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'Scarpetta' Season 1, Episode 1 Review: Bridge of Time, Part 1

2026-04-02T22:07:00.000-04:00

Nicole Kidman as Dr. Kay Scarpetta in Amazon Prime's Scarpetta

Bones was fundamentally a TV show about young professionals figuring out how to be the adults in the (big, scary, murdery) room and how to form lasting relationships in spite of their jobs. So it was fine that forensics took a back seat to the lives of Brennan, Booth, and the gang -- most of whom were never featured in the Kathy Reichs book series -- and that made it fun to watch and to review.

That's not the vibe of Scarpetta, Amazon Prime's new take on the series of forensic thrillers by Patricia Cornwell. It's decidedly darker and harder; a more formidable version of Bones's bumbling optimism. While Bones balanced science and relationships with winking aplomb, Scarpetta feels no obligation to tip the scales away from the grim tasks of the job or to humanize its churlish characters. But the problem here isn't the source material; I've read all of the books, and the series is true them. The problem is that an unflinching Scarpetta makes for uninviting television.

The first episode opens with a dual-timeline reenactment of the first book, Postmortem (1990), and the 25th book, Autopsy (2021), as forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta and her friends and family try to solve a series of murders that are very similar but more than two decades apart.

In the present day, Scarpetta (played by Aussie Nicole Kidman doing a not-great American accent) is called to the scene of a Jane Doe, who was murdered and dumped near railroad tracks. A flashback to 1998 reveals that Scarpetta (played by Brit Rosy McEwen doing a good American accent) had a similar case. Both killings (of tied-up, big-busted, white women) are shown in classical-music-scored flashback snippets that veer into murder porn as Scarpetta intones "manner of death: homicide, mechanism is exsanguination, cause-of-death is sharp force injury to the neck."

But most of this episode revolves around setting up the one-note characters who will recur throughout the series: Jamie Lee Curtis as Dorothy, Kay's (much) older and eccentric sister; Bobby Cannavale as Pete Marino, Kay's right-hand-man and Dorothy's husband; Ariana DeBose as Lucy Farinelli, Kay's niece and Dorothy's daughter, who just lost her wife; and Aussie Simon Baker as an inconsistently southern-accented Benton Wesley, Kay's husband and an FBI profiler. Scenes include: Kay-and-Dorothy resentment dialed up to 11, Benton being oddly meek, Marino being strangely normal, and Lucy bragging about how rich she is. There are a lot of swear words and very low-lit scenes so that Amazon Prime can prove that it can do drama. And there are hints of the misogyny rampant throughout Cornwell's book series as new secretary Maggie (played by Stephanie Faracy) lingers too long as Scarpetta showers and says it's "marvelous how you've kept your figure all these years."

Unlike Bones, this series is not a case-of-the-week procedural. So we don't get a resolution to the past-and-present murder cases just yet. I suppose I'll have to watch the rest of the series to see how the showrunners deal with the split timeline and the currently one-dimensional characters. Patricia Cornwell is probably thrilled that her books finally made it to the small screen. But I doubt that Scarpetta will have the 12-season staying power of Bones.

Extraneous Thoughts

I adore Bobby Cannavale, but he is absolutely not Pete Marino, the bald, overweight, chain-smoking Jersey detective. It is cute, though, that they cast Cannavale's real-life son for the flashbacks.
I also really enjoyed Simon Baker in The Mentalist, and his American accent is spot-on, so it's tragic that they're making him do a weird southern-ish accent for the character of Benton Wesley, who is from a moneyed New England family. (As I am from Virginia, I can say with certainty that no one is doing any sort of Virginia accent.)
Fun fact: David Hornsby (who played a cop in this episode but is better known as Rickety Cricket in It's Always Sunny) is married to Bones star Emily Deschanel (Temperance Brennan herself).
And of course, Patricia Cornwell made a cameo in the episode, as the Virginia judge who swore in Dr. Scarpetta as the medical examiner in the present day.

Who needs a classicist? (Installment 4)

2024-03-16T14:34:00.001-04:00

Started watching Northern Exposure, since I didn't see it the first time around. In this episode, a former Russian spy tells Maurice he has his secret KGB file and pulls it out of his briefcase.

I know it was filmed 35 years ago, long before Google translate was a thing, but mixing up the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets is a pretty hilarious mistake. Love the "Top Secret" typed in Greek letters!

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 58)

2023-09-27T13:55:00.004-04:00

So these Nazca aliens. Man. I thought we'd all made memes and moved on.

But here comes Cliff Miles declaring there are 8 to 11 individuals and they're a new species in the genus Kosmosidae. LOL. He's got a 266-page (yes, really) paper discussing the purported aliens' anatomy, and it's a doozy. And by that, I mean his osteological terminology is atrociously bad and his ability to identify random bits of human remains cobbled together into... whatever these things are... is even worse.

Yes, this fake isn't even up to Piltdown standards. Now, I don't have much experience with reading X-rays, and even I can tell that these are bits and bobs of some poor soul who did not deserve to be reassembled randomly and passed off as an alien.

It's been four years since I posted here at PbO, but I figured, what the heck... Who needs an osteologist?

Welp, the red rectangle is the shaft of a long bone. Could be a humerus for all I can tell, but importantly that midshaft is at the elbow. It doesn't terminate in a metaphysis, it's broken and shoved into the elbow area. The yellow rectangle? Miles says that's the mysterious single carpal bone. It's actually a vertebral body (likely lower thoracic) rotated and stuck there. I think the blue rectangle shows some nonadult femora -- but turned upside down so that the distal ends are weirdly mushed into the pelvis. Or maybe upside-down femora with tibial epiphyses on top? And the green rectangle shows that these very human children whose skeletons are being used to further crackpot pseudoarchaeology theories were probably under-nourished at death (if those are indeed Harris lines). Don't even get me started on the "eggs" that are inexplicably, fully radiopaque.

The rest of the 266-page paper -- which I'm not linking to, but you can easily find at the miles paper dot com -- is rife with conspiracy theories of all sorts.

I thought the alien mummies were just a ridiculous story going around, when two were presented to the Mexican congress recently, but the truth is even sadder: ancient Peruvian children's bodies were desecrated by a bunch of terrible people claiming proof of their conspiracy theories.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 57)

2019-10-21T11:39:00.000-04:00

Three different bioarchaeologists alerted me to this absolute clusterf*ck of bones in Saturday's Telegraph:

I feel like I should be asking... are any of the bones actually correct? I guess the femora look fine. But the lower legs, the pelvis, all of the arm bones are completely wrong. I don't have the heart to zoom in on the ribs and shoulder girdle. Didn't anyone at the Historic Royal Palaces have a photograph of a skeleton? Or Halloween decorations? Or freaking Google?

It's unfortunate, since it seems like a really cool find! A middle-aged woman and a 7-year-old child found in the Tower of London.

(Thanks to @archaeowright, @CranioMattrics, and @noddinggoth.)

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
The TV show Ozark needs an osteologist.
BioMed Research International needs an osteologist.
Museo de Navarra needs an osteologist.
Blade Runner 2049 needs an osteologist.
Marvel Comics and Wolverine need an osteologist.
Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist.
WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

How 3D Hominin Models Are Paving The Way For Future Palaeoanthropologists

2019-07-19T20:18:00.004-04:00

Over on my personal Facebook page, I often post snippets from people who email me, a semi-regular feature called What's in KK's Email? This is how I laugh at and offload my stress at getting cranky, mean, or mansplainy emails, usually about something I've written for Forbes. But occasionally, What's in KK's Email features emails that start like this:

"Your 2015 Forbes article about online 3D fossils pointed the way for my 15-year-old daughter to use 3D skull models for a science project. The result was her study comparing human, primate, and fossil skulls, which won the Florida award and was chosen as one of 100 regional finalists in the Google Science Fair. We thought you might be interested."

The dad who emailed me, John Thompson, also included a link to his daughter Storm's digital science fair project, entitled "The foramen magnum, bipedalism, habitat, and human ancestry: a computer study of 3D digital skulls." You can check it out yourself at the GoogleScienceFair link!

Storm writes that:

"This project compares correlations between different measurements of FM placement and posture. Using 3D scans from the Internet allowed more consistent measurements of specimens than 2D photos, and these scans were more accessible than the skulls themselves. I compared humans, extant primates, and several fossil specimens thought to be human ancestors. I compared a measure similar to Dart's original to one intended to exclude adaptations in muzzle length, and compared angles the FM makes with facial features and the upper jaw.

