPAC headquarters in Honolulu, Hawaii, make matches between bones and soldiers listed as missing in action.

"It's basically CSI, but much slower," Fox says. "We can't make a match in 45 minutes."

Tarawa, a South Pacific atoll, was the site of one the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history. Starting on the morning of November 20, 1943, more than 1,000 American men were killed in roughly 72 hours of fighting with the Japanese. Hundreds of Marines were gunned down in the water trying to make it to shore.

Tarawa was before Iwo Jima. For Marines, the battle is both a source of pride and a lesson learned. The high casualties were blamed in part to poor planning. The attack was launched during low tide, which left a lot of the landing craft stuck on coral.

The Japanese were sitting in fortified bunkers along the shoreline, shooting Marines at close range as they attempted to make it to the beach. In the end, the Marines took the beach and won the battle. An estimated 4,000 Japanese soldiers died in the fighting, over what was considered at the time a strategic airstrip in the Pacific.

Alexander "Sandy" Bonnyman was posthumously awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroics at Tarawa.

"I spent my childhood idolizing him, even though he died 18 years before I was born," says his grandson, Clay Bonnyman Evans. Evans made the long trip from his home in Boulder, Colorado, to Tarawa to be here while JPAC is digging for remains.

He retraced his grandfather's steps at Tarawa, wading through the water onshore, then climbing to the top of a bunker referred to as "Bonnyman's Bunker."

Now overgrown and filled with trash, the bunker was a Japanese stronghold during the battle. Bonnyman, according to his fellow Marines, led a charge to the top of the bunker, flushing out more than 100 Japanese soldiers that had been killing Marines on the beach.

"Frankly, most of my life I knew a lot of the story, and I know a lot more now," Evans says from the bunker where his grandfather was ultimately killed.

After the battle, Bonnyman and the other Marines who died were originally buried in several areas around Tarawa. But there were so many bodies, including the thousands of Japanese soldiers, that the U.S. Navy eventually bulldozed the site. After the war, the U.S. government returned to retrieve the bodies, but couldn't find them all.

It's estimated that as many as 450 Marines remain buried on Tarawa. Over the years, several bodies have been unearthed by construction workers and others. On Wednesday, local officials handed over a set of remains to the JPAC team in a ceremony conducted by Marine Capt. Todd Nordman.

Nordman says he volunteered for this mission because of the Marine Corps history here. While JPAC may be made up of all branches of the military, for this mission it's almost all Marines. "Tarawa holds a soft spot in Marine Corps hearts, so it's important that we bring a large contingency from the Marine Corps," he says.

The mission calls for JPAC to dig at six sites, which if the research is correct, could yield more than 100 missing Marines. Finding where to dig took years of research, and several trips to Tarawa with ground-penetrating radar. That work was done by the nonprofit group History Flight and its founder Mark Noah, who has dedicated most of his life over recent years trying to bring the Marines of Tarawa home.

"It's our mission to affect a positive solution to the mystery of what happened to the lost graves of Tarawa," says Noah.

JPAC is using his research as a playbook for the mission. "it was a great first step," says Fox.

The current JPAC mission scheduled to last more than a month. If a mass grave is found, more archaeologists are on standby in Hawaii to come help Fox.

JPAC

2010-08-08T13:54:00.002-04:00

I don't know if I've talked about JPAC before - it's a military operation (but includes civilian researchers) located at Hickam AFB in Hawaii. Its mission is to recover and identify missing service members and return them to their families. And part of the tools they use is the largest forensic anthropological lab in the world. If you are a biological anthropologist (or archaeologist) with a bend towards forensics, JPAC has several opportunities to join their team including internships, full employment, and a semester long 'college' where they teach you all that they do (taking DNA from bone, identifying human bone, etc.) and then send you out on a mission to Laos or Vietnam. To check out these opportunities, click on this link ORAU. Civilian jobs are posted through USAjobs, but the internships are done through Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).

I actually have some pretty strong feelings about JPAC, not the least of which is that I really want to work there at some point in the near future. It's an amazing organization that demonstrates that not only are people not forgotten, they are actively being looked for. The newest missions started in late July/early August and will take place in Papua New Guinea investigating possible WWII airplane crash sites. Below is the full press release:

Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command

Public Affairs Office
(808) 448-1934
www.jpac.pacom.mil
Pao_mail@jpac.pacom.mil
Contact: Elizabeth C. Feeney
Aug. 5, 2010
Release # 10-10

~ NEWS RELEASE ~

POW/MIA RECOVERY & INVESTIGATION TEAMS SEARCH FOR MISSING AMERICANS
JPAC teams search for World War II aircraft crash sites

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (Aug. 5, 2010) – Two archeological recovery teams and one investigation team from the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) departed Hawaii recently for missions in the Independent State of Papua New Guinea.

The more than 35-person joint field activity will be in-country for approximately 45 days to investigate and excavate several aircraft crash sites. Two recovery teams will search in the Madang and Morobe provinces at sites that are associated with the losses of more than 21 Americans missing from World War II. The investigation team will validate the authenticity of leads by conducting interviews, research, and field work in the Central and Northern provinces for 16 aircraft losses and more than 50 Americans still listed as missing in action.

Falling directly under the U.S. Department of Defense, the jointly-manned organization of more than 400 military and civilian specialists has investigated and recovered missing Americans since the 1970’s. To date there are approximately 74,190 unaccounted-for Americans from World War II.

The ultimate goal of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and of the agencies involved in returning America’s heroes home, is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of Americans lost during the nation’s past conflicts.

"Until They Are Home"

2010-07-21T00:19:00.002-04:00

I'm not a big Bond film fan, although who doesn't love Sean Connery? But I've been wasting precious time you-tubing as a way to escape the anxiety of all the things I have to do in a small amount of time. I know, it's a vicious, vicious cycle. Here's one that's old, but still makes me giggle.

And now, Sex in 3D

2010-07-13T20:27:00.003-04:00

In a previous post I discussed the importance of accurate sex determination techniques when identifying human remains, specifically I went on and on about my love for metric analysis, which I think provides an anthropologist with a more confidant finding. New and really interesting research at my university lends support to my metric love.

(I've copied the article here, but you can click on this link and visit the original page which has some more info to go with the pictures)

Hips don't lie: Researchers find more accurate technique to determine sex of skeletal remains



		IMAGE: The new technique could also have significant benefits in the courtroom. Obviously the improved accuracy is important, but so is the fact that the method relies on quantifiable metric data... Click here for more information.

Research from North Carolina State University offers a new means of determining the sex of skeletal human remains – an advance that may have significant impacts in the wake of disasters, the studying of ancient remains and the criminal justice system.

Historically, forensic scientists have been able to determine the sex of skeletal remains by visually evaluating the size and shape of the pelvis, or os coxa. "This technique is accurate, but is not without its limitations," says Dr. Ann Ross, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research.

"For example," Ross says, "when faced with fragmentary remains of the os coxa, it can be difficult to determine the deceased person's sex based solely on visual inspection. This can be a significant challenge when evaluating remains from disasters – such as plane crashes – or degraded remains in mass burials – whether the burials date from prehistory or 20th century political violence."

But Ross and her colleague Dr. Joan Bytheway have now used three-dimensional imaging technology to effectively quantify the specific characteristics of the os coxa that differentiate males from females. Bytheway is an assistant professor of forensic science at Sam Houston State University.

The researchers found more than 20 anatomical "landmarks" on the os coxa that can be used to determine a body's sex. Finding so many landmarks is important, Ross says, because it means that the sex of a body can be ascertained even if only a small fragment of the pelvis can be found. In other words, even if only 15 percent of the pelvis is recovered, it is likely that at least a few of the landmarks can be found on that fragment.



		IMAGE: The new technique for determining the sex of skeletal human remains based on examination of the pelvic bones is significantly more accurate than traditional visual inspections. Click here for more information.

Here's how it would work: a forensic scientist would use a digitizer to create a 3-D map of the pelvic fragment and measure the relevant anatomical landmarks. The scientist could then determine the sex of the remains by comparing those measurements to the measurements listed in the paper by Bytheway and Ross.

"This technique also has the benefit of being significantly more accurate than traditional visual inspections," Ross says. While determining sex based on visual inspections of os coxa have an accuracy rate of approximately 90 percent, the new technique from Ross and Bytheway has an accuracy rate of 98 percent or better. The researchers found, for example, that several anatomical landmarks commonly used in visual inspection to estimate sex are actually very poor indicators of sex.

The new technique could also have significant benefits in the courtroom. Obviously the improved accuracy is important, but so is the fact that the method relies on quantifiable metric data – not an opinion. This is an important distinction under the federal rules of evidence that govern what evidence can be submitted in criminal court.

The researchers are planning to incorporate their findings into the National Institute of Justice's 3D-ID program. The 3D-ID program consists of software that allows forensic scientists to plug in data on skeletal remains and determine the sex and ancestral origin of those remains.

###

The research, "A Geometric Morphometric Approach to Sex Determination of the Human Adult Os Coxa," is published in the July issue of Journal of Forensic Sciences.

New York apartment ideas

2010-07-12T16:09:00.002-04:00

Now for today's Good idea/Bad idea:

Apartment in New York: newly re-modeled, loft style, with (!) a washer/dryer in a price range I can afford. Located beside a bar.

Could be awesome or ridiculously awful. Hard to know which when I'm roughly 500 miles away.

At least there would be a wealth of people around.

On the other hand, they most likely will be intoxicated.

Dilemmas.

