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! : )
12 comments:
Boy! Lots of suggestive language.
I can't imagine it feeling cool this early down there.
Oh, you know me. I am all about the suggestive language and the teasing ;)
Using a Pelvic Bone for a phone! Whoever heard such a thing?!
Hey, when you are in the pursuit of knowledge and trying to figure out who this person is laying on you lab table - the first step is to lay them out in an anatomically correct way. So you use any memory trick you can.
It's like the little rhyme, "red meets yellow, you're a dead fellow" when you are trying to figure out if that's a coral snake you are looking at.
Didn't you have anything like that in the Guard to remember important, don't get yourself killed information?
Well, yeah. Even though I've never been in the Guard. Like, if it sounds like a rock, it ain't a Panther;)
Sorry, you are Reserves...oops. At least I didn't say Air Force ; )
I like the saying, though - I might have to steal that one.
LOL
I have a correction. Over at my place I told you I know Patricia Lance, I just looked in "Time Before History, The Archaeology Of North Carolina" where you will see her as Patricia Holden, she defined Pisgah Phase Pottery. Had to set the record straight.
That book is on my thesis research list of things to read. I am pretty sure she talks a little about Town Creek - I'm hoping to go see it sometime this summer.
You said you were 'armchair' with this stuff, but how did you get involved with it and how did you meet Ms. Holden? If in real life you are actually a well-known and published archaeologist and you are just hiding your true identity - keep in mind I am but a poor masters student who could use some funding and can wash and catalog pottery in exchange ; )
If I was a well known and published Archaeologist, why would I do such a thing?
I know Pat because she is from here. She ran a little Feed N Seed at the Forks of the River. She's a Local Icon. I'd stop in, buy a drink,pick her brain and she'd walk off in the back and come back with an axe head. She told me allot.
She was at the Town Creek Ground Breaking if I remember right. I picked her brain about allot of more local stuff, Kanasta, Tuckaseegee, Judaculla Rock, Garden Creek. She's up in her years now, the store is being torn down and I've not seen her.
Now for getting into this, it's always been a natural wonder to me. Something I share with Pat though, after all allot of these "peoples" were my Ancestors, I don't see it as technical phases as I do that these were people living their lives. And, they must have lived some fascinating lives.
Now I've got to do the silly wor verification game...It spells Kremlin.crlmvyn
I Don't WANT to Study! Your MOM want's to study! Oh man!
wor verification game...It spells Kremlin.crlmvyn - whaat?
I agree about the cultural phases - they sometimes feel very subjective; yeah they are supposed to show changes in cultural patterns but not every new kind of pot was an indication of a major cultural shift.
Now they are helpful when there is a big cultural shift - like the change between the Pee Dee mississippians at Town Creek who apparently left and a Siouan group who took over.
If you want to read some interesting stuff, the book on Town Creek (Town Creek Indian Mound:
A Native American Legacy
by Joffre Lanning Coe) has a section on a really limited osteo analysis of both cultures; the Siouan remains show signs of cranial flattening - hmm pretty :)
But I am still at a loss for a good question to do my thesis on...I like trauma even though that sounds awful...but I'm starting to be really interested in why the Pee Dee left and where they went. Although, I have no idea how to study that osteologically. I guess I have until February to figure it out.
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