My results support a relationship between FM placement and bipedalism, but contradict previous conclusions about the Australopiths. However the angle the FM makes to the plane of the upper jaw (maxilla) was a better indicator of habitat, and could be used to evaluate fossil specimens' place in the human lineage. This will help us better understand our origins and place in nature."

You can even watch a 2-minute presentation of her project here:

I was thrilled that Storm was able to pursue her interest in palaeoanthropology thanks to the digitization of fossil hominin skulls. As a discipline, palaeoanthropology has been notoriously closed-off for decades, but an open access push in the last few years by heavy-hitters such as John Hawks and Lee Berger has led to huge amounts of public outreach (such as their Rising Star project that found Homo naledi).

John said that I could share his words and Storm's project here. "Collecting a wide enough variety of specimens was one of Storm's biggest frustrations," he wrote in email, "and so we were hoping her work could be used as an example to encourage more open access." In her acknowledgments section, Storm even gave shout-outs to all the folks who have made their 3D models available, as well as the open source software community. John concluded by thanking me "for pointing the way towards all those 3D resources; she could never have done this rigorous of a project without them."

Even though I am no longer teaching dozens of students each semester, it's great to know that my public outreach is paving the way for the next generation to start their anthropological future!

Way to go, Storm! Congratulations on winning the Florida award in the 2019 Google Science Fair!

I'm Not in the Habit of Quitting Things

2019-05-02T15:29:00.002-04:00

As I was writing my resignation letter last week to the Society for American Archaeology, leaving my post as chair of a committee in light of the massive failure of staff and board members in the wake of a serious sexual harassment issue, I reflected on the fact that it was the second time in a year that I was bailing on something that used to be very important to me.

Exactly one year ago, I quit my academic job at the University of West Florida.

Like most academics who struggle through a PhD or finally land a tenure-track job after years of uncertainty, I follow through on my commitments. Articles I promised, committees I joined, emails that are due, advising to be done, talks to be given -- I'm simply not in the habit of quitting things.

But in thinking about the reasons that compelled me to leave the SAA, I realized many of them were similar to why I left UWF: a lack of communication within a dysfunctional organization as well as a lack of respect for the autonomy and expertise of stakeholders. Basically, while the SAA fell victim to doggedly following their own insufficient policy and ignoring the power of social media, my time at UWF felt like tilting at the windmills of the status quo.

I've written and rewritten half a dozen different quit-lit essays in the last year in an attempt to answer the question that I'm often asked by people still in academia: Why did you leave?

That question gets easier to answer the further removed I am from UWF, far enough where I can look at the big picture rather than all the slings and arrows along the way. And I suspect that, now that I'm moving into my second year as an un(der)employed academic, my answer will soon become more concise and focused on the one or two deal-breakers that, in retrospect, tanked my desire to be a professor.

But before I get to the point where I can speak emotionlessly about one of the biggest decisions in my life, I wanted to briefly catalogue the emotions of quitting. There's no Kübler-Ross model to help academics understand what it's like to make a decision to leave a job and profession they'd worked toward for three decades, so I wasn't fully prepared for the variety of feelings that flooded over me in this process.

Halfway up Mt. Vesuvius in July 2017. I did not quit!
Even though I had just eaten a giant lunch and had
too many glasses of wine and really really wanted to!

❦ Anger ❦

On February 28, 2015, after getting my two girls to bed, I opened Word and quickly set up a table with four columns that started this way: Things to Like About Job / Things Not to Like / Things to Like About Academia / Things Not to Like.

That date is significant only to me, as it came at the end of a long month of dealing with infrastructural issues with my basement office and classroom: repeated floods, mold triggering my allergies, pipes exposed in the walls, and the fetid smell that permeated both rooms. In my work diary, I'd written:

Jan 23, 2015. The flood that started
it all. Evacuating the skeletons.

Feb 25 - Office smell was finally fixed after 2 weeks of complaints. Smell coming from old outdoor septic tank, through pipes that are no longer capped in building b/c they were stripped for parts. University plumber fixed with duct tape.
Feb 27 - Office pipe was blocked, so smell has migrated into classroom. Have to move class again in interest of my and the students' health and safety.

This document turned into the first step in quitting my academic job at the University of West Florida. It was anger that impelled me to create the pro/con list and disappointment that I felt as I opened it, repeatedly over the next two years, through additional floods, leaking sewage, dripping acoustic tile, broken floorboards, and an unconcerned health and safety office.

Moving out of that office space in fall 2017 was therefore a relief coupled with hope that I could start ignoring at least the building issues of the previous two years.

❦ Hope ❦

In my first three years at UWF, I applied to just five jobs, all at research-focused institutions, since I know that my academic strengths lie in writing and research. There are few jobs like this in bioarchaeology, though, with stiff competition. I had one interview and no offers.

But after I created my job pro/con list in 2015, I applied everywhere I thought I could fit -- 17 applications in 2 years. I was hopeful that I had learned how to be successful in academia, with high teaching evaluations, a stellar track record of publications and small to medium external grants, and a raised public outreach profile, and that I could translate that to hit the ground running in a new position somewhere else.

Getting a job at a research-focused institution was my goal because it was the only way to grow my research program. I envisioned starting a light isotope prep lab so that I could train graduate students, do faster and better research, and collaborate with people across the country on bioarchaeological projects related to ancient diet.

It was impossible to do any of this at UWF, a regional comprehensive university in the perpetually under-funded Florida state system. I'd proposed in my sabbatical application - which was approved for the academic year 2018-19 - to start an isotope prep lab in the space recently evacuated by my retiring colleague. It was the first time I had lab space, five years after I started, and I was excited to apply for grants to create a lab, train students, and undertake research projects. But my department chair immediately made me share it with two other colleagues - both junior women faculty - because "space is tight."

In spite of several on-campus interviews, hope for a new permanent position somewhere else quickly dissipated with a rejection email from NC State University coincidentally dated February 28, 2018: three years to the day that I had begun to think of an exit strategy. It was everything I had wanted in a job and everything I wanted in a permanent place to live, and I had failed to get it.

❦ Failure ❦

Being rejected is part and parcel of academia. Your grant proposals and research articles are almost always rejected the first time, but if you're lucky, your reviewers have given you suggestions for how to make a better, stronger application.

I once slapped a sticker on a closet in
my office and created a 3D "lab."

That's not how job-hunting works. It's impossible to be anything but yourself - complete with your teaching philosophy and research program - and it's nearly impossible to get pointers for how to give a better, stronger interview the next time because it often comes down to "fit". You can't work on "fit."

Not getting offered the job I desperately wanted felt like a failure. I felt like a failure. Having a tenure-track job to "fall back on" didn't particularly assuage this feeling, since I wanted more and knew I could do more and be more if given a chance. I'd always been good at creating something out of next to nothing.

❦ Stuck ❦

Even harder to deal with than the emotional rollercoaster of failure, though, was the feeling of being stuck. At least for me. The feeling of wanting to expand my research program and being unable to for structural reasons... of wanting a different job but realizing that with tenure I was even more unlikely to be offered one... of loving the public scholarship I was doing but knowing that notoriety limited my academic prospects. These competing desires bumped into an intransigent reality, and it was anxiety-inducing.

Generalized anxiety is something I've dealt with since high school, heightened by situations that are out of my control. But I was always able to harness it and turn it into productivity -- if I work harder, apply for all the grants, and out-publish everyone, then I will get good grades, fund my dissertation, and find a tenure-track job.

But no one had told me that being stuck in a job I didn't enjoy in a town I hated living in would lead to a different kind of anxiety.

❦ Escape ❦

Feeling that everything is wrong and you need to escape is common with generalized anxiety. I'd binge Netflix, play Candy Crush, or have a martini -- sometimes all at the same time -- to get through difficult periods. But the feeling of being stuck both mentally and physically was wearing on me.

The day I turned in my
official "separation"
paperwork (May 10, 2018)

After that last rejection, I took stock: I had lost my patience with students; I was frustrated with the direction of my field; I was drinking too much; I had gained too much weight and did too little exercise; I was too quick to raise my voice at my family.