Movie Critics Corner Take 3; or Things that have nothing to do with anthropology

2010-05-25T23:27:00.010-04:00

I was really excited about this movie, it looked inspiring and uplifting and had two actors that I really enjoy, Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Damon is incredibly attractive in this film, so just like rate your professor.com, it gets bonus points for hotness level. I can't help being a girl.

Delicioso...

In general, the movie was really good. The message was inspiring, especially since it was based on real events. But something was missing for me and I still haven't figured out what exactly it was or if it's more me than the movie.

Accents: The South African accents that were used were really interesting (I love hearing accents) and made the setting believable, but I had a hard time understanding people sometimes. So this issue is likely my problem more than the movie's.

Morgan Freeman: no complaints - He made an excellent Nelson Mandela and brought a lot of realism to the role. I do wish they had fleshed out his relationship with his family more since it was portrayed as troubled and that is something I have never known when reading about him. But overall, excellent.

Time Period: I liked how you see a lot of the overall racial issues going on in South Africa at the time through the prism of Mandela's bi-racial security team. These guys don't trust each other at all and I think the first line that the head dude says to the white security detail when they first enter the room sums it all up, "Are you here to arrest us?" Because that had been a regular occurrence.

I do wish we could have had a little more history. We know Mandela was imprisoned and that it was unfair, but as Americans (and my generation especially) we don't have a great understanding of what exactly happened. We start the film with Mandela being released from prison and people say things and news reports mention that black South Africans can now vote (and that was 1994!), but I would have liked to have seen flashbacks to understand what it was previously like, political arrests/societal oppression, etc. And maybe see why it suddenly changed (was it more international or internal pressure?). Clint Eastwood, show me, don't tell me!

I think what I really wanted was an explanation for why white South Africans felt that the previous apartheid government was ok. Why they felt that they were actually superior and could just say racist comments out loud and think nothing of it. But questions concerning government/societal indoctrination of racist norms is not, I guess, really a part of a movie that shows how a man tried to move people past those issues. Much like the South Africans in the movie, we the audience are pushed to focus on the future. It makes sense, but I'm left wanting more context.

Rugby: I'm not sure if the movie needed more rugby or more structure to let the audience know what was going on. I know a little about rugby and have watched a few games (world cup a few years ago: biggest Frenchmen I have ever seen, wiped the floor with my poor Irish kin), and this movie reminded me that for such a brutal sport, rugby is surprisingly boring. I don't know why. Huge guys dragging each other up and down a field should be interesting, but it's not and I think the problem is the scrum. And that's what the issue was in the movie.

Much like real life, there's a lot of scrum and not a whole lot of running (except for the Maori guy in the New Zealand match, he kicked ass). So you have a lot of camera shots of the scrum, where all the action is taking place. And to catch this exciting time, we are in the middle of it, watching from below as these guys heave and ho against each other for field and ball advantage.

The problem is that it's not exciting, I'm not on the edge of my seat wondering if the little guy who's name I can't remember is going to get the ball or get trampled. And if you aren't watching the screen, it sounds kind of like a bad porn or a day at Gold's gym, i.e. a lot of grunting.

I'll be honest, this is probably me. I just may be scrumophobic. And I don't know how to improve these scenes, although a more intense instrumental music sequence might have helped. I'm thinking battle scenes from Braveheart or Gladiator, something heavy on ethnic/tribal drums, maybe a bodran. But I didn't feel the intensity of the game and I needed to since it was as much a main character as Nelson Mandela or Pienaar.

So, it was good and inspiring, but I wish I felt it a bit more. And I wish I had waited for it to come out on Netflix.

Graduated

2010-05-15T23:09:00.004-04:00

Best graduation gift ever!

Anthro kids give the best presents!

Graduation

2010-05-14T22:29:00.004-04:00

Graduation tomorrow and now I need a job until August when I move my happy butt to New York and start this all over again. Huzzah.

(image borrowed from http://www.upstatenyroads.com/assets/oldi-81.jpg)

Metric Sex

2010-05-11T15:27:00.006-04:00

I've never been particularly good at math, in fact the reason I had to take the GRE so many times was because I couldn't get my math score up to a competitive level. Embarrassing, but true. So color me surprised when I find myself preferring and appreciating metric analysis to determine sex and ancestry. If only metrics could give a better idea about aging, but I think there we are stuck with morphological characteristics for awhile.

Morpho traits have been the main determinant in sex and ancestry estimation. Some of these can be incredibly easy to discern especially when they deal with the pelvis; the presence or lack of a subpubic angle, the depth and breadth of the greater sciatic notch, the shape of the ventral face of the pubic bone.

(Image borrowed from http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/)

But people are variable and geographic groups differ in their amount of sexual dimorphism. Even within the most studied groups in America (European and African descent groups), there can be individuals who are extreme outliers. My favorite story concerning this issue comes from my undergrad forensics professor who attended a conference where one presenter laid out several skulls and asked participants to attribute sex and ancestry. One skull was consistently scored as European-American female based on morphological traits. Then the known determinations were revealed. The European-American female turned out to be an African-American male. This is a pretty big discrepancy to have missed on both counts.

This is why in the forensics class I took in my final semester of grad school, I appreciated the encouragement to try out new ways of determining the biological profile. Around mid-semester someone found a JFS (Journal of Forensic Sciences) article using a scapula metric calculation for sex (Dabbs et al. 55(1) 2010).

This article has become my new favorite method of double-checking my morpho assessment. There are two different methods described in the article. The 5-measurement method uses non-standard measurements from a 1928 article that I couldn't get my hands on, which was a shame because there are no pictures of the exact measurement method and the descriptions could have been more detailed. I was left approximating what I thought was probably the right way to do them. So basically, guessing. The 2-measurement method was much better, standard measurements (breadth and length) that are part of the usual measurements you would do for a case anyway.

This method correctly determined sex for African- and European-American cases, and most importantly, for Hispanic individuals, which have had less skeletal assessment for modern populations and are becoming a bigger presence in forensic cases. The only down side was that the cases were all male, so I can't vouch for the female side of things, though Dabbs et al. had an overall accuracy of 91% for the 2-measurement method. As always, more research is needed.

Long time no see

2010-05-08T23:24:00.004-04:00

Yes, again, I was a horrible blog writer person. I apologize. But the good news is that my hard work and ignoring my blog paid off and I get to graduate. Huzzah! One week from today I will be officially a master's person...or a person with a masters. Sadly, it doesn't have the same ring as being officially a doctor or officially a bartender or welder. And also seems a little unhelpful at times, at least with those programs you end up qualified to go do something, make money, get a real job. With the masters, happy though I am that I survived, I am qualified only to go get my doctorate, oh well.

Lots of things have happened since the last time I posted. Graduation coming up being one. Moving to NY soon being another. There is a spot at a doctorate program with my name on it and I get to move to a brand new place far from the dear and familiar South to do it. I'm pretty excited.

But while that's exciting for me, it's probably boring for you all. So I do have a fun story to relate, complete with pictures.

I have been collecting data for a project my professor and I have been working on. This has involved me tramping through a field for the better part of a year as pigs we laid out decomposed. It sounds gross, but the NC fall was pretty hot and the decomp part of the study didn't take very long. Our primary objective was the bones - how do they change over time.

I'd initially been worried about snakes, but after months of not having any issues, I got brave and stopped carrying the machete that I had originally used to cut down foliage. This was my first mistake. The snakes seemed to sense my lack of fear and started hunting me down.

By snakes I mean one snake, but the important thing to remember is that I did the requisite stomping of the ground as I moved along, a 'snake scare away' tactic I learned as a child. Unfortunately, I found out later from a rattlesnake expert in Albuquerque, NM that snakes are deaf so won't hear you coming (which I knew) and even as you tramped along sending out specific 'here i come' vibrations, they will just curl up and stay where they are (which I didn't know). So much for my snake preparednes.

But the problem with my snake encounter wasn't that I scared it or snuck up on it. It was that it snuck up on me. Something the so called rattlesnake expert had no answer for. There I was checking on my pig (who was nicely weathering in the sun and vegetation) and when I turned around, there he was, a 5 ft snake waiting for me like some sort of ninja. The bastard. But don't worry I handled the situation like any seasoned anthropological researcher would. And by handled it, I mean I did the running-jumping-screaming thing which is key when evading snakes.

These are the lengths that you must go, dear readers, when you take on anthropological work, so be fore-warned. Our field is not for the feint of heart!

Need further proof? Fast forward a few weeks and my field has suddenly exploded with late spring vegetation. And the machete is back in action to find some of my pigs that have gone missing in the growth.

There is one important thing you need to know for future reference about this particular procedure: machetes are sharp.

Unfortunately, I know this because I mistook my thumb for a clump of grass. Whoops. Luckily my handy-dandy masters education has also qualified me as a green beret level anthropologist! So I was able to stop the bleeding by using a long blade of grass as a makeshift band-aid.

So, kids, join the ranks of anthropologists and you, too, can go on exciting and dangerous data collection expeditions and employ creative field first aid!

Ways to procrastinate thesis statistics #28: Post on your blog about how you don't want to do thesis

2010-04-03T17:03:00.004-04:00

So, I'm back, again..I'm down to a week to get three major projects done including my thesis, so it seems like a perfectly good time to update the blog.

I'm still waiting on a decision from my school in NY and I've started looking for alternative plans. This has caused somewhat of a conundrum because now I'm kind of excited about those plans and would be a little disappointed if I got into my phd program and couldn't do them. I'm officially tired of this application cycle. When you reach the point where you would be disappointed no matter what the response is, there is no way to be excited about anything. No excitement = lots of worrying and thinking and planning. And at this point, I just want to take a nap. Ugh. So, purgatory continues.

