Instead of regaling you, my dear readers, with posts of the past let me instead introduce to you posts of the future from my mystical green crystal orb (i.e. my neglected draft folder). Whilst 2014 has indeed been a busy period, it has also been a particularly downcast sort of year punctuated with moments of beauty and intense clarity. As such I’d thought it be more interesting to delve into some upcoming posts, highlight a few interesting events in my 2015 archaeological calendar, and also show just where this osteology thing has taken me and where (I hope) it will take me in 2015. (Remember you can see my haul of 2014 posts in all of their naked glory here, and a quick round-up of the 2014 stats at the end of this post).
It also pains me somewhat to realise at this point that the awesome Blogging Archaeology carnival’s first entry took place well over a year ago. Ran by Doug Rocks-Macqueen, this online archaeology blogging carnival helped bring together archaeologists from around the world in producing reflective entries on the importance and wealth of blogging archaeology. In my series of Blogging Archaeology entries I made some vague and, looking back, crazy predictions of what I wanted to do with this blog in 2014. A lot of this (including a PDF of the ever-popular Skeletal Series entries) didn’t really happen (about do check out Bone Broke’s awesome collection of handy osteo tips for PDF perfection). Adding to that, I actually barely added to the Skeletal Series at all in 2014 (may the gods of osteo forgive me!). But I kept blogging, sometimes not as much as I hoped, but the fantastic guest entries kept coming in and the internationally flavoured interviews and mini-photo essay posts began in earnest as well. I diverged and that is always good.
On a general note 2014 did provide some paid archaeological work, I also got to excavate a few skeletons with friends in the surroundings of the lovely Peak District and I got to take part in some fantastic education outreach in both Sheffield and Manchester. I also had the great joy of attending excellent conferences in both Belfast and Durham. Although I was out of action for around 3-4 months mid 2014 due to a broken arm, I did manage to cram a fair bit in alongside the normal non-archaeological day job.
So in this 2015 preview I want to introduce a few blog posts that have been sitting quietly in my draft folder, where I’ve regularly updated them and added in new references, but haven’t completely finished them to post them to the blog itself. As such this is just a sneak peek of a few thoughts that have been rattling around my mind…
1) The Body as a Weapon: The Bioarchaeology of Terror and Thoughts on Suicide Attacks
Given the rise in the recognition and importance of conflict archaeology and the role of understanding the bioarchaeology of violence in past societies, I think it is probably time we took a look at a modern-day phenomena through a bioarchaeological approach. For the past few decades terrorism has become a dominant feature of continuing international and transnational conflicts as asymmetric warfare has largely replaced conventional warfare. I’ll be particularly focusing on suicide attacks, where an individual or group aim to kill both themselves and others in an explosive act of violence. As such in this post I’ll explore some initial thoughts on suicide attacks from a futurist bioarchaeological perspective (the bioarchaeology of terror). Primarily focusing on the body as a weapon (both actual body damage and perceived threat based on body type) this post will also highlight a range of suicide attacks carried out by terrorists from across the globe and analyse both the bioarchaeology implications of these, and the differing cultural/national considerations in response to them.
2) Disability at the Movies: Physical and Mental Impairment on the Big Screen
As a fan of film I have long been interested in the representation of physical and mental disabilities in the movies. As a relatively new artistic medium film has risen over the past century or so to become a vital, and major, part of the world’s culture, helping to document changing attitudes and explore artistic expression. In this meandering entry I’ll discuss a number of films from the past 100 years or so and highlight the use and representation of both physical and mental disabilities (or impairments).
3) Disability and Sexuality: Looking through the Lens
Sexuality is often taken to be an integral part of the nature of human expression and humanity. Disability, as either a mental or physical impairment, can be present at birth or occur during the lifetime of an individual and can mean impairments in the cognitive, emotional, developmental, sensory and/or physical sense. If sexuality is the expression and capacity for erotic experiences and responses, what does this mean for individuals with disabilities and, more specifically, what does this mean for us as a society in the representation of people with impairments as members of that society? How does this differ culturally? This post will look at the intersection of the two and discuss the considerations of what is meant by disability or impairment, and how this is approached and understood in the context of human sexuality.