My husband and I started talking about my leaving my job even before that last rejection. I revisited my pros/cons list from 2015. My list of Things to Like About Academia was still solidly focused on research and had changed little in three years. But my list of positive aspects of my job had dwindled from five items to just one -- "already here; already settled in house and school."

We talked for hours, I cried a lot, and we ran the numbers: our family finances would survive without my academic salary. We could move back to Chapel Hill, NC, a place we both loved living as graduate students, where our kids could go to great public schools, where I could potentially look for alt-ac jobs in social science, and we'd have family and old friends and a support network again.

Considering that the mediocre status quo was one of the underlying reasons that I did not like my job or the city I lived in, it was clear the balance had shifted. But in academia, giving up a job - especially a tenure-track one - means giving up an entire lifestyle and professional persona you've worked probably 20 years to create.

❦ Letting Go ❦

Being willing to let go of academia was the hardest mental step of this process for me. I love research. Learning about the lives of ancient people through their bones is all I've wanted to do since I was a kid, poring through Greek and Roman archaeology textbooks, and wondering why histories and artifacts were privileged over biological remains. I worked goddamn hard to learn Latin, to pay for college, to break into an interdisciplinary field that barely existed, and to deal with critics and jerks along the way. Mentally, I had to be OK with losing all that I'd worked for because academia convinces you that if you walk out the door, another one will never open for you.

Vesuvius, 2017

I did have at least one more summer of research funding for my work at Oplontis, though. So in March 2018, while I figured out how to quit UWF and surfed Zillow for houses in Chapel Hill, I also planned what could be my last fieldwork trip to Italy. I booked a nice AirBNB in a convenient location, funded two students to come help me for all of July, bought necessary equipment, and then lunched at wineries, saw James Taylor in concert at Pompeii, and spent a weekend in Malta because it sounded interesting. My students and I also wrapped up data collection, leaving plenty of grant funding for the analysis that's currently ongoing.

If this is my last research adventure, I think I'm OK with that. This small project worked out well, and the best part -- getting data back and writing it up -- is yet to come.

❦ Hanging On ❦

Logistically, though, it is difficult to just give up an academic job and divest oneself of graduate students, research, professional organizations, and grants. I separated from UWF easily enough, leaving all the equipment I'd bought with start-up funds, ensuring my last couple of students had appropriate mentorship, and turning in my keys. But I also reasoned that finishing my research at Oplontis would benefit from an affiliation. An official one, complete with title, email, and ideally remote library access.

Back in class!

So after letting go, after convincing myself I'll be OK without my academic persona, I jumped back into academia -- sort of.

I spoke with several of my graduate mentors after I made the decision to quit, to let them know I was moving back, and ended up being asked to teach two courses in the fall of 2018 at UNC. Since one was online and one was at night, they didn't compete much with my parenting or my daily writing schedule. Plus, UNC pays their adjuncts far better than most.

I enjoyed teaching UNC students again, as they reminded me that 18-year-olds can be whip-smart and care about the world and their place in it. I'll probably teach there again at some point, but right now, I am glad that I am not required by job or financial constraints to do so. If last fall was my final time teaching, I can also legitimately say that I'm OK with that.

❦ Uncertainty ❦

For now, I am hanging on to my research, which I definitely want to see through, and to my five-year UNC affiliation, which lets me apply for new grants if I want to launch another project. I'm in academia doing research, writing books, and giving talks around the country, but for the first time in two decades, I have no clear plan for the future. And no clear job prospects beyond my contract at Forbes. Maybe I'll take some UX classes or figure out how to be a data scientist; there are certainly oodles of jobs in those realms here in the Research Triangle, and they're based on skills that I already have.

For the time being, I'm working in the moment -- spending my days writing, exercising, cooking, re-teaching myself to crochet, reading pop-sci books, and hanging out with my family. It's nice not to feel that constant pressure to do more, to feel guilty that I'm not preparing another grant proposal, publication, or lecture, and to feel that nothing I can do is good enough.

And for the time being, I'm still working through my emotions about academia -- emotions I like to pretend don't exist because how ridiculous is it that an enormous chunk of my self worth is wrapped up in this industry that seems specifically engineered to break your spirit, and how privileged am I that I can just up and quit and only worry about emotions?

I don't really have advice right now, or a grand narrative, or a searing critique of academe that will convince higher education administrators and politicians to fix the catastrophe they've caused.

I have uncertainty, and right now, I'm leaning into it. It's been a great year.

That Time the Society for American Archaeology Blocked Me on Twitter

2019-04-26T10:55:00.002-04:00

Chris Polt made me this amazing meme. I love it.

Last night, @SAAorg blocked me on Twitter. I figured it was coming -- after resigning my position as the Media Relations Committee chair in light of the #SAA2019 #MeToo fiasco earlier this month, I've been vocal about changes that are necessary for the Society to repair its relationship with its members. Not just on Twitter, either.

I've written emails to SAA President Joe Watkins and the entire Board of Directors, pleading with them to read the tl;dr version of what happened on April 11 and continues to happen. As anthropologists, we are trained to understand past events as part of a process, and we are trained to synthesize multiple accounts of the past in order to approach a truth, so I was optimistic that the Board would see what I saw. That they would see what thousands of us saw unfold on Twitter, Facebook, at the conference, and by email, and what thousands of us signed an open letter protesting.

But two weeks on, I am no longer convinced that I can get through to the SAA Board of Directors.

They haven't listened to me, in spite of my years of public education experience, which actually won me an award from SAA and which the SAA asked me to use when teaching an online seminar for them last year in "outreach, engagement, and advocacy."

They haven't listened to Jason De León, who is a MacArthur Genius award winner and co-chaired the #MeToo symposium at this year's conference. [His statement is here.] Or Pamela Geller, the other #MeToo co-chair. [Her letter is here.]

They haven't listened to Holly Norton, the archaeologist for the state of Colorado, who resigned her position on the Committee for Government Affairs. [Her letter is here.]

They haven't listened to Sarah Rowe, who bravely spoke up in the SAA business meeting and also penned a letter to the Board [here], or to Justin Walsh, who publicly resigned his membership [here], or Brad Lepper, an SAA award winner and committee member [here], or Sara Juengst [here].

They haven't listened to their Student Affairs Committee. [Their letter is here.] Or to the Queer Archaeology Interest Group. [Here] They haven't even listened to the SAA's own Committee on the Status of Women in Archaeology. [Their letter is here.]

But most importantly, they haven't listened to the three women most traumatized by this: Norma Johnson, Annalisa Heppner, and Liz Ortiz. I would encourage everyone to read what they have to say.

Finally, for those of you who haven't followed this for the past two weeks, here's one last attempt to summarize what happened and what continues to happen. (Feel free to skip down if you know all of this, or feel free to read the full timeline, curated by Liz Quinlan.)

---

Norma, Annalisa, and Liz were attending the SAA conference in Albuquerque. They all had checked for weeks to make sure that archaeologist David Yesner had not registered for the conference, as they were three of the nine claimants against him in a Title IX case at the University of Alaska Anchorage. That case was public knowledge in archaeology circles for months, and about a week before the SAAs, UAA banned Yesner from campus and from any events involving students in light of their finding of Title IX sexual harassment/assault violations he had committed.

When Yesner is first spotted at the SAAs around 8am on Thursday, April 11, the women frantically text one another and decided to enlist the help of their UAA faculty members, including Ryan Harrod and Gerad Smith, as well as that of journalist Michael Balter, who is at the conference to participate in De León's and Pamela Geller's MeToo session that happened on Sunday, April 14. In order not to "out" themselves, the women ask Balter to intervene on their behalf with SAA staff, in an attempt to have Yesner ejected from the conference.

Balter goes to the SAA press room and talks to PR/press coordinator Amy Rutledge about Yesner. According to him, Amy does not tell him about any official reporting channels but does say she will look into it and get back to him. When Amy does not handle this situation in a swift manner, Balter decides to ask Yesner to leave and walks with him until Yesner is outside the conference center. Balter continues to try to extract information from Amy, who has given him her cell number and invited him to ask for updates, and is met with silence.

By late afternoon on Thursday the 11th, Twitter and Facebook are lit up with posts from people shocked that Yesner is there, that SAA hasn't asked him to leave, and that Balter is being stonewalled. The SAA is silent on both social media platforms, publishing only what appear to be scheduled posts. And the UAA Chancellor, Cathy Sandeen, attempts to contact the SAA Executive staff, on Thursday after Liz alerts her, but cannot reach anyone.