In other news, I'm pretty good at my forensic cases. I'm especially excited about the current one, where for the past two weeks I've been looking at the femoral heads of one individual thinking there had to be something wrong. It just looks weird, kind of flattened on one side with a little groove. This is not normal. My anthropology buddy, who is much more experienced, kept saying it was within the range of normality. Until low and behold, I find this: Poirier's facet!
(The groove and bone growth between the ball and the neck, Mann and Hunt 2005)

Insert 'happy, competent physical anthropologist' dance here.

I found the answer flipping through my copy of Mann and Hunt. I love this book!

I've been sharing my copy with the group and we have all found exactly what we were looking for as we have flipped through at random. It seems to be kind of magical. You open it up thinking 'this femur is weird' and then it flips to a picture of a weird femur looking exactly like the one sitting in front of you! Magic!

So if anyone is a bone student looking for a good guide, I would highly recommend buying a copy, especially when it's half the cost of so many others.

And deep breath and stretch...

2010-03-31T22:42:00.007-04:00

It's over! Sort of...still, whoot! Now there are edits to do and some new interesting stats to run (like sexual dimorphism indexes which I will use to compare possible changes in sexual dimorphism between my two time periods), all within two weeks. Ha! So, my master's career has essentially come down to a fun race to see how fast I can type. Hilarious.

But I am pretty excited about the sexual dimorphism indexes. The way it works is this: there is a certain amount of sexual dimorphism in humans (and most animals), which means something that you notice everyday - guys are bigger than girls. Now the ratio may change - for instance, the ratio is less, meaning males and females are closer in size, in certain groups in Asia, for instance. But you find that when a group goes through periods of stress - like they can't get enough nutritious foods or food in general - sexual dimorphism decreases, meaning men and women are closer in height. So this will be interesting to see in the Town Creek population.

I'm going to see "How to train your dragon" on Friday (tomorrow), it looks pretty awesome. I'm especially looking forward to this summer's movies like Iron Man 2. I've never been a Robert Downey, jr. fan, but he did an excellent job in the first film. He is great at being cool and disaffected. I like that, in the same theme as the X-Men, Spiderman, and the Hulk, updated the setting to more current issues. He's an arms dealer and the Global War on Terror is on and he ends up being taken hostage by a warlord or terrorists (I'm not sure which) in Afghanistan. Awesomeness ensues after he builds his suit and makes an escape. But I thought it was poignant when he ends up becoming friends with a fellow prisoner, a local man who talked about trying to get back to his family. I know this was set up as a foil to Ironman's (I forget the character's name) profession as an arms dealer and puts a face to the destruction that comes from that, but I was pretty sad when the guy sacrifices himself so that Ironman can get away. As he runs towards the oncoming bad guys, Ironman tries to stop him reminding him that his family is waiting for him. And the guy remarks that yes they are, they've been dead for some time. Ugh, sad. And then Ironman exacts revenge and it's incredibly fulfilling.

And that's just the beginning. So I can't wait for part dos.

Tomorrow

2010-03-28T15:49:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow's the day. And I didn't realize I was so nervous. I ended up having a small panic attack in the dressing room of Old Navy. I have excellent timing ; ) Thank God for friends that can talk you down off the ledge and His good timing.

On the upside I find a nice sweater for cheap and my hands have mostly stopped shaking. Let's hope I can get everything under control by tomorrow at 9 am and that I don't throw up the bagel bribes I'm bringing in for my committee. Maybe I should just stay away from food altogether tomorrow morning.

On the upside, this whole process is mostly over. I'm looking forward to the enormous nap I'm going to take after everything is over tomorrow.

So at 9 am tomorrow, say a little prayer that everything goes smoothly and I don't fuck this whole thing up. ; )

One Week

2010-03-22T17:39:00.000-04:00

One more week...this time next Monday, I will either be someone with a positively defended thesis or I will be crying into my textbooks looking up job openings for Target.

Say a prayer next Monday at 9 am!

Cusp of Cara-what?

2010-03-05T19:39:00.004-05:00

Well, here I am again. Yeah, I know it seems like I might be using this blog as a way to procrastinate my work, but I like to say my storm of posts is because of my previous months of neglect...of the three people (including my dad) who read this silly, narcissistic thing. : )

At least this time, I can share some fun knowledge. I'm working on my third case for my forensics class, sad this time because its a little baby. And for obvious reasons little kids are difficult to figure out for a couple of reasons. Small children are essentially the same sex-wise. This is because they haven't gone through puberty, which brings on the hormonal changes that instigate the muscular and skeletal changes that give indicators of male/female-ness.

I do use the word 'sex' here because we are talking about someone's sex which is a biological reference and not their gender, which is a cultural creation. 'Gender' goes beyond male and female - it gives social cues to indicate proper behavior and roles. 'Sex' is just about the plumbing.

So I can't figure out if its a boy or a girl, but aging is a lot easier in kids. This is because the timing of growth, while slightly variable between different populations, is pretty standard within populations. You can figure this out based on the formation and eruption of teeth and the amount of growth of skeletal elements.

Another element of information you are generally looking at forensically is ancestry. Now some anthropologists thing ancestry is essentially racist and it has been used in that vein in the past. But I am of the school that thinks trying to figure out the general places of a person's geographic history is only helpful in identifying this person. Further, some things, like estimating a person's stature, are group specific. I can't use equations that estimate height for a person of European descent and expect them to work for someone who was of Asian descent. So I think its fine to figure out ancestry. We are all the same species, but because our descent groups moved around, settled in certain places and adapted, we all look a little different. The funny thing is, while we Americans think of ourselves as mutts from whatever conglomeration of home countries, we actually are creating our own phenotype. There is an 'American' skeletal type. European Americans do not look like Europeans and the same goes for African Americans. There has been so much admixture between people from different countries that we are both culturally and skeletally American.

So when figuring out ancestry, there are certain traits that can point towards a certain broad geographic group. One I thought I saw was a Carabelli's Cusp. It is an extra cusp found on the molars of the maxilla (your top row of teeth) on the side facing the inside of your mouth. Go ahead and poke around with your tongue, if you feel an extra little bump on the side of your tooth, generally above the biting surface, you may have one. Ask your dentist the next time you go.

This trait is found in people of European descent among other groups. Prehistoric Japanese skeletons (Jamon period) have been found to have it in pretty high frequencies, too.

Well, I needed to make sure carabelli's was what I was looking at (it wasn't), so I googled this trait to figure out what it would look like in an infant. But I was surprised that the third return on my Internet search was a message board on a white supremacist website. Just as an FYI Google, you can ignore any hate group website returns when I surf the web. I don't care if they have the exact answer for what I'm looking for, it's ok, I'll find it some other way.

But what started this whole post was that I found myself reading this message board - yeah, I might be on some govt list now because I clicked over, I just wanted to know what they were saying about some random dental trait. I mean why would anyone besides anthro kids care? What they were discussing was that the carabelli's cusp can be used as an ancestry trait. And they saw it as proving their white-ness (see: questionable 'awesome superiority-ness').

So this does prove the point that ancestry can be used in a racist and discriminatory way. I see that. But lets look at it this way, anything can be used in a good v bad way. Cars, guns, superpowers. Ancestry skeletal studies are a tool that can help better understand our population similarities and differences, trace population movement, and identify skeletonized forensic cases. It's important and just because some people want to choose a few traits and say it shows how great they are, well, someone will always say they have 'stars on thars', it doesn't make them right.

But there were some inaccuracies in the few posts I read that I feel compelled, as an anthropologist and supporter of ethical ancestry skeletal studies, to clear up. They won't read this, it's silly to even get worked up about, but it's my blog and I can rant if I want to. ; )

The carabelli's cusp is found in higher percentages among groups of European ancestry, but it's also found in pretty high frequencies among Asian and Australian aboriginal groups. Not to mention the fact that, while not seen often, is found in African groups.

So congratulations, skinheads, you could be white! Or you could be something else entirely. Welcome to the wonderful world of tens of thousands of years of human migration and admixture. We really have no idea who our ancestors were sleeping with, just general ideas. My people are Irish (among other things), but they weren't always in Ireland.

Wait, what?

2010-03-03T23:03:00.004-05:00

Ok, so I know I just posted, but I noticed that the ad at the bottom of my blog (which makes me no extra money, thanks for giving me false hope of an easy income Adsense), is advertising for Single Seniors. What? No wonder I'm not making any money, there are apparently no single seniors reading my blog. I'm not sure if this is my failing for not appealing to a wider audience or if adsense has completely misinterpreted the eclecticism I promote here.

Sigh

2010-03-03T22:54:00.002-05:00

I had a really good joke, well more like a funny pun featuring the patella, but all I can remember is the punchline which rhymed with the main part of the joke and ended with patell-ya. Let me reassure you, dear readers, that it was hilarious when I thought of it during my forensics class. If I ever remember it, I'll post it. One can only hope it happens soon as punny little things and a good laugh is the only thing getting me through the last few weeks. That and massive amounts of caffeine (and a weekly dose of cinnamon role, which is being discontinued this week as being both expensive on my poor grad student checkbook and counter-productive to the healthy kick I've been working on - who knew you couldn't lose weight while happily diving into a cinnamon sugar mountain every Tuesday?)

On the bright side, I'm pretty competent at forensics. Good to know I've absorbed some knowledge over the past two years.

Thesis defense is the last Monday of this month. Praise the Lord and pass the Pillsbury.

Things that make you go : (

2010-02-17T22:39:00.012-05:00

So, the Hurt Locker. This is a good movie, but don't be fooled.

This man is very attractive. But he has a lot of issues. Issues that don't even include problems like this.

