Guest Interview: Putting Flesh on the Bones with James Neill

James Neill is a Project Archivist working on the Putting Flesh on the Bones project at the University of Bradford. Prior to this project James worked for a diverse range of arts, heritage and higher education organisations, including London Metropolitan Archives, the Mercers’ Company and the University of Arts London. As an archivist James has worked on a broad range of collections, from medieval manuscripts created by the Estate of Sir Richard Whittington to counter-cultural US comic books of the 1960s. His primary professional focus is working with archive collections with real historical, cultural or organisational value.

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These Bones of Mine (TBOM):  Hello James, thank you for joining me here at These Bones of Mine! I have to say I am pretty excited to talk about your new project, entitled ‘Putting Flesh on the Bones’, which is based at the University of Bradford.  Could you tell us a little bit about the project and your role within it?

James Neill (JN):  Thanks David.  The ‘Putting Flesh on the Bones’ is an 18 month-long project which aims to catalogue, digitise and promote the archive collection of renowned palaeopathologist Calvin Wells (1908-1978).  The majority of the collection relates to Calvin’s distinguished palaeopathology career, but also reflects his many other intriguing professional and personal endeavours.  After his death Calvin’s archive of research papers, correspondence, photographs and transparencies, radiographs, and audio-visual material came to Bradford under the management of his friend and colleague Dr Keith Manchester.  This includes Calvin’s unique library of rare and antiquarian books on medicine, archaeology and anthropology.

The British palaeopathologist Calvin Wells examining a human crania. Image credit: University of Bradford.

When the collection arrived at Bradford it was divided between two different departments, with the palaeopathology material going to the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (B.A.R.C.), and his books and more personal ephemera being held by Special Collections at the J.B. Priestley Library.  This physical split as well as lack of comprehensive understanding about the contents of the collection limited its accessibility for potential users. Moreover many items, particularly the transparencies and audio-visual material, are vulnerable to deterioration and in need of professional conservation.

These factors motived B.A.R.C. Collections Manager Dr Jo Buckberry and Special Collections Librarian Alison Cullingford to bid in 2016 for a Wellcome Trust Research Resources Grant.  The purpose of the grant is to improve access to health-related library and archive collections, and is a substantial boon for archive projects across the U.K. Fortunately Jo and Alison were successful in their application and the ‘Putting Flesh on the Bones’ project was awarded a grant of almost £140,000.

We’re very fortunate because the grant has allowed us to afford a team of specialists, including a project archivist, osteologist, conservator and placement student.  As the project archivist my role is oversee each part of the cataloguing and digitisation process, as well as manage and organise all promotional aspects of the project through online and outreach activities.  Ultimately I am responsible for ensuring the collection’s potential for scientific and historical research is fulfilled by making it more accessible and known to relevant audiences as well the wider public.

TBOM:  Having been a longtime itinerant visitor to the University of Bradford, and its Department of Archaeological Sciences, I’ve always been intrigued by the fundamental role the department has played in establishing human osteology and palaeopathology as archaeological-based disciplines within Britain and internationally.  However, the university itself was the recipient of Calvin Wells physical archive rather than the base of his work. 

As such I’m intrigued by the relationship between the man and his archive.  How, and by what methods, are you making the numerous research articles, monographs, and review publications available to current researches?

JN:  Bradford’s role in developing palaeopathology teaching and research on an international level is central to the Calvin Wells Archive story.  It was Calvin’s wish that the collection be held in trust by the Wellcome Library with the intention of ultimate donation to a University offering a course in Palaeopathology to degree level.  With the introduction of the MSc Course in Osteology, Palaeopathology and Funerary Archaeology at Bradford, Calvin’s wife Freddie released the collection to the Department of Archaeological Sciences.

A collection of slides that were left behind in the archive, a very useful and durable form of documentation. Image credit: University of Bradford.

Whilst the collection is yet to be fully catalogued we’re confident that the archive holds the vast majority of Calvin’s published and unpublished skeletal research and reports.  This includes additional material, such as photographs, handwritten notes, annotated typescripts, and related correspondence.  For the first time, all of Calvin’s research will be available from one resource.  A central reason why the Wellcome Trust funded the project was our ability to demonstrate the continued interest and demand for Calvin’s work.  An analysis by Bradford’s Subject Librarian for Archaeology and Forensics Sarah George demonstrated that in the 40 years since his death, citations of his work have risen year on year.

The intention of the ‘Putting Flesh on the Bones’ project is to unlock the collection for potential researchers by producing a comprehensive catalogue of its contents. Our team Osteologist Michelle Williams-Ward is focused on parts of the collection which require specialist descriptions, such as Wells’ skeletal reports and associated photographic material. Michelle is uniquely placed for this role given that she has just completed a PhD thesis ‘Buried Identities: An osteological and archaeological analysis of burial variation and identity