On Friday morning, Balter is ejected from the SAA conference by executive director Oona Schmid, as Yesner (or perhaps Amy?) appears to have filed a harassment report against him. Oona suggests that Balter can talk to her about his concerns after the conference is concluded.

Also on Friday morning, Amy suggests via email to Norma, Annalisa, and Liz that the previous day's reporting of Yesner was not official, and they should file an official report. Norma attempts to make a report at 9am, and finds that the conference room where harassment reports are to be filed is occupied by an unrelated event. At 10am on Friday, as the three women are filing their report, they are on the phone with UAA Chancellor Sandeen, who was still unable to reach anyone on the SAA executive staff by phone.

Throughout Friday the 12th, the women and their supporters attempt to get an update on whether or not Yesner has been ejected, as they grow more fearful of seeing or having to interact with him. Journalist Kristin Romey of National Geographic inquires in the press office when getting her badge if an announcement will be forthcoming, and is told that it will be eventually.

By 5pm Friday, the time of the SAA Business Meeting, the three complainants still have no answers, social media outrage swells to epic proportions, and several people at the meeting report that then-president Susan Chandler was dismissive of the reports and refuses to say anything more, even after Sarah Rowe speaks up in the question period.

Over the next few days, the SAA says almost nothing on social media, while the claimants get more and more upset that no one at SAA has responded to their official or unofficial complaints. Even by April 16, the Tuesday after the conference was concluded, none of the three claimants has been contacted by SAA except to confirm that they filed a report.

Meanwhile, national media covers the controversy between April 12 and April 18 -- The Scientist, KTVA, Science Magazine, Hyperallergic, and Science Magazine again. And, according to a reputable source, Oona sought recommendations for a crisis management PR firm on April 14. It's unclear if SAA ever engaged one, though.

[EDIT (5/9/19) - The crisis PR professional SAA engaged is Adele Cehrs. I learned this when she accidentally tweeted a personal link to the SAA's Twitter account on May 6. She has since deleted that link as well as her LinkedIn profile. I also learned that Cehrs is the one responsible for blocking SAA members on Twitter.]

On April 17, the SAA puts out a statement about Yesner laden with falsehoods about the timeline of events. Both their Twitter and Facebook accounts are blasted with corrections and outrage. SAA starts quietly deleting some Facebook comments, and removes the "rate us" feature on Facebook due to the overwhelmingly negative comments about their handling of the situation.

On April 18, whoever runs the SAA social media accounts implies that Balter's report of Yesner on Friday the 11th was not credible as he was not participating in the meeting as a journalist. Later that day, Joe Watkins delivers a short video and text statement that engenders hope in many SAA members who have been frustrated with the opacity of the organization for the past week.

On April 22, the SAA finally talks to Norma, as well as Chancellor Sandeen and others from UAA, about what happened. Norma reports that the call was unproductive, and there is a general consensus that the SAA, specifically Oona and lawyers, are preventing real change and healing from happening.

Shortly afterward on the 22nd, the SAA tweets (and then a few hours later deletes) the suggestion that "UAA inaction put its students in a hostile environment." Norma forwards a screenshot to Chancellor Sandeen, who forwards it to UAA legal. UAA public relations and a KTVA reporter are astounded by this insinuation and publish a response.

As resignations roll in and other professional organizations (RPA, AAPA, AAA, SHA, CAA, SEAC, and more!) re-commit themselves to their anti-harassment policies, the SAA is largely silent on social media.

On April 23, SAA posts an announcement that they've been in contact with the survivors - which is demonstrably untrue as Annalisa still has had no proactive contact from anyone. Once people begin to call them on this tweet, the SAA deletes it and blocks an archaeology undergrad student.

The person running the SAA Twitter account (who I can only assume is SAA staff member Amy Rutledge) continues to block people over the next few days -- Elizabeth Smith, Hanna Marie, Akshay Sarathi, the Alternative Archaeology Conference folks, me, and Michael Balter.

My badge of honor!

The social media person then deletes all of the SAA's previous tweets -- everything between the April 18 posts of Joe's video/text and a new April 25 job post is deleted. Dozens of us had responded to SAA tweets encouraging engagement. Those responses ranged from dispassionate to constructive to angry. Not one of them was ad hominem (I mean, it's hard to write ad hominem tweets to a person who does not reveal themselves!).

As others have said, the last two weeks have truly been a masterclass in how NOT to engage in PR with members of an organization. The damage done by the lack of a swift response to the Yesner situation at the conference is being compounded by the completely incompetent social media and PR done on behalf of the SAA.

Joe has said repeatedly that he and the SAA are listening. But SAA staff are demonstrating the exact opposite.

[EDIT 5/9/19 - A leaked email has been published by Michael Balter in which Joe responds in writing to an SAA member (maybe of the Board?), providing point-by-point explanations in response to that person's questions. It's fairly damaging, as it suggests the SAA Board/staff are still trying to place blame on UAA and/or the women. It also echoes Joe's repeated calls for "civility" and "being nice", making it clear to me that he does not respect people who use social media for outreach, activism, or change. It also shows that Joe does not think the working group's petition for a bylaw referendum is appropriate. His desire to move at a snail's pace and drag out the status quo is clear.]

---

So. Where do we go from here? I truly don't know.

For two weeks, I was willing to give Joe the benefit of the doubt. After all, he inherited this mess when he took over as president in the middle of the conference. And I was willing to give the Board the benefit of the doubt, as the vast majority of them are not on social media, and they are not empowered to speak on behalf of the SAA -- only Oona Schmid and Joe Watkins are.

But they've all been informed of the timeline. They've all had time to see what went on, and to read about the SAA staff's roles in ignoring the Yesner situation, in not informing the Board in a timely manner, in lawyering up, and in covering their asses by putting out incorrect information and shutting down social media dialogue. And yet all Joe and the Board have done is set up a task force -- that's currently shrouded in secrecy and, let's be frank, is just doubling down on something SAA already had and something that didn't work to prevent or fix this situation.

The main failure in this whole debacle is clearly the inaction of SAA staff at the conference.

Can the membership remove the staff, whose salaries are paid by our dues? Based on the bylaws, it doesn't look like it. We can remove Board members per the bylaws (and talk of this is ongoing), however.

What we -- all of us -- can do at this moment is to pressure Joe to do what's right:

talk to the survivors;
tell the entire membership what's going on; and
remove and/or reassign any staff members who are not contributing productively to the inclusivity goals of the SAA.

Perhaps if enough of us email Joe with our concerns (joe.watkins.saa @ gmail.com), he'll start listening. If he doesn't, I'll be leaving the SAA for good and encouraging others to do the same.

My Resignation as Chair of the SAA Media Relations Committee

2019-04-14T17:32:00.000-04:00

My name tag from the 2018 SAA conference in D.C.

Since 2017, I have been the chair of the Media Relations Committee of the Society for American Archaeology. And essentially since I started, I have been frustrated by the general intransigence of the organization and their reticence to change, particularly on the part of the SAA staff.

So when the SAA failed to immediately respond on Thursday, April 11, to Facebook and Twitter reports that an archaeologist whose Title IX case was adjudicated against him had registered for the annual conference, I was not surprised because they are wildly out of touch with social media.

However, over the next two days, SAA staff and others who spoke for the organization refused to eject the archaeologist in spite of the exhortations of survivors and their university chancellor, and instead decided to clam up and refuse to engage with the issue in any venue.

Media coverage is so far light (KTVA and The Scientist), but it's only a matter of time until outlets like Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle report on the events of this week just as they did for racist incidents at the Society for Classical Studies conference in January.

The last few days have been like watching a public relations train wreck in real time. Since I wasn't in attendance at the SAA conference this year, I did my best to amplify voices of outrage through Twitter and Facebook. But even had I been in Albuquerque, I do not believe that SAA staff would have heeded my advice to issue a response as quickly as possible.

After reading hundreds of tweets from survivors who are sharing their stories, archaeologists who were in attendance at the SAAs, and academics in other fields who were horrified at seeing this unfold, I made the decision to resign as chair of the Media Relations Committee. The text of my letter follows.

DATE: April 14, 2019

TO: Oona Schmid, SAA Exec Director; Dr. Joe Watkins, SAA President; Amy Rutledge, SAA Media Relations; Members of the SAA Board of Directors

Dear Oona, Joe, Amy, and the SAA Board of Directors,

I am writing to resign my position as Chair of the Media Relations Committee in light of the events at this year’s Society for American Archaeology conference in Albuquerque.