Or even this.

I guess this is kind of spoiler-ish, so you're forewarned. I had gotten the impression from some of the reviews that this was one of those 'man put in difficult position, survives, puts himself back in harm's way for the good of his men' kind of movies. Those are good films. Also good, Star Trek.

Unfortunately, this movie is not either of those. It's a little like The Kingdom, where it's intense and crazy (and on the HD pretty sweet) and you leave feeling like the world is a pretty dark and cold place. But mostly I just ended up feeling ambiguous towards the main character.

I was all set to really like him. He was hot and had a swagger. He was kind of cavalier about his job, but formula generally states that shit will happen, the team will come together, and the end will be some variation of puppies and rainbows. But, as it turns out, our hero has a major case of disassociation. I kind of wished he was the one talking to the shrink instead of the cute Specialist who we last saw as the guy that almost got shot by Jake Gylenhaal in Jarhead.

Which is kind of ironic considering that he actually gets shot by the main character in Hurt Locker.

But there is no talking to the shrink or working out issues or even enjoying the family. Our main character goes back to war, but he's not doing it out of a sense of duty or brotherhood or even because it's a job. Before he ships out again, our hero has a conversation with his infant son about how, as you get older, the circle of things you love will shrink until there is maybe only one or two things left. And that's the case for him, our hero only loves the bomb. Which is just amazingly sad.

It was a good movie, but I came away sad and upset with our main guy because you get the feeling that his issues are going to get someone killed someday. I think I need to watch some Star Trek and find my happy place again.

Technology is Amazing

2010-02-15T17:19:00.003-05:00

Something pretty amazing happened the other day and I feel the need to share. To set the story, I have to give some background info....

Almost four years ago I graduated from college...holy hell, I graduated from college almost four years ago, ugh...anyway...so four years ago on my graduation I was given an iPod (wonderful). Using some grad money, I bought one of those fm transmitters that plugs into the bottom of the iPod so that my music would play through my car stereo. Necessary because my little Alero didn't have an auxiliary input.

The Griffin iTrip I bought (for 70 freking dollars), worked ok. I could listen to music, but it was often really static-y and had a hard time finding a signal. I became jealous of my friends' cars who had tape decks and could use the tape converter. So simple and easy. Why couldn't my car have a tape deck? (Actually it did, but then I switched it out for a CD player with no aux. input before graduation. Damn my lack of foresight!)

Fast forward to about two weeks ago when the piedmont of North Carolina suddenly decided it wanted to be like New York. Seven inches of snow fell. I realized I don't have the kind of cold weather clothing I really need, especially now that I'm trying to actually move to NY (or somewhere I can get a phd).

Well, while there was still snow and ice all around and my brother was out of school for most of the week, my college told me to suck it up and get to class. And there I was making my cold, but merry way to my car two Tuesday's ago, scratching the ice off my windows with a credit card (the thinking woman's ice scraper). As I'm getting my iPod ready for the drive, I realize I can't find the iTrip. I had just had it, literally, in my hand and remembered putting it in my backpack. But I can't find it. And for the next week it is nowhere to be seen.

Then comes Superbowl Sunday and I decide at 9 pm, when its dark and cold outside, that I MUST find this thing. And there I am outside with the flashlight, prepared to tear my car apart, thinking it must have fallen between the seats. As I tromping across the leftover ice, I see something just ahead of my car, in the place where I usually park. I'm thinking to myself that's weird, what is it? It's small. And black. And looks suspiciously, oh holy crap, its the iTrip.

It had apparently, fallen out of the backpack that previous Tuesday and sat outside in the cold and the snow and the rain for a full week. I googled my problem that evening to see if there was a way to fix it, but apparently I am the only person on the internet who has left their iTrip out in the snow for a week. I still feel that this is somewhat unlikely.

The next morning I have to drive to school again and I figure I might as well try and see if it will work. After plugging it in, Dave Matthews started playing through my speakers. ! ! ! Unbelievable.

So, the moral of this story is that I don't complain about my iTrip anymore, it's an amazing piece of technology. And if anyone is thinking of getting one I highly recommend Griffen...or an auxiliary input.

I have a good excuse, I've been busy

2010-01-17T18:51:00.003-05:00

Yeah, so my last post was awhile ago, but I do have a good excuse...I've been feverishly working on my thesis. Graduation will hopefully be in May and phd will start in August (Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise).

So as a peace offering for the three people, including my dad, who read this blog, I am including some video of traveling buddies and tigers in Thailand. I've been holding the footage hostage for a bit too long and not sharing with people who would like to see themselves kissing a tiger. Sorry, guys. : )

On another note, I am done with (and passed) my stats classes. Whoot! But I now have two intensive reading classes that grade not only my writing abilities, but also my skills as a bioarchaeologist. Who knew that at some point they would start testing me on my ability to actually perform all of the things we've been reading about. This is truly a crazy mixed up world. I'll let you know how my biological profiles work out, let's hope that I'm fairly competent.

For something non-school related - I am officially not a fan of bad drivers. Now believe me, I am not the greatest and probably would give myself a C. This is because I'm a multi-tasker and deep thinker (read: I have a hard time paying attention, this is part of my second problem - I have a difficult relationship with punctuality, but that's another issue altogether).

But the other night proved me wrong. Thank God. Because as I was driving home, clipping along at a legal 55 mph, some jackass decided to pull out in front of me just as I was about to pass him.

Now, people say things like, "oh, I almost got into a wreck. It was awful. I almost hit someone's bumper going 10 mph in stop and go traffic. Or, oh man, I almost hit someone and they were only 50 feet away, but I was able to stop in time."

No, that is not close. Close was last night, when I was about 10 feet out from this dude and I had to swerve into the on-coming traffic lane to avoid him, white-knuckling the wheel to keep the car on the road (and who knew swerving cars were hard to handle, the movies are liars). The good news is that my first reaction was to swerve and accelerate and not hit the brakes because there would have been no stopping just in the nick of time.

So I am going to start giving myself a grade of a B, because while I may have some driving problems, my subconscious/instinct is a hell of a driver.

Sad.....

2009-07-05T13:07:00.002-04:00

Back in Bangkok and spent tonight with a few people from the dig, including the awesome Thai grad students who helped our group move more smoothly among Thai society. They are amazing people who became our friends over the course of the fieldschool and I am sad to be leaving here and not know when I will see them again.

My little traveling group has seen some amazing things and there are still more stories from the past month that I need to post on, but for tonight I am just going to be sad that this adventure is just about over and that there are some amazing people who I have been fortunate enough to spend time with and get to know that I will be missing.

Lop-vegas

2009-06-22T10:04:00.007-04:00

Lopburi, Thailand is a large town/small city that weirdly enough reminds me of the big town I grew up outside of in West Virginia. If Parkersburg had street markets and vendors and monkeys running around, they would be about the same - both are kind of dated and run down, but still friendly. Apparently Lopburi is also the secret weapon for the Thai military and I am literally surrounded by about a dozen bases and special forces schools. Oddly enough around town people still wear American military apparel, saw a guy with an arm patch that said Ft. Benning, pretty sure there is not one of those here. But there is an airborne base down the street from my hotel, so maybe we have an exchange program? I'll tell you what there is not a lot of...hookers. Not that I was looking or expected it, but there is not a plethora of seedy bars and questionable women. There are a lot of monkeys that will steal your stuff and dogs that look like they want to eat you, but so far no red light district.

I can't mention the monkeys enough, mainly because I don't like them. They are cute for about 2 minutes and then they start looking at you and your realize that they are scoping out what you have and how much they want it. I'm not kidding. One of our first excursions downtown, we were walking back from dinner trying to find a song-tau (cheap taxi - pickup truck with a metal roll cage welded to the bed with bench seats placed inside)

to catch a ride back to the hotel, and we see a monkey sitting on the iron gate encircling a ruined temple. This monkey sees something in the bed of a truck that is coming down the street, jumps from the gate across some lawn, a sidewalk, and a lane of traffic to land in the bed of the moving truck, steals a piece of fruit, and jumps out again. These monkeys do not play around.

The people though are amazing - they think we are interesting to watch because they get few Western foreigners here and we are varying shades of pale which is considered attractive. So for the first time in my life I am exotic. Haha. It's a novel experience, but I am looking forward to blending in again when I get back. They are extraordinarily patient with our lack of Thai and their lack of English - it's amazing what you can accomplish with hand gestures and pantomime.

It's also amazing how alive this town gets in the early evening. It starts getting a bit cooler (although the heat is not intolerable, no worse than Florida in the early summer), and people roll out open door restaurants onto the sidewalk, food carts line up along busy streets and people just pull out of traffic onto the shoulder to grab food. Somtimes they don't even make it to the shoulder, they just stop in the lane and the rest of traffic just moves around them. No angry blaring of horns or yelling. No whistling or yelling from guys either as a group of us girls walk down the street. I love Buddhist countries.

They love pork here, but there is no bacon at breakfast. And Thais don't seem to eat cheese, which is sad and has me craving quesadillas and nachos a lot. The food is good here, but I find myself planning my meals for when I get home. This is kind of ridiculous because there are western restaurants - I had pizza last night (tasted like Pizza Hut) and my favorite food cart is fried chicken made my a sweet Thai woman who laughs at my highly accented Thai thank yous (kop kun ka!). So it's not like I am without comforts of home - I even bought bowls and have been having Fruit Loops in the mornings for breakfast. This doesn't mean I haven't been expanding my horizons. At the dig site, several of the wonderful Thai students who work with us make amazingly beautiful and delicious lunches. This was my first taste of curries and all sorts of Thai fruits (mmm mangosteens!). And you really can't go wrong with simple dishes like pork or chicken and rice. Sadly, this means I have learned I am a non-ferocious bamboo shoot when it comes to spices. A lot of things that the other field school kids think is only mild or worse, not spicy at all, I have a hard time trying to get down. White rice is amazing for cooling your mouth and I'm also drinking a lot of water, as a consequence. So..yay, for hydration, at least.

