Interested in the human skeletal system but don’t know your lacrimal from your zygomatic, or your talus from your patella? If not then the University of Sheffield is offering the chance for students, enthusiasts and members of the public a chance to get to grips with the skills and techniques used in human skeletal analysis with remains from archaeological contexts in an upcoming human osteology short course.
The mysterious left human talus, a paired skeletal bone. This talus is in the inferior view where anterior is up. Where is this bone found in the human body? Clue: if, as it goes in the idiom, you put your ‘best **** forward’ you are trying to make the best impression! Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.
The course will run from the 26th to the 28th of August 2015 at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. The short course is led by Dr Diana Mahoney-Swales and Dr Elizabeth Craig-Atkins, with support on hand from graduates from the human osteology program. The course costs £120 for reduced rates (students and unwaged) and £180 for full rate (employed). The osteology laboratory at the department is well equipped for the study and analysis of human remains and should provide an accurate picture of how bioarchaeology analysis is carried out within the British system today.
The content of the course will include an overview of the human skeleton, how to identity and side each element (including major anatomical skeletal landmarks), how to recognise and identify markers and techniques for the age and biological sex of individuals and the presence of any pathology present on the bones. Further to this the course will cover archaeological aspects that affect the recovery and presentation of human remains (taphonomic changes and funerary/mortuary behaviours) and give an overview of the ethics involved in human osteology. The Department of Archaeology at Sheffield have successfully ran this course for a number of years now, and have helped inform many of the importance of the scientific analysis of human skeletal remains. The university is one of the major universities in the United Kingdom for the study of this topic, although the Universities of Bournemouth, Bradford, Durham, Edinburgh, Kent, and UCL all offer specialism in this topic at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.
More Bones…
As always if you are a member of an archaeology department, or alternatively an archaeological unit/community organisation, in the UK or Europe, who are running a short course focusing on the analysis of human remains, then please contact me and I’d be happy to mention the course on this site. Regular readers will know I happily champion a range of courses and educational open days in the United Kingdom on this site.
This blog reaches hundreds of individuals a day and, if advertised on social media sites, can reach thousands of views for a single entry across a global context within a day or two. If this short course above tickles your fancy and you are interested in studying human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts at a Masters level (known as bioarchaeology or human osteology) then please see this entry where I have cataloged available UK Masters course and prices (correct as of the 13/14 academic year, expect price increase since).
Further Information
- Information for the August 2014 short course can be found here. Please be aware that these courses are ran throughout the year so if you are unable to attend this session it is likely that there will be another in the not-too-distant-future.
- The department also regularly run a palaeoenvironmental short course (10-11th September 2015) which focuses on geological and organic remains from archaeological sites, and zooarchaeology I (7th-11th September 2015), a short course focusing on the analysis of animal skeletal remains from archaeological contexts. The zooarchaeology course covers a wide range of animal remains found on archaeological sites within Britain and Europe (including large mammals and avian species). Information on these courses can be found here. Price range is the same for the human osteology course above (£120-£180).
- The University of Sheffield is also playing host to the 2015 British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology 17th annual conference from the Friday 18th to the Saturday 20th of September (costs from £150-180). The association conference is one of the top places to meet and greet important British and European researchers discussing recent research in the fields of human osteology, bioarchaeology and physical anthropology. More information and a booking form can be found here.
These Bones Of Mine 