In 2017, I accepted the position of Chair of this committee with the hope that I would be able to assist SAA in advancing its public face, particularly through creating a database of experts willing to talk to the media, formulating infographics on topics such as NAGPRA and the accidental discovery of bones, and assisting with the organization’s expressed desire to be more active on social media.

While my committee has worked to create text for an infographic, an idea that was approved by Amy, our other suggestions have not received a positive response. For example, I was told that an expert database would potentially open SAA up to legal issues. And although Kate Ellenberger of the committee drafted a 3-page document on social media ‘best practices’ leading up to the annual conference, which I passed along to Amy along with the offer of committee help in tweeting sessions and manning the organization’s social media, she and I received no positive response to that either.

Given the SAA’s lack of interest over the past two years in using the expertise that my committee and I bring to the practices of social media and media relations, I was unsurprised that SAA was caught off-guard by the registration of Dr. David Yesner, whose case has been widely circulated by archaeologists on both Facebook and Twitter for more than a month now. Yesner was a known threat with sanctions in place from his former employer, the University of Alaska Anchorage. While the SAA could not have known that he would register on-site, the response from SAA staff and other leadership when the issue was first raised both in person and on Twitter on Thursday, April 11, by journalist Michael Balter has been nothing short of appalling.

Whether or not Balter’s forceful speech constituted harassment of a staff member or an attendee, he was doing so at the behest of survivors who felt ignored by the SAA leadership and unsafe in their attendance, a fact that one of the survivors shared with me on Friday following her meeting with, in her words, “the press person and secretary.” As a result of SAA’s inaction in revoking Yesner’s registration, three survivors left the SAA conference early and were also forced to out themselves on social media to counter the SAA’s disingenuous and dangerous statement that the SAA has a Code of Conduct “designed to make the meeting a safe space for all attendees.”

In joining the SAA as a committee chair two years ago, I had hoped to use my formidable social media presence and name recognition to help the organization build up its relationship with members and the public. I quickly learned, however, that the SAA has a major intra-organization communication problem, which spills over into failures of communication with membership and other stakeholders. Following my resignation, I plan to use my expertise to amplify the voices of people who have felt sidelined by the SAA and to encourage the SAA staff and Board to effect real, important change on this front.

All survivors, but especially those with the courage to take on a Title IX case against a well-known senior male archaeologist, warrant our utmost respect. The three junior female scholars who filed official reports with Amy and Oona and then went public on social media are now afraid that they have jeopardized their future in this field. They deserve our collective assistance in helping them move on and up in their careers. Please listen to their stories and take immediate, corrective action.

I truly hope that SAA will learn from its membership’s and public’s vociferous reaction to this situation, but I am no longer interested in giving my time and effort to an organization that has such clear contempt for the most important cultural movement of this generation.

Sincerely yours,

Kristina Killgrove, PhD, RPA

I do not plan to renew my SAA dues in the coming year. However, I also recognize that many scholars are not in the same position to boycott the SAA as I am, particularly junior colleagues who may rely on the conference for presenting their work and networking to advance their careers. If there are any scholars who were counting on the SAAs to get in touch with me for bioarchaeology or media reasons, please feel free to contact me!

Finally, if you are in a position to let the SAA know what you think about their handling of this issue, please consider writing them an email or signing this open letter, written by Danielle Bradford (@anthroqveer on Twitter), which currently has more than 1,100 signatures.

While I'll miss the SAA conference, I have had far better experiences as a member and committee chair with the Archaeological Institute of America and with the American Association of Physical [Biological] Anthropologists, the latter of which I'm a lifetime member. I plan to donate my time and energy to these organizations going forward.

Linking here to some comments by folks directly affected by the SAA's lack of action. This one is from UAA anthropology faculty member Gerad Smith:

Gender Ratio in Bioarchaeology Media Coverage

2019-03-09T16:46:00.001-05:00

When I started writing for Forbes in May of 2015, one of my goals was to diversify media coverage of bioarchaeology news. There wasn't a whole lot of it to begin with, but since I was at a regional public university at the time, I knew that as I kept writing, I wanted to talk up research by people who didn't have access to the kinds of PR that faculty at R1s have.

I also did set out to diversify my coverage geographically. Since the start, I've input all the locations of my coverage into a Google Fusion table. As of last September, this is what the map looked like (click here for the explanation of different color symbols):

But since the field of bioarchaeology is, conventionally, more female than male, I hadn't set out specifically to gender-balance what I wrote, assuming it was probably fine.

Three years ago, science writer Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic wrote about analyzing her reporting for gender bias. "Male dominance in global media is well documented, and has been for many decades," she wrote in 2016. In 2013, a survey of the 2,075 people she mentioned in a year showed only 25% were women, and when she did it again in 2015, she found that that number had dropped to 22%.

A year ago, science writer Ed Yong published his own self-reflection at The Atlantic about his attempt to fix the gender imbalance in his stories. Yong wrote that "across all 23 of them [stories Yong published in 2016], 24% of the quoted sources were women. And of those stories, 35% featured no female voices at all. That surprised me. I knew it wasn’t going to be 50%, but I didn’t think it would be that low, either. I knew that I care about equality, so I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t part of the problem. I assumed that my passive concern would be enough."

Internationally, only about one-quarter of newsworthy subjects are female, and some outlets are worse than others. LaFrance also cited the stat that Forbes and the BBC refer to men 81% of the time. So I decided to check my gender equality in 44 months' worth of my pieces. Here's what I found.

I looked through 308 posts at Forbes from May 2015 through February 2019. From that number, I specifically excluded any piece that cited no named individuals, that were about my own research, that were explainers, or that were evergreens, and focused on my summaries and reporting on newly published research in 222 articles that collectively were responsible for 7,981,748 hits.

In the 222 pieces, I mentioned 395 researchers by name. This was always the first author, and sometimes the second or multiple authors. Of these, 218 were male and 177 were female, for a ratio of 55% male to 45% female. A chi-square test is statistically significant at p < 0.05, meaning I quoted men significantly more often than women.

I also tabulated the commenters, or people whose research was not featured but whose expertise I relied on for quotes or other information. There were 174 commenters -- 94 male and 80 female. This gender ratio, 54% male to 46% female, was not statistically significant in a chi-square test.

Finally, like Yong did, I counted the stories in which I mentioned only men or only women. Out of the 222 pieces, 61 had only male voices (27%), and 55 had only female voices (25%).

In an attempt to graph this, I separated the data by month (as I average 5 posts per month) and then calculated the male:female ratio. A ratio above the green line is more male, while a ratio below it is more female. So there are clearly entire months when I covered basically all women's work, and months when it's all men.

Commenter numbers are harder to deal with, since I largely gave up on finding lots of commenters after the first couple of years writing for Forbes. It took a significant amount of time, and maybe half the people would answer my emails. But in combining the Researcher and Commenter numbers, there are 312 men and 257 women, for a gender ratio of 55% male to 45% female over all the experts I mention in 222 Forbes posts.

There is, of course, a lot going on in these data. There are a few posts in the data that may skew the numbers, such as those in which I summarized or referred to a lot of research. While I excluded historic-only posts, some of the numbers (particularly from men) come from my quoting or referencing older articles/books/etc. Additionally, I do not limit my coverage to bioarchaeology, so the times that I write archaeology or palaeoanthropology news tend to focus on men, as those subfields have more men.

Since I hadn't set out initially to pay attention to gender balance or otherwise track it, I had no real expectations going into this exercise. I guess I figured it would be either 50/50 or like 55F/45M based on my perception of gender in bioarchaeology. My numbers certainly aren't as bad as they could be, but they're also not as balanced as I hoped they were.

Going forward, I aim to be less passive and more active about balancing the people I quote. One way is by starting a Google Doc that any anthropology (or similar) expert can add their name to -- Anthropology Expert Media List. I'm hoping that helps me raise my numbers of commenters and further diversifies the voices in these pieces.