More to come, but just as an fyi - if you are in Thailand and are trying to buy a drink and they ask you if you want it in a bag - say yes.

I think therefore Siam

2009-06-04T10:52:00.007-04:00

Bangkok - May 27-30

What an amazing, loud, busy city. It's like London or D.C. on crack and if they were into street carts and sidewalk salesman. The city smells of food all the time - people are cooking in restaurants, rolling out sidewalk cafes, setting up carts of fresh fruit, noodles, boiled pork (yum!) and some sort of weird hot dog thing that they call sausage, but IS NOT SAUSAGE and made me a little sick to my stomach.

We saw several temples (Sleeping Buddha – largest in the world) and the Grand Palace where the king still performs ceremonial functions, part of the palace area is a Buddhist temple where the Emerald Budda resides *Hint- Buddha is a big theme here*.

It was moving in a way I can’t explain to see people taking off their shoes, going in and kneeling to pray. I was moved, but at the same time was very aware of my own Christianity and didn’t join other non-Thais (read Americans and Europeans) when they kneeled before Buddha too. The beautiful murals and statues and architecture are so grand as to be almost overwhelming and I am still trying to wrap my brain around a place that dates its Historical (written word) period back at least 2,000 years. *Another hint* We Americans only date it back about 200.

It's hot, but not unbearable - reminds me a lot of Florida. The vegetation is more interesting out in the town where we are working out of (Lopburi), just because there is more of it to see. In Bangkok, like any city, it's more concrete than actual jungle. And sadly, I find out, there is no actual jungle. We are in the middle of the country where it’s maybe subtropical, but more temperate forests. The south has the tropical jungles.

Had to take a boat to get to The Grand Palace and the Sleeping Buddha - which was a good time. It sounded almost refreshing since it was hot that day, until you saw and smelled the river. Not as much trash as you would think, but lots of biodegradable refuse like plants and a dead baby pig. Not something you want to go swimming in…or have sprayed on you. It's definitely a bottled water city (and country for that matter) though there are no recycling bins that I have seen...it’s possible this is just done at the trash plants.

Food was a mix of Thai food, a few forays to McDonalds as I craved something familiar, and Thai pizza - which was delicious. Oven backed bread cooked on the thin side so was crispy with mozzarella and tomato paste put on top last. The food here is amazing I have come to find out.

The Temples were beautiful, you had to take your shoes off when you entered, out of respect - so there was a lot of removing of shoes and socks and I kind of wished I had brought flip flops. We also stopped by the Jim Thompson house which was close to our hotel, an interesting story - an American serviceman (served in the OSS during WWII) who liked Thailand and stayed on, building this beautiful conglomeration of several Thai houses into one main structure and making Thai silk what it is today - world renowned and wanted. And then on a visit to friends in Malaysia he just disappears while on a walk. Crazy. But his business continues and you can tour his house and gardens which are amazing. You have to remove your shoes – it’s customary to do this in Thai houses since they normally eat sitting on the floor and you want to keep it clean. Of course, I didn't see the signs initially and stepped inside and was about to take a picture when I was reprimanded by the staff. I hate making cultural faux pas like that.

Next updates will be about Lopburi and the dig - Bangkok was fun and interesting, but I'm no city girl and jet lag had me in bed by 9 or 10 each night.

Siam so far away...

2009-05-26T02:46:00.005-04:00

So I think I am going to start calling the places I want to visit by the old names - Siam...Indja (which just might be Nicole Kidman's accent, but sounds awesome anyway)...these might be colonial and therefore not politically correct, but how cool is it to say 'I am going to Siam'. Makes me think of pith helmets, handlebar mustaches, steamer ships taking you to far away and exotic locales...and then attacking, colonizing and exploiting their natural resources....ok, we are going to just forget that last part. This trip we are going to think more The King and I (which is where it is actually set) and less Joseph Conrad and his awful Heart of Darkness. This is exotic and spicy Thailand, not horribly depressing Congo.

I fly out in roughly 7 hours and I think I am going to treat the family to cinnamon rolls as we are getting ready in the morning. Hmm, pillsbury.

Fingers crossed I can fit all of my stuff into my bags. My minimalist plan seems to have some holes and it would probably have been easier to consolidate my bulky bags into my one big suitcase. Oy vey.

I'm off to bed to get a few hours sleep, see you all in about 21 hrs and another hemisphere.

Correspondance

2009-05-01T22:43:00.008-04:00

Final days of the semester and Monday will be the true test on how things go. For Stats I have to maintain at least a B- to remain in good standing with my program and sadly the first test did not begin the semester well. But I've rallied since then and 8 am Monday will be the make or break moment.

Have I mentioned before how much I love Netflix? Not just for the cheap movies coming within three days, but increasingly for the Watch Now feature which opens up all kinds of options. Almost all seasons of South Park are available (excellent for background noise when doing research) and tons of documentaries, which I have been kind of addicted to lately. Some of the most recent are Bigger, Stronger, Faster follows a brother's look into steroid use in America (and his family) and Jihad of Love, which follows the lives of several gay men and women in the Muslim world - interesting portrayals and perspectives all around.

One of my most recent viewings (though this was an actual DVD) was The Shop Around the Corner - what You've Got Mail was based on. It's a brilliant movie with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan and takes place in Hungary--of all places. You would expect New York or Chicago, but Budapest seems so far away and exotic. And you wouldn't have known it was Hungary at all, there wasn't any incorporation of Hungarian culture - it could have been New York or the town Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey was from.

I love the premise, the idea that two people can meet and connect over letters. This doesn't necessarily have to be about love, but just mutual interests and curiosity. Which is, I suppose, exactly what the blogosphere is now. People posting their thoughts and musings ranging from being a military spouse to the trials and tribulations of internet dating, which is a hilarious experience, by the way. And you when your done writing you post it out into the ethos, like a giant yellow post-it on the cork board at work. And then people find your post-it as they are Googling or reading someone who read someone who read you once and put it on their blog role. I think we need a new incarnation of the story; first letters then e-mail now it should be a blog - So and so has posted on your blog - not catchy, but I'm putting the idea out there. : )

Traffic

2009-04-28T23:40:00.002-04:00

Why is it so incredibly satisfying to honk your horn at someone? I don't do it very often and always hesitate to make sure that this really is the right moment. But once that moment has been determined and is a go - man, it's amazing. Honking seems to perfectly express that righteous sense of indignation, especially when you accompany it with the 'you're an idiot' headshake and/or the hand(s) in the air 'what the hell are you doing' gesture.

I used the standard honk and shake today. There I am at the light, getting ready to pull out and beat the car full of guys at the acceleration race (silly but legal and not dangerous). Green light - I'm accelerating! - and then some idiot at the corner pulls out as if to cut in front of me and then stops. In the intersection. W.T.F. On-coming traffic + red light = stay behind the line. I quickly decelerate and he sits there and stares at me for a good 5 - 10 seconds (like he's wondering what I'm doing pulling forward with a green light), he finally finishes his right hand turn and I respond with the car form of Cesar's (Dog Whisperer) training touch. Somebody needs to learn some boundaries, rules, and limitations.

Dig Prep Update

2009-04-20T20:41:00.004-04:00

Slowly accumulating the things I need. I got my hiking backpack in today! So one more thing off my list.

International

2009-03-24T11:33:00.002-04:00

So what does it take to get from North Carolina to Bangkok, Thailand? Apparently $1,079 and 9,000 miles. Holy crap. Count down to that adventure beings...now.

Crisis of Competence

2009-03-23T20:35:00.004-04:00

Big stats test coming up on Wednesday, got to do well.....actually, after I failed my first stats test (seriously, like the first time I have failed anything since Honors Intro. to Oceanography sophomore year of college - apparently I hate the ocean and how it works) I have to get an A on everything to get my passing B. Awesome, I love adding the stress of trying no to get kicked out of my program to the regular stresses of class. The good news is that I understand what we are doing...ANOVAs can be kind of fun.

On the thesis front, things have actually started. Spent two hours at Chapel Hill analyzing my first skeleton. For the first 20 minutes I had a crisis of competence when I realized that enthusiasm and love for what I'm learning doesn't make up for actually needing to be able to apply that information. This is the BIG project and my methods and general analysis need to be accurate - my future as a bio-anthropologist literally depends on it. And of course the first bone I look at (radius) I mis-side. Ah!...crap. This is why Bass' bone manual is now my constant companion. And I am more OCD than usual, re-checking the bone over and over to make sure I didn't miss anything. It'll work out, just got to repeat what my thesis mentor said to me...it's just a master's thesis, it's just a masters thesis. As if shrug no big deal.

Here's something fun for the kids at home...we've been learning about non-metric traits...little weird things on the bones that occur because of occupation or genetics. People are trying to use them as indicators of family association, which I find interesting. Anyway, stand beside a table and place your hands flat on the surface, keeping your arms straight. If the inside of your elbow pushes forward beyond the normal 180 degree straight line of your arm, then congratulations! you probably have a septal aperture. Which is basically just an extra foramen (hole) in the bottom of your humerus where your ulna attaches (olecranon process). *See picture*

(from Septal Aperture of the Humerus in a Mediaeval Human Skeletal Population by Simon Mays)

This has been associated primarily with females, but newer research has shown that it is in both sexes. One of my profs. has done work in the Balkans (helping with identification after the genocide in the late 90's) and found this trait in the male population there. Interesting stuff.