4) Ageing: Puberty in the Osteoarchaeological Record
This is a quick post highlighting some recent articles and books that I’ve been reading lately in understanding the ageing of the human body (particularly focusing on the biology of human senescence). Being able to age a human skeleton is one of the fundamental skills in bioarchaeology, used as a basic demographic attribute for understanding past population structures.
However, there are still two age stages that can be ‘invisible’ in the archaeological record – old age and being able to identify the advent and process of puberty in the osteoarchaeological record. The older age categories, used when skeletal maturation has been achieved (when full adult growth has been attained), are largely based on the degradation and wear stage of certain skeletal elements (pubic symphysis, auricular surface of the ilium, cranial suture obliteration, tooth wear stage, etc). After the fifth decade of life it can be hard to successfully pin a small age range on an individual, particularly if there is no reference population to serriate against to gauge expected differences in bone change at known, or documented, ages. This will probably be a post by itself.
The focus of this ageing post though is on puberty, as the measure when the non-adult individual grows to become an adult (sometimes taken as juvenile to adolescent to adult). As both males and females reach puberty at different ages (females normally start it a year or two before males), this has posed bioarchaeologists problems in understanding when past populations reached this. Shapland & Lewis (2013) have a method for this though, and I’ll post about it shortly!
5) Review: Day of the Dead Conference, October 2014, Queen’s University Belfast
I had the great joy in attending this wonderful conference in Belfast at Queen’s back in October. Focusing on both bioarchaeology and funerary archaeology, the Day of the Dead three-day conference confidently brought together a slew of new research from both Ireland and the wider world on prehistoric and historic sites and cultures (including an awesome presentation on cannonball damage in deer and a possible universal code for sexing skeletal remains). The conference was ably hosted by Dr Catriona McKenzie with a keynote speech by Dr Barra O Donnabhain and help from the ever affable Prof. Chris Knüsel. This post, which detail a few of the presentations in detail, should also be up shortly.
6) The Anatomical Position: A Short History of the Internationally Agreed Standard
One of the first posts where I have actively engaged and sought the views of others before commencing the writing of the post. I have struggled so far to exactly find what I am looking for, but this has only spurned me on. In this post I’ll take a quick look at how the anatomical position used in bioarchaeology, forensic science, medicine, and the anatomical sciences, has became so widespread as an internationally agreed standard and convention for the positioning and examining of the human body. This is one of the posts that may take a while to appear, but it is there!
and finally…
7) Skeletal Series Part 13: How to Age a Human Skeleton
8) Skeletal Series Part 14: How to Sex a Human Skeleton
Two much delayed posts helping to highlight the next stage of the Skeletal Series posts.
This is really just a quick housekeeping post, making me more aware of what I need to do. As highlighted towards the end of last month there will be a few posts on musical interludes, highlighting the evidence for music ability in the archaeological record. My one big event for 2015 so far is the upcoming Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in April in San Francisco, USA. I am particularly excited as there is a session on the Bioarchaeology of Care methodology by Lorna Tilley of Australia National University. The methodology is an important step not just for understanding physical impairment in the past, but also for collating, using and distributing knowledge of the archaeological record via the Index of Care online tool.
All in all 2015 looks to be rather productive.
Notes
For die-hard stats fans this blog was viewed around 260,000 from 206 countries in 2014 (if I remember correctly this is down from 2013). Averaged out this is around 5000 views a week, with the majority of the views taking place Monday to Friday rather than on the weekends. The top 5 annual posts per views were (as it typical for each year that this blog has existed) the Skeletal Series posts. Blog views, especially toward the last few months of 2014, tailed off noticeably.
These Bones Of Mine 