If you have other ideas for how I can investigate the variation in these data, let me know! I'm happy to share the simple database I created.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 56)

2019-03-08T12:21:00.000-05:00

Bioarchaeologist Sonia Zakrzewski is currently traveling in the U.S. and sent me this picture from the Penn Museum of their Beth Shemesh burial:

I agree with her that those scapulae are weeeeeeird. Not only is that one on the right side pointing the wrong way, but I think it's also a left scapula. The vertebrae are odd as well - are they subadult? Or just mixed up? My initial reaction to the clavicles was that they were wrong, but it's hard to tell with all the dirt, but in another close-up, indeed the lateral ends are placed medially on both sides. Oopsies!

Dr. Zakrzewski did alert a gallery volunteer, and Penn Museum's social media person responded on Twitter, so here's hoping it gets fixed right up!

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

The TV show Ozark needs an osteologist.
BioMed Research International needs an osteologist.
Museo de Navarra needs an osteologist.
Blade Runner 2049 needs an osteologist.
Marvel Comics and Wolverine need an osteologist.
Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist.
WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 55)

2018-10-06T15:19:00.002-04:00

This screenshot from the TV show Ozark (S02E06) was sent to me by Rosie Bongiovanni Tullos and Sara Juengst, both biological anthropologists. Neither could believe just how very VERY wrong this is:

Let's start from the top, shall we? Those clavicles... the scapula... not sure why the ribs are placed like that... upside down vertebrae... upside down humeri and radius... zero wrist bones... and the missided ossa coxarum.

The only things that are correct are the femora, sacrum, and mandible. Frankly, I'm surprised the femora are correct since whoever the makeup fx/prop master is for this show clearly didn't know left from right bones.

Seriously, how hard is it to google for what a human skeleton looks like?

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

BioMed Research International needs an osteologist.
Museo de Navarra needs an osteologist.
Blade Runner 2049 needs an osteologist.
Marvel Comics and Wolverine need an osteologist.
Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist.
WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 54)

2018-09-12T10:12:00.001-04:00

Over on Instagram, biological anthropology graduate student Maya Miljević tagged me in an image from a published article, asking her followers "What's wrong in this picture? I mean, how can anyone let a photo like this be accepted in a scientific journal?"

The upside down clavicles are cliché at this point, but the backwards elbows get me every time -- I mean, how do your arms bend?

What else do you notice?

Image from this article:

Andreas G. Nerlich, Alfred Riepertinger, Ralph Gillich, and Stephanie Panzer, “Paleopathology and Nutritional Analysis of a South German Monastery Population,” BioMed Research International, vol. 2015, Article ID 486467, 8 pages, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/486467.

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Museo de Navarra needs an osteologist.
Blade Runner 2049 needs an osteologist.
Marvel Comics and Wolverine need an osteologist.
Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist.
WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 53)

2018-09-10T14:27:00.000-04:00

Two upcoming presentations at the Museo de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, are highlighted in this poster forwarded to me by Maite García-Collado:

The skeleton in the image is labeled as a "female burial of Aizpea, in Aribe." Google image searching for those keywords turns up a few photos from what is presumably a museum display at the Museo de Navarre in which the bones are arranged the same way.

Of course, if we look more closely, we can see that, at the very least, both radii are upside down and both humeri are mis-sided. The right clavicle is upside down, but sided correctly. Is there a tarsal in the right wrist?

What else do you notice? If the more eagle-eyed among you see anything else, post in the comments!

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Blade Runner 2049 needs an osteologist.
Marvel Comics and Wolverine need an osteologist.
Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist.
WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 52)

2018-06-17T12:43:00.001-04:00

From bioarchaeologist Megan Perry come a couple screen shots from Blade Runner 2049:

Oh hey, the scapulae are upside down with the socket part of the ball-and-socket joint pointing in towards the middle of the body. Total week 1 rookie osteology mistake!

The clavicles are a bit hard to see, but are also wrong, with the lateral end weirdly pointing to the middle of the body.

Hai, Princess Buttercup. Those ossa coxarum are a bit hard to see but tooooootally not sided correctly. Hope this skeleton likes his pelvis facing backward! Whoopsadaisy.

I have no idea if these images represent a spoiler for the movie, because I rarely watch movies anymore, but uh, apologies if these are spoilers!

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Marvel Comics and Wolverine need an osteologist.
Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist.
WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 51)

2018-06-06T16:23:00.001-04:00

Spotted by longtime PbO reader Elizabeth Monroe on Tumblr is this anatomical imagining of Wolverine's skeleton:

Apparently this member of the X-Men has his hand and foot mixed up, and also has a mysterious bone in his leg called the fibia.

Sorry, Marvel, but you need an osteologist.

---
Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist.
WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Ladypants and Archaeology - 2018 Edition

2018-06-06T16:16:00.002-04:00

Hi, ladies. Can we talk about pants for archaeological fieldwork again? Last time we chatted, in May of 2017, I got loads of ideas about what to wear in Naples in July. Figured I'd revisit it to let you all know how I fared, what I'm going to bring this year, and see if you have any additional suggestions or updates.

Last summer, I tried to get some free clothes out of companies to try out in the field.* I was only successful at getting some Red Ants Pants. While they're super sturdy and awesome, they were far too thick for summer in Italy.

Another suggestion I got, though, was Rothco fatigues. I did buy a pair of these and wear them on site quite a bit. The multiple pockets were useful for stashing baggies, Sharpies, a trowel, and more. I liked the construction of them (didn't feel like I would split the seat of my pants bending over or anything), and liked the drawstring at the waist, but as all-cotton pants they were still a bit hot. I also brought a pair of Target pants with pockets and a drawstring waist that I liked a lot -- but proceeded to get paint all over this spring while touching up the trim in the house.

Wasn't sure what I was going to pack for this July's fieldwork until couple days ago, when I happened to be at Old Navy buying new summer shoes for my girls. I found these pants -- mid-rise, linen-blend, wide-leg pants. Pockets! Drawstring/elastic waist! Linen blend! Cue the hallelujah chorus. This is exactly what I like to wear on site -- or at least, when working in a lab on site. Not sure if these will hold up for strenuous excavation (they're at least better made than pajama pants), but for keeping me cool and covered in ridiculously hot and humid weather, these look perfect. They have them in numerous colors (chambray, olive, black, khaki, etc.), so I'll be sporting them along with a tank top all damn summer. Woo hoo!

Let me know in the comments how you did last summer or if you've found anything good to wear on a dig this summer.

* I also got some free knives and backpacks from Victorinox and I lovelovelove all of them. I got the dual-compartment laptop backpack, since I had to drag my computer to site every day along with a ton of other stuff, and this totally fit the bill. Definitely bringing it back this year -- so consider buying one if you need to haul gear to site every day!

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 50)

2018-03-31T09:47:00.000-04:00

We took the kids to Universal Studios in Orlando this week, since it was their spring break. A new Voodoo Doughnut just opened on the City Walk there, so of course we had to introduce the kids to their sugary concoctions.

As we sat and ate, quickly succumbing to sugar comas, I looked up at the skeletons decorating the place, smack in the middle of the store:

My eye started twitching. Oh no.

Someone mixed up the left and right lower legs so that the fibulae are on the inside.

I looked around once more and:

This lovely band of skeletons in the rafters is also suffering from reverse-shin-itis.

So, Voodoo Doughnut, I heart your deep fried deliciousness, but you really need an osteologist. Please have someone swap those lower legs so my eye will stop twitching.

---
Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

WikiHow needs an osteologist.
Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Three Kids, a Dead Raccoon, and My Crockpot: A Photo-Essay

2018-03-03T16:29:00.002-05:00

I was out of town giving a public talk last week when I got this picture along with a text from my husband: "Zooarch consult plz."

That's my 8-year-old on the right along with their BFF. They were traipsing through the small patch of woods behind our house and found some... dead stuff. Squinting at my phone, I typed back that there was a turtle and maybe a small dog or something, but that I'd check it out when I got home. And to wash their hands well.

The kids gathered the bones-and-fur mess and tied it off in a plastic bag.

Once I got a look at it, and posted to Facebook for a consult, I realized it wasn't a dog but rather a raccoon. The next step was to separate the raccoon from the turtle shell and pick off the gross decaying fur. So I brought home some nitrile gloves from my lab.

The 8yo liked this part, and was excited to find some vertebrae still articulated:

The 8yo put all the bones into the crockpot that I brought home from my lab as well (which we keep for the express purpose of defleshing stuff that, well, still has squishy/hairy bits on it). The 8yo filled it about 2/3rds of the way up with water from the garden hose (which they wanted to put in the watering can for some reason). Then, we had to add detergent. Biz was recommended to me by our resident faunal expert in the department, so I bought a small amount of it at Publix.