Oh Hopewell

2009-03-12T19:15:00.003-04:00

So much homework....tonight will be an all nighter...ugh. But part of what I am working on tonight is combing a massive database on the Hopewell Indian culture for information on aged remains. They were moundbuilders in the center of Ohio and their influence spread out from WV to the Dakotas. Pretty neat stuff, I grew up across the river from the mounds in Marietta, Ohio. Although, my professor says this particular mound wasn't Hopewellian, but an earlier group.

Interesting that burial mounds were so prolific throughout the Mid-west and South. Even more so because it was practices by several different cultures. Early anthropological theory would say this is probably because of diffusion, one group came up with it and others thought it was a neat idea. I am not a big diffusionist though, at least not without actual proof. I figure the mounds are a product of independent invention. Some cultures (Hopewell, Mississippians, etc) came up with the idea and, because their cultures were so extensive and far-reaching, mounds popped up around the better part of the Mid-west and South.

Conus Mound in Marietta, Ohio.
Built by the Adena Indians, later a revolutionary war and early settler cemetery was built around it.

Image grabbed from James Jacobs archaeoblog: http://www.jqjacobs.net/blog/marietta.html

Love a little iron, A little protein

2009-03-08T14:34:00.003-04:00

*sigh* There is nothing on this world better than a grilled steak filet with a nice warm, red center. I haven't had one since New Year's and it had left a lot to be desired. So with a little money that the dad sent me, I took myself out to a wonderful steak dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. Hmmm Dallas filet. Amazing. Of course, everyone else had the same idea on a Saturday night and I was able to find a single seat at the bar. The bar can be kind of a fun place, you end up having conversations with random people and hearing some pretty crazy stories. For instance, last night.

So, I'm sitting there working on some homework and looking over some thesis stuff...loving! the wonderful rolls they have there. This dude sits down and eventually strikes up a conversation, mainly he's just talking about his job, his life and where he likes to hang out. I mention a bar that a friend of mine likes to go to when we all go out and that leads to a conversation on why he got barred from a bar. This story involved a bar fight that consisted of the older opponent ending up in critical condition and the dude I was talking to being arrested for several felonies including assault and attempted murder. Holy Shit! Apparently, over this guy's 40 or so years he had never been in trouble and it got dropped down to misdemeanors. And his opponent made a full recovery. Crazy. First time I'd had a conversation with a dude who had been charged with something you hear about on Law and Order.

All right, lunch time, got to go make my delicious delicious wrap. And then finishing homework because sadly, vacation is over tomorrow.

Hmm

2009-03-06T18:20:00.002-05:00

Sadly, sadly spring break is winding down and I have to actually make sure I get homework done instead of making really good plans for what I will be doing tomorrow. Seriously, based on the massively detailed and amazingly complex and hopeful iteneraries I make for myself, you would I think I was actually getting stuff done...but I'm not. Although, I can feel a little better because thesis work did get done...poster presentation that will be presented next week is just about done...and my several mental health days that I took when I ran away to the mom's house for puppies and food were amazing.

On another note, Thailand bioarch trip is getting closer. My first field school AND I get to dig up bones! I have to pay for it and buy my tickets soon, but I am officially on the list to go. So exciting! Can't believe I will be in the country of the King and I...way too bad that Yul Brynner will not be there. But there are elephants and a tiger preserve that I am hoping to go see and unfortunately, monkeys. I hate monkeys. They are so dirty and they come up and steal your stuff. And I have no idea what to do if I am approached. And they are in the town we will be staying in, just wondering around. Luckily, though, they aren't so much around the Buddhist temple where we are digging. And it really is getting closer, we just got an email from our prof. detailing things we will need. How we have to wear shirts with at least short sleeves and long pants when we dig to respect the Buddhist ideas on modesty (really this is just for the girls, but our prof. decided everyone should be the same - which is nice). Ah! I am getting so excited, this trip is going to so awesome. I need to start making lists of things I need to do and get before I leave, so far I know I need rain poncho, maybe hiking shoes, a shiny new trowel for digging, and probably several drugs (multi-stage antibiotic for traveller's stomach issues and possibly something for malaria - though hopefully not the one that the Army was giving out and made some of the soldiers go crazy - small statistic, I know, but still).

Found a new blog through another blog I am reading, Delta Whiskey is an awesome cook. She takes pictures of her food as she cooks it and gives some really good instructions and reasons for some substitutions. I am still learning about cooking so I find her info really helpful. Plus, she's pretty funny, so check her out.

Finally, what has happened to Big Tobacco? On the right side of my blog there is a growing list of blogs I read and one of them is from a staff sgt writing from Iraq. He was updating pretty regularly and then all of a sudden his website doesn't exist. This is probably a bad sign considering where he was - meaning someone higher up the chain got pissed. Anyone have any ideas?

Ok, off to work.

Snow Day!

2009-01-20T12:22:00.007-05:00

Was warned by my pop yesterday to make sure I have plenty of food and supplied for the incoming snow storm. Ha. It never snows here, people just freak out and buy all the water and milk and then nothing happens. So I went to sleep last night figuring I would get up early and read some before class. I woke up to a call from one of my cohort asking if school was still a go. And outside my window was beautiful snow...and even now in the early afternoon it is still snowing! It snowed so hard and the wind blew so much last night that my recycling bin, sitting by my door and protected by the covered walkway, has a thin covering of snow on it. Good thing I went to the store a couple of days ago, I have plenty of soup and grilled cheese and mt dew to last me until it melts. Which will probably be tomorrow. But I did go out and play a bit and made a snowball. Ah snow days. Reminds of elementary school and praying the night before that God would just please please let school be canceled.

We have a new president today and I found myself getting choked up a little as the procession made their way to their seats. So many people standing out in the cold watching this, even if they can't really see it without the jumbotrons. The mall is covered with people. Amazing when it's even colder up there. The big thing though will be how Jon Stewart is going to be able to make fun of this tonight on The Daily Show.

The Mysteries of Town Creek

2008-11-22T12:48:00.004-05:00

So in my research of the Town Creek group - hopefully the early Mississippian group will be my thesis people - I come across this picture of one of the Siouan burials on the site. The Siouans were a different culture group (made up of different tribes) that moved into Town Creek after the Mississippian inhabitants had left. You can tell this from a number of things - one of them is through burial practices. The Mississippian group buried their dead in a slightly flexed (usually the lower limbs were folded or bent) or completely extended position along cardinal directions (some angle of N-S) with their heads angled East or West.

The Siouans buried their dead in the fetal position, completely flexed. While a lot of Southeastern US groups buried their dead in this position, the interesting thing about this picture is the clay cover that retained the impression of the skeleton. The really interesting thing is that another blogger (http://gulahiyi.blogspot.com/2008/11/clay-sepulchres-along-cullasaja.html) posted some historical documents of Western Carolina settlers finding burials with clay lids. I had originally thought that those reports were anomalies, now it looks like, for the Siouan groups, it was a common practice.

(Picture is from the master's thesis of Martha Graham)

The arm bone is connected to the hand bone is connected to the I need some sleep bone

2008-11-13T18:49:00.002-05:00

Osteology test and rough draft of my environmental archaeology paper on the decline of Cahokia due tomorrow...going to be a long night. But at least there is Grey's Anatomy and the hot army dr, so that should be a good time to take a break.

It's cold, officially, and I am layering up because Florida definitely thinned my blood out. All the trees are showing some amazing colors. Walked by the big white oak when taking out the recycling and couldn't help but kick the thick cover of leaves on the ground like I was 5. We had a tree just like it across the road at the last place we lived in WV when I was a kid, and for a minute I was right back there standing across the street, getting ready for the bus...feeling how cold it was. Funny how little things like that can trigger sensory memories.

Working on getting the money together for my Thai field school...whoohoo digging up bones. If you would like to donate to the cause, I accept cash, checks, and all major credit cards : )

Yay for November, I can listen to Christmas songs now without feeling like I am starting too early and I think I may put up my tree soon. If ABC Family can start their countdown to the 25 days of Christmas countdown next Sunday, then I can start singing carols.

Back to work....

Everyone needs to take a deep breath

2008-11-05T12:10:00.002-05:00

If you have read a few of my earlier posts, you probably know I am a fan of Obama and I am excited about the turnout of the election yesterday. BUT...I am worried about all of the incredibly negative messages I see on my friends' and family's facebook pages - people who are worried about the beginning of socialism and the end of America.

This is a difficult time for our country...we are losing jobs and homes and carefully invested retirements and college savings. There are people in this world that really do want to hurt us. And for a lot of people, Obama was an unknown and unwanted choice - not because he was Black- but because some of his polices and his rhetoric (and lets face it - a really good smear campaign trying to label him socialist/Marxist) made people nervous. I don't agree with these fears, but that doesn't mean they aren't legitimate. NOW - that does not mean they are entirely accurate - but it does mean that people are nervous and scared about the direction the country could go in and they don't trust Obama.

I'm sorry there is a lack of trust for him and I am sorry that there is so much animosity between conservatives and liberals - as a conservative liberal, I think Obama will turn out to be more centrist than people think, which is good for such a diverse country as ours. And he is no dove that will call the troops back from everywhere - I can only pray that he listens to the men on the ground in Iraq because we can't afford to lose the ground we have gained - we have a moral obligation and duty to leave that country better than when we first arrived. But you will see - liberals and conservatives - a stepped up program in Afghanistan...and some of you liberals will be pissed. But there, we also have an obligation to help...and we have a few people we need to find.

But the bigger thing right now - more than an historic election, more than worries about becoming Communist - is that we have major issues going on in this country that need attention and we need to come together and fix them. That means that even if we disagree about economics or social issues - we need to put those aside and remember that we all live here, together.

People will probably say - well, thats easy for you, your guy won. Honestly...honestly...if McCain had won, I would be saying the same thing. Granted, I would be all down in the mouth and sad right now, but I would suck it up...because my country is more than the issue of McCain or Obama, abortion, or the war in Iraq. However you voted on Tuesday - you voted for America...and we will be fine. That means liberals need to not be douches and gloat and call McCain supporters racist. And conservatives need to realize that some of the stuff said on the campaign trail about a turn towards socialism (and is this the 50's again all of a sudden? don't we remember the awfulness of McCarthyism?) are inaccurate and was done to scare you.

Everyone just needs to take a deep breath. We are going to be fine, but we all need to work together. I am no fan of Bush, but he's my president. And in January, Obama will be all of our president. This is democracy, this is what we stand for as a country.

2008-10-30T16:41:00.003-04:00

Obama rally yesterday was awesome. He made some really good points about the economy and came off really strong about defense and taking care of our troops. His ideas about encouraging people to enlist or otherwise volunteer for some sort of national service are important. I especially liked his emphasis on making college affordable, as a broke college student I am all ears. He ties this in with national service - he wants higher education to be attainable for everyone, but those that join the military or the peacecorp should have their college paid for and college work study should be used as a way to volunteer in the community. This is all well and good and I support it, but I need a little help paying for grad school.

It was really cool to be part of one of the largest crowds in NC that he has had so far - 20 to 30,000 people showed up. It feels like all the stories you hear about the '60s - its like a movement...like something different and exciting and good is just around the corner. I have never been so emotionally invested in a campaign and if he loses...ugh, I'm going to be dissappointed and heartbroken. But no matter who wins, everybody has got to suck it up and come together because its going to be a tough job getting this country back on track.

Anyway, Christmas is just around the corner and I have already started watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas - makes me feel warm and fuzzy and I can't wait for the season to start (which happens right after Halloween is over).

Civic Duty

2008-10-28T13:44:00.002-04:00

I voted today, am very excited because it's my first national election and, aside from this year's primaries, my first election in general. Doing it early was pretty easy and there was only a small line - which was actually kind of exciting because there you are getting ready to exercise your right to vote and your surrounded by 20 or so of your countrymen getting ready to do the same thing.

So, I'm feeling very connected and part of the process right now. Yay, for being an American : )

Remember to go vote!

Wednesday can't get here fast enough

2008-10-27T17:35:00.003-04:00

I have purposefully kept politics out of my posts becuase its a polarizing subject and I think that we need to have more unity now a days....also, I don't want to lose the little viewership that I have based on different points of view..yeah, I'm being a tool, whatever.

BUT! This I have to share and will hopefully be posting video of later...I am going to see Barack Obama on Wednesday!! I know some people don't like him and even I disagree with some of his ideas (not a huge fan of his Iraq pull out plan, though his idea to encourage more community involvement is good)...but I have never felt so energized and hopeful (though that's really cliche now) than I have during this campaign. It feels like we are on the edge of huge change in this country - and I feel like he can take us in an amazing and positive direction.

Plus, his mom was an anthropologist (cultural) who did her fieldwork in the Philippines on blacksmiths..crazy specific. So he's an anthropology baby...which doesn't have anything to do with running the country, but I think is a neat connection.

Can't wait till Wednesday!!

Beautiful campus...some dumb kids...

2008-10-22T19:14:00.007-04:00

Apparently, Western Carolina needs to start assigning more homework and explain to these kids how pranks are supposed to be funny, not disturbing.

Really? Really, Car? Really?

2008-10-21T12:24:00.002-04:00

So here's a ridiculous story:

Background: One of the guys in my cohort is out of town and the other guy in my group and I are helping to take care of his cats and dog while he and his fiance are away. Went there last night, no big deal...played with the dog, cuddled the kitten. Perfect.

This morning: Ended up staying up All Freakin' Night working on a paper for today that I FINALLY finished at 7:30 am. Ugh. Lay down for a bit and then headed back over to let the puppy out and check on things. Everything is fine except my car window on the driver side seems to not be up all the way. No big deal right? It's electric and I'm resourceful so I play with it as I pull up to the apartment. Doesn't seem to be going up...huh, I think to myself....well, of course I can figure this out, I like to fix things. So I make the horrible horrible decision to roll the window down.

My car door eats the window and makes some really bad 'breaking of something probably really important' sounds. So now my window won't roll up and I can't just park the car with a rolled down window for the rest of the day while I am in class - I live in a nice part of town, but its still a city and while I don't have crazy expensive things the last thing I need is someone to have easy access to steal the radio or even the car itself.

SO...I figure not a big deal, probably just came off the track - not that expensive. I know this because apparently I am also a mechanic. This positive outlook lasts about as long as it takes for the really young and adorable mechanic to take my door apart - which is actually pretty cool looking, by the way. I had already told him my diagnosis and he kind of laughs and make some joke about how I thought it was a simple fix. Yeah, freakin' HILAR-ious.

Turns out...all of that awful crunching and breaking heard earlier? Yup that was the regulator deciding to shatter into a half dozen pieces. This is not hyperbole, I counted those sad little pieces that fell to the ground as the door came apart - a handful of broken white pieces of plastic that means I can't roll down my window and have to get a replacement part - a $200 piece of plastic. Perfect.

So they drill a bolt through my door to keep the window up - which works - and now, $75 later - I am trying to find a cheap regulator to fix my window (which I am told is not likely, but I am research girl - I will find it even if I have to check ebay).

*Sigh* Yeah, so good times this morning. Thank God! I got my paper (due this afternoon) done this morning before I left. Now just two more papers to go before I am taking a day off - I get to watch a Beatles tribute band with a friend of mine this weekend which should be a good time.

Any ideas of where to search for parts other than the junkyard and e-bay would be awesome.

Good Times at the Fair

2008-10-19T12:56:00.002-04:00

State Fair was awesome last night! What could be more great than going to a place where just about everything you buy is some sort of fried thing on a stick. The new additions this year? Fried mac and cheese - which I couldn't find - and fried pecan pie - which I saw. My friend tried the deep fried twinkie - she said it was actually pretty good. I was boring and unadventurous and stuck with the normal funnel cake. Funnel cakes at a fair remind me of growing up in WV and going to all the fair and festivals my little town held with my grandmother and getting a funnel cake with her. Sternwheeler Festival and the Parkersburg Homecoming - for being a small area - had some pretty good music come in. Dixie Chicks before they got famous, Diamond Rio, Molly Hatchet Band (who knew they were still touring).

Tomorrow (Monday) would be a good time to go back to the fair - if I had time, what with four papers due this week - because Bobby Flay of Food Network fame will be there...what he's going to do I have no idea, hopefully it will involve making a delicious Southwestern style corn dog with a mango salsa ..yum! (my friend Jo came up with a great recipe he should follow)

Got to see some of the baked and canned goods that won prizes, makes me want to enter a contest sometime with my pepperoni rolls. I'm sure there were larger animals, but we did get to see the champion bunnies - some of those things are huge. I don't know what you are going to do with a 20lb rabbit...maybe eat it?

Anyway, good times at the fair and now its back to environmental archaeology articles.

Coming up for air

2008-10-17T14:30:00.004-04:00

Wow, so I just realized that I haven't updated the blog since August. Sorry for the lack of attention, I have been working on keeping my head above water with papers and midterms. On the bright side, my relationship with grad school is a lot less abusive now and according to my mid-term grades, I am not altogether horrible at this - it seems I am actually kind of good. Which has been a nice surprise. Literally, just got out of my second osteology exam. This time it was the bones of the skull plus any of the leg bones from the last section he wanted to throw in. Feel like I did a lot better this time, but I don't like to build myself up and feel cocky just in case things don't turn out so well.

Fall break was last week. Used the time to get a little bit of work done, but mostly just hung out and breathed. It was nice to relax and catch up on sleep...spend some time away from school...after all of the stress and all-nighters from September. Half of my first semester is officially over and for the most part (aside from the usual readings and papers) my attention is turning toward the big semester papers that will come due for two classes in about a month and a half. The nice thing about it is that my profs. have split it up a bit and have deadlines throughout the term to make sure we are progressing correctly. It's a little bit of hand holding that I wasn't expecting and kind of appreciate since I am a notorious procrastinator and will focus too much on all the short-term work (of which there is plenty) and lose site of the long term stuff.

On the thesis front, things are coming along. Hopefully I will be doing something with the Town Creek collection. I have been looking for other settlement sites of the same culture, South Appalachian Mississippian, but so far have not found much in the literature. Apparently the Tennessee Valley Authority talks about them in one of their Environmental Impact Survey, but I haven't found where they were doing their survey work. But there are plenty of mounds in the western part of North Carolina, at least one of them is bound to be from the culture I am studying. Sometime this summer I will need to head out that way and check some of them out if I can, at the least it's a good reason to go get some good barbecue. This part of the state has too much of the Eastern Carolina influence which is way too thin and mustard/vinegary for my taste. And I am still looking for a good Chinese food establishment - found one that is ok (mostly it's just really convenient and cheap), which makes up for the sub-par orange chicken.

It's definitely Fall now. The fact that I lived in Florida for the past two years is now really apparent, because I am ready to break out the heavy coat and everyone else is still walking around in t-shirts. I'm going to have to buy a space heater soon.