At this point, my 4-year-old wanted to help out. After the 8yo dumped in the detergent, they both took turns gently stirring it. (The 4yo by the way, was quite disappointed in the raccoon - they really wanted to macerate a bat, to see how its wing looked on the inside. But that's not gonna happen because of the risk of rabies.)

We put the lid on, turned the crockpot on to the low/4-hour setting, and left it alone.

Since we didn't start this quite early enough in the day, by the time we turned the crockpot off, it was getting dark. I decanted the sudsy water off carefully, and then dumped the rest of the water-and-bones out onto the cement patio. We collected the bones and set them on the metal table outside, and I let the 8yo and friend scrub the bones with old toothbrushes to get the remaining fur off.

Once the bones were cleaned, I tossed them into a disposable tupperware bowl, dumped in all the hydrogen peroxide I had (maybe 1.5 cups), and topped the bowl off with water and capped it. I didn't take any pictures of this, but we left it on the kitchen counter for like 3 days, swirling it occasionally.

When we were happy with the color, we dumped the bones out of the hydrogen peroxide solution and let them dry on the table outside.

After the bones were dry, I printed out two diagrams of raccoon skeletons. I gave those to the 8yo along with the clean, dry bones, and let them puzzle out where they all went.

(Kiddo's labeling of the skeleton diagram.)

This is what we ended up with, once I helped identify and side the bones. (Those of you with better faunal anatomy skills, don't yell at me! I totally punted on the metatarsals and tarsals(?) but think I did OK on the major bones.)

The 8yo wanted to label the bones and put them in labeled boxes or bags, so I helped by giving the correct plurals where relevant.

And that's it! We finished labeling the bones this afternoon, and now they're in little bags and boxes, waiting for... well, who knows. I'm interested to find out what the 8yo wants to do with the raccoon!

So, if your kid brings home a random dead thing, all you need are a crockpot, some detergent, and hydrogen peroxide, and... voilà! A STEM-worthy project.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 49)

2018-02-06T09:51:00.003-05:00

This latest entry in 'Who needs an osteologist?' was sent in by grad student Mar Vergara Martín, who happened to be looking for information on ulnar avulsion fractures and came across this WikiHow page on how to classify a radial fracture:

Mmmmm, nope.

It also says, "Distinguish the radius from the ulna. The radius is the larger of the two forearm bones. When the palm of the hand faces forward, the radius is the outer bone." Sure, the radius is larger at the wrist. But that last sentence is... very confusing. Couldn't they just have said the radius is the one near the thumb?

Also, I realize the bones depicted are the tibia/fibula and not the radius/ulna, but if the arm actually was in this position, the forearm bones would be crossed (that's why standard anatomical position is palm-up, to uncross those bones).

Now, most of us wouldn't trust WikiHow to help us diagnose a fracture (and I sincerely HOPE a medical doctor wouldn't either), but still...

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Runner's World needs an osteologist.
London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 48)

2018-02-02T10:13:00.003-05:00

Bioarchaeologist Kori Filipek noticed this amazing graphic on the Runner's World Facebook page this week:

And the original graphic, via Twitter:

I imagine it would take quite a while for a runner to get back on the road with a knee injury that involved.... a replacement of his leg bones with the elbow joint of a kid?

There are a bunch of comments on the post from people who also noticed the error, but as of today, Runner's World has not fixed it. (If you click through, though, that graphic does not appear in the article.)

If you want to learn more about osteology, Kori is involved with Transylvania Bioarchaeology, which seems to have an amazing field school every summer!

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

London's Science Museum needs an osteologist.
Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 47)

2018-01-02T09:07:00.001-05:00

Bioarchaeologist Sonia Zakrzewski was at London's Science Museum and snapped these images to share on Twitter:

And bioarch Twitter responded with predictable shock:

The whole skeleton needs sorting out and laying out properly. Or laying out as excavated. But not this mixed up mess.
— Dr Sonia Zakrzewski (@Sonia_Zak) January 1, 2018

Also, I'm not 100% certain, but that looks a lot like C1 in between the clavicles??
— Ruth C. (@Mumbleduck) January 1, 2018

And the vertebrae. What is going on with T11/T12?
— Angela Lieverse (@Angela_Lieverse) January 1, 2018

I like how you can pinpoint exactly where the person laying out the spine just went "oh, fuck it" and gave up.
— Ruth C. (@Mumbleduck) January 1, 2018

Sure is. Some spectacularly awful ordering of vertebrae. I always like having my lower neck sandwiched between my head & top of my neck!
— Dr Sonia Zakrzewski (@Sonia_Zak) January 1, 2018

And forearm bones not in standard anatomical position. Whee, thanks!
— Kristina Killgrove ☠ (@DrKillgrove) January 1, 2018

I hadn't even looked at the arms - was so bowled over explaining legs to kids & friends!
— Dr Sonia Zakrzewski (@Sonia_Zak) January 1, 2018

Those feet are messed up.
— Charity Upson-Taboas (@taboas_charity) January 1, 2018

Go home, Bleadon skeleton, you're drunk.
— Ruth C. (@Mumbleduck) January 1, 2018

Here's hoping that the Science Museum takes a page from the museum at Roman Bath and quickly offers to fix their multiple mistakes!

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Roman Bath needs an osteologist.
The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

What surprises college students about human evolution?

2017-12-11T12:41:00.000-05:00

Every time I teach our ANT2511 - Introduction to Biological Anthropology course, I include a fill-in-the-blank question on one of the last exams that reads as follows:

"List one thing you learned this semester about biological anthropology or human evolution that surprised you."

I make it worth a couple of points, and every student always responds to it. For me, it's both a way to gauge that they learned at least one thing from the course and a chance for me to take an accounting of what the state of undergraduate knowledge about human evolution is -- that is, what surprised them is generally something they were never taught before. In this way I can look at changes over the semesters to understand what kind of stuff they've learned in K-12 education. It also helps me understand what to focus on in my outreach to the general public.

This semester, I did a quick accounting of their responses. That is, I read all of them and created general categories into which their answers fell. Here's what that looks like:

#1 - The complexity of human evolution / number of species. There were 14 responses that I coded into this category. Most students were surprised that it took so many different physical changes to produce us, or that there were more members of the Homo genus than just us.

#2 - That Neandertal and Denisovan DNA is still around / that they interbred with modern human groups. 10 students commented in some form on their surprise that we are not completely different from these Middle Pleistocene populations and that their genes in fact appear to still exist in many populations around the world.

#3 - The lumper/splitter approaches to species. 6 students noted their surprise that not all biological anthropologists agree on how to classify species. This may reflect my approach to teaching the course (so YMMV), but since I tend toward the lumper side, I talk a lot about how they don't need to remember Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, for example, and the reasons I see them as the same species. A couple of these students commented further that it was kind of exciting to see that this field is still learning, and our understanding changes over time.

#4 - That human culture is very old. Another 5 students said that they were surprised that human culture and/or society was so old -- some mentioned tool use, others cave paintings, others language and communication.

#5 - The agricultural revolution sucked for our bodies and cultures in many ways. This was a topic I covered at the very end of the semester, and 4 students were surprised by this. My favorite response here involved the sarcastic phrase, "Thanks a lot, *corn*."

#6 - Hobbits! 3 students were surprised that a small-bodied, small-brained hominin existed until very recently.

Other responses fell into categories like "just how closely we are related to apes," "race is not a biological reality," and "bonobos have crazy sex lives."

Any of you ask your students something similar? What themes have you uncovered? I'm curious if it differs across the country and across the world.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 46)

2017-12-04T09:51:00.000-05:00

Spoiler alert: this episode of "Who needs an osteologist?" has a special twist at the end.

This weekend, archaeologist Steph Evelyn-Wright posted the following to Twitter:

Who needs an osteologist? Saw this today in Bath. The clavicles look the wrong way round to me. @DrKillgrove @BOSotonUni @Sonia_Zak @RomanBathsBath . #osteology #bioarchaeology #whoneedsanosteologist #oops pic.twitter.com/Q3GCfDUBBc
— Steph Evelyn-Wright (@archaeowright) December 3, 2017

Steph noticed this display at the Roman baths in Bath, Somerset (UK), and immediately noticed that the clavicles are the wrong way 'round. Several of us concurred with her assessment, and an archaeologist further asked:

I do wonder whether the museums that have this happen to them ever actually go back and correct their mistakes.
— Matthew Lee (@CranioMattrics) December 4, 2017

This morning, the Roman baths at Bath responded! I am pretty sure this marks the first time that "Who needs an osteologist?" has been acknowledged, with a promised fix:

You're right! Thank you very much for pointing this out. This has already been passed on to the Roman Baths Collections team and will be changed ASAP.
— The Roman Baths (@RomanBathsBath) December 4, 2017

So awesome that Roman Baths took this series of tweets seriously and are making their exhibit better. Some day, I hope to go back -- my husband and I visited for our honeymoon waaaaaay back in 2000.

Clavicles: nope, not like that. Thankfully, Roman Baths have
promised to fix them straightaway!

---

Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

The Education Center needs an osteologist.
The Science Channel needs an osteologist.
Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Who needs an osteologist? (Installment 44)

2017-06-12T11:33:00.000-04:00

Today's installment of "Who needs an osteologist?" comes courtesy bioarchaeologist Megan Perry, who was watching a Science Channel clip on the skeletons found in the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan.

Here's the clip: (if the embedded YouTube video doesn't work for you, this one might)

So, what did you notice? I rolled my eyes at the radii, which were upside down when being held, and the os coxae, which are mis-sided.

Then raised my eyebrows at the overabundance of lumbar vertebrae.

Then heaved a deep sigh for the incorrectly placed clavicles.

Anything else I'm missing? Pretty sure those humeri have issues. And the foot bones. But it's hard to tell in the video...

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Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist?

Museo delta Antica needs an osteologist.
Usborn publishers needs an osteologist.
DK Publishing needs an osteologist.
Corvin Castle needs an osteologist.
Loch Ness needs an osteologist.
Giant Screen Films/IMAX needs an osteologist.
The National Museum in Copenhagen and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo need an osteologist.
The American Anthropological Association needs an osteologist.
Greensboro Science Center needs an osteologist.
Scholastic News needs an osteologist.
From Darkness on the BBC needs an osteologist.
The Iraqi National Museum needs an osteologist.
Halloween stores need an osteologist.
The New York Times needs an osteologist.
Morgan's Cove needs an osteologist.
Dunstable Baptist Church needs an osteologist.
Once again, Bones needs an osteologist.
Tampa Bay History Center needs an osteologist.
The Archaeological Museum of the Castle of Santo Anton needs an osteologist.
The Gruppo Archeologico della Val Nure needs an osteologist.
Polish archaeologists at the site of Kamien Pomorski need an osteologist.
Kathy Reichs needs an osteologist.
The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium needs an osteologist.
GitHub needs an osteologist.
The Telegraph needs an osteologist.
University Museum in Chieti-Pescara needs an osteologist.
NKP Salve Institute of Medical Sciences needs an osteologist.
Huffington Post and the Mars Rover need an osteologist.
PBS and Richard III need an osteologist.
Abbot House Museum needs an osteologist.
The Zanjan Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic Channel's "Nazi War Diggers" needs an osteologist.
BBC/NOVA needs an osteologist.
The Penn Museum needs an osteologist.
National Geographic needs an osteologist.
Acura needs an osteologist.
The "African" woman in Fairford, England, needs an osteologist.
Museo delle Grotte needs an osteologist.
Either NPR or Yale needs an osteologist.
Yorkshire Museum needs an osteologist.
Staffordshire University needs an osteologist.
And, of course, Bones needs an osteologist.

Ladypants and Archaeology

2017-05-17T12:23:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons that I've been posting very little here lately is that I am gearing up to go into the field in July, for some excavation, 3D modeling, and osteological analysis at the site of Oplontis outside of Pompeii. My goal for the summer is to blog here about that fieldwork, although it'll likely take the form of writing about work-life balance. You see, I'm bringing my family to the field for the first time! So I'll send missives about the adventures of traveling and seeing Europe with my 8yo and 3.5yo daughters and software engineer husband.

Found this on Pinterest as a "summer archaeology excavation
outfit". To which I say Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

In preparation, since I really haven't been in the field in a while, save a few weeks every other summer, I've been restocking my archaeological toolkit -- not the actual equipment, since my Marshalltown doesn't age, but my field clothing. Between the changes in site rules in Italy and the changes in my body following two kids, my old field garb isn't cutting it. Shirts are a no-brainer, and Italy requires EU-rated steel-toed boots, but that leaves the question of pants.

Ladies' pants are problematic. I'm currently wearing jeans that fit me well, but that annoy me because they have lady-pockets. You know, the teeny half-pockets (or sometimes no pockets!) that you can't fit anything in except lipstick because of *course* that's the only thing I want to carry with me. I've also found that ladies' khaki pants (no laughing here, Brits!) are woefully inadequate for fieldwork, especially if purchased at a store like Old Navy. The fabric is thin, the pockets are sad, and the worst part is that the men's pants are far more useful and rugged... and usually cheaper. My last pair of field pants was a men's style and size (plus a belt), since I had to prioritize function over fit.

To remedy this, I did what any social media maven would do: crowdsourced suggestions for archaeological ladypants. If you're also looking for rugged but lightweight pants for the field, here's a big ol' list that is only vaguely organized. (Full disclosure: I've not tested any of these except Rothco.)

National Sports/Sportswear Stores

Columbia Sportswear. Among the recommendations here were the fishing pants. To save on the cost, find an outlet near you.
REI. Highly recommended were the Sahara pants - there's a regular kind and a kind that can be rolled up when you get hot. Bonus points: these were also recommended by a recently postpartum archaeologist.
Eddie Bauer. The zip-off hiking pants, rip-stop pants, and the Horizon pant were recommended (which also rolls up).
These stores were recommended as well, but no specific pants were mentioned: Academy Sports, Tractor Supply Company, Bass Pro Shops.

Local or Online Sportswear Stores

Eastern Mountain Sports
LL Bean, specifically the cargo pants
Duluth Trading Company
Kühl Clothing, recommended especially for curvy bodies
Ex Officio's Bugsaway pants were recommended for folks who work in extremely fly- and mosquito-heavy areas
GT/5.11 Tactical gear pants (although I note that the ladies' pants are more expensive than the men's in pretty much all categories, which is disappointing)
Prana pants, specifically the Halle style
Red Ants Pants, which are heavy-duty pants made specifically for women's bodies by a woman-owned and woman-run company (if they weren't so expensive, I'd totally try them out!)
Woman Within cargo pants were suggested. It's clothing specifically designed for sizes 12W and up.
Craghoppers

Other

Army surplus was recommended for either hiking combats or paratrooper style pants. I found the Rothco brand of fatigues online at Amazon and ordered a couple, mostly because of the drawstring waist/side tabs at the waist, figuring that would get me through weight fluctuations.
Workout pants / activewear. I don't think this is allowed where I work, but if you are in a more lax country, sweat-wicking workout capris or other activewear could be a good bet. I was warned, though, that mosquitoes can bite through the thin stuff (see Ex Officio above).

I'm excited to try out the Rothco pants to see how comfortable they are. If they're not, I guess I'll try one of the above. Sadly, archaeologists are not as cool as NASCAR drivers and don't get crazy sponsorship deals. But man, I'd totally list sponsorship on my project page and say nice things about the company if I got free field clothes and backpacks!

The author in 2003 as "queen of the trench"
at the site of Azoria on Crete. Definitely
can't wear this sort of field gear now!

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Thanks muchly to all the ladypants wearers who contributed to my Facebook thread: Traci Ardren, Jo Buckberry, Sarah Levin-Richardson, Julie Hruby, Kate Ellenberger, Erin Stevens Nelson, Claire Terhune, Mindy Pitre, Tanya Peres, Katie Brewer, Amanda Mathis, Beth Koontz, Jane Holmstrom, Liz Berger, Kate Spradley, Megan Perry, Sonia Zakrzewski, Michelle Ziegler, Sheri Pak, Jess Beck, Anna Osterholtz, Sarah Miller, Ruth Beeston, Carlina de la Cova, Sarah Rowe, and Shannon Hodge. And thanks to the menfolk who also suggested pants: Dimitri Nakassis, Andy Danner, Stephen Savage, and Jim O'Hara.

Clearly, the sheer number of people with opinions on this topic means finding good archaeo-pants is a very real concern!