Got two books in the past few weeks, one I've read before - the excellent Clea Koff's The Bone Woman...if you want to read about what its like to work as a forensic anthropologist in the '90s Rwanda and Bosnia, this is the book you should be reading. I already knew what I wanted to be before reading this book and after, it has only validated my choice.

The other book is the Forever War by Dexter Filkins. He's an embed journalist who was in Iraq and Afghanistan..though it seems to be more of an Afghanistan emphasis. It reads like stream of conscience and he jumps from one story to the next, current war to one ten years ago, from one country to another...which is slightly disjointed, but the more you read it the easier it is to understand. The thing I like about it so far is that Filkins spent a good bit of time in Afghanistan back in the '90s...and so can contexctualize the current stories he has of the people there with history on the Taliban's rise, what Kandahar was like when the warlords were fighting for power, and the influence of foreign money and fighters in the support and shoring up of Taliban power.

Afghanistan is a place many people in the US don't know much about outside of our current involvment. It's been through a hell of a time for the past couple of decades and lost a lot - the oppressive laws women were subjected to and the loss of important archaeological and cultural history when the Taliban destroyed the statues of Buddha are just a few examples. I'm glad there has been a shift in increased awareness and focus on our military and civil efforts there - the Pentagon has even started employing cultural anthropologists to help provide some insight in what can be done to help the population. You hear so much about America's war fatigue and it has been going on for a long time, but we can make a difference and have been making a difference - we just need to stick it out. But that's the end of my soapbox, I'm going to go start on the copious amounts of homework that I have and look forward to my break tomorrow when I get to have a funnel cake at the fair. Whoohoo fair : )

Obturator, obturator. Foramen, can you hear me?

2008-08-28T13:35:00.007-04:00

So, update on grad school - it pretty much rocks. It's hard - ooh boy, it's really hard and there are a lot of papers and reading, but I got to play with bones the other day in my osteology class and that really makes it all worth it. Now I am WAY out of practice, I haven't looked at a real bone - let alone mapped out the geographic points on it - in two years so there is quite a bit of review going on for me right now. But this is all still very awesome.

We have been learning the lower long bones - femur, tibia, fibula - as well as the pelvis and patella. We have also been going over techniques of siding - figuring out the left and right - as well as sexing them - and that's not what you think.

The other bone kid in my grad program showed me a pretty cool - and maybe slightly insensitive - way of siding the pelvic bones (called innominates or os coxa).

Think back to pictures you have seen of the pelvis, there is a notch about halfway down on each side. This is called the Greater Sciatic Notch...place your thumb there like you are picking the bone up (with your palm covering the socket where your femur connects). Now hold it like a phone. The crest of the bone should sweep upwards by your ear and the pubic ramis should angle down toward your mouth. It's not as gross as it sounds. Now, whichever side of your face the "phone" fits more naturally is the side of the body the bone belongs to.

The accompanying diagram of an innominate will give the less anatomy inclined an idea where the geographic points I have mentioned are located. Notice that if you picture the technique, the pictured bone is from the right side of the body.

The weather is starting to cool - it's that interesting mini-season that North Carolina has where the hot summer weather has finally broken, but its not quite chilly enough to be called fall. It feels a lot like springs in Wilmington.

And it's about that time of year, where senior undergrads and those just wanting to go to grad school are starting the application process and taking the unhappy GREs. Good Luck!...and what are you still doing on the internet? Go study! : )

2008-08-25T18:50:00.002-04:00

Into my second week of school now and wow - so much reading...and just a lot work. I am at times incredibly excited and amazingly overwhelmed. And I can't quite shake the feeling that I am in way over my head on this one. Kind of a weird feeling since I am really good at the school thing - it's my bag - and yet, here I am worrying about if I am good enough to make it through this pretty intense program. It's a lot of classes in a pretty short amount of time and I am not really sure what my thesis topic will be and it seems like we already need to have a really good idea of what we want to study.

*Sigh* Anyone else feel this way? It will probably pass, I will turn in my first paper and it will be awesome and I will feel like I'm on the level with everyone else. But after being out of school for two years...I feel out of practice.

On the upside, had some good extended family time - we were celebrating the grandparents' belated 60th wedding anniversary. Pretty amazing, although I can't quite imagine spending that much time with one person. Not that I am a fan of jumping around - I have always been more of a penguin. And obviously marriage is a serious commitment, but after 60 years - you have been married for way longer than you were ever single. Pretty inspiring, since divorce is so prevalent and it happened to my family - made me pretty cynical about the whole love thing. But there is still hope, if both sets of my grandparents can stay married for 60 years - well, we will see about me.

Anyway, back to reading - got to get a little homework done before heading out to see Tropic Thunder tonight - looks like a pretty funny movie and hopefully it will live up to the hype.

2008-08-18T01:30:00.009-04:00

Getting ready to start classes soon, whoohoo! Definitely a good thing since it feels like all I have done is sit around and continue to spend money with a little bit of unpacking sprinkled in here and there. Some of you will be proud to know I am finally throwing away boxes that I have kept for the past two years - they were broken down and put into the recycling the other day. There are a lot less to finish, but seems like I will never get everything unpacked. Oh well.

The town has been good so far, with the cool Carolina nights starting to set in. Hopefully, the days will get cooler, too - I've had enough of hot and humid from being in Florida where you could walk out the apt door at 7:30 in the morning and start sweating.

Driving on the interstate the other day, I saw a small herd of deer on the side of the highway, strung out along the hill. Nice to see deer again, didn't see any in Florida (which are about the size of a big dog from what I was told). These were your average NC deer - about 4 or 5 ft at the shoulder.

Spent time with the folks this weekend and got some puppy time in. I have never seen a German Shepherd as obsessed with a tennis ball as the parents' puppy is, always thought it was more of a lab thing.

Attaching another movie with this post. When I was in England my friend, who graciously shared her flat and showed me around, recorded a message for our friend who wasn't able to make it over. Enjoy! both of you - hope you like the music choice :) *Took down movie as it fulfilled its purpose : )*

I will be adding another movie of England highlights - hopefully minimizing the shakiness and increasing the interesting-ness. :)

2008-08-06T22:52:00.004-04:00

Finally! Moved to North Carolina and getting the new apt set up for the start of grad school. Can't wait to meet the grad kids I will be studying with for the next few years.

I am missing Florida though. It feels weird not going to work everyday and I feel really slack just sitting around unpacking and spending money. It's like I am still on vacation and tomorrow I will wake up remembering that in a few days I will need to pack my suitcase and drive back to Gainesville.

Spent some time at the mom's house with the puppies and took some video. I am posting that as well, you all get to see my very first movie! Very exciting, but also keep in mind it is my first - so it is rough, plus it's not that exciting - but I figured some of you will enjoy the puppy time : )

Hope to have more interesting news for you all soon.

2008-06-29T18:59:00.002-04:00

Four weeks until the big move. Looking forward to getting settled and getting school started. Just got to remind myself five months from now - this is what I wanted and worked two years for - go to remind myself to love the pain, stress, and hard work.

Silly Me...

2008-04-12T13:47:00.002-04:00

So what's worse than waiting around to find out if you are accepted into grad school (and not getting accepted so having to go through the whole process of application three years in a row, by the way)?

What's worse is waiting to start school after you get accepted. 3 1/2 months and counting till the move to school, another 1/2 month till classes start. And I am excited.

I am not sure who will read this blog, random late-night internet surfers maybe...this can apply to a lot of stuff I guess, but my biggest challenge was getting into grad school...so those of you who are just starting the process or thinking about going to grad school - whether anthropology or something else - don't quit if you don't get in the first time.

Academics have always been my thing - I've had to work at it, but it's been what I'm good at - I even lettered in high school ;) So when I found out I didn't get into grad school my senior year of college I was shocked. What do you mean I am not good enough to be accepted?

So I got my stuff together and did some more research on schools and moved myself across the country and tried again. Granted I kind of hamstrung myself by only applying to one school the second time around. Yeah, no go the second time either. This time I was crushed. It sucked, a lot. I had a whole 'nother year to sit around and watch other people start school and graduate and I was slogging through a regular work day. I had a good job, this helped a lot...but it wasn't in my field or what I want as a career.

I also had the mental clock keeping track of where I should be in school...especially in comparison to my friends who did get into grad school. Nothing like some mental bullying to make you feel good about yourself.

So, I have gone through three separate application cycles and have applied to four schools (three were applied to twice). But I finally got in (I haven't stopped doing little happy dances and for the first few weeks I re-read the acceptance letter ever few days to remind myself it was real).

And the program I was accepted to will not only combine my undergraduate concentration in archaeology with my current interest in human skeletal anatomy, but will also move me back closer to some family and friends I have been missing. The thing is, this program is new - it wasn't around when I first started applying to schools. In fact, this coming school year will only be its second year in existence. Kind of crazy the way things work out.

So when you apply and your letters start coming back...congratulations on your acceptance!...but if it's the other kind of letter....stop and sit down and ask yourself 'how bad do you want it?' It took me forever to finally get accepted (and to make a decent score on the damn GRE), but I got in. And despite not really wanting to take a year off, let alone two....it's been a good two years of real world experience...even if one of the things I've learned is that I really want to be back in school. And I realized that I what I am wanting to do is really what I want to do. Not getting accepted was just an obstacle - not a decision. So don't stop.

Another shot at originality

2008-04-05T11:59:00.003-04:00

So, another blog about some random person's life experiences. This particular one is to chronicle my time in grad school and beyond...and to add another virtual voice to the anthropology dialog. Interesting things will be posted, hopefully I will even write a few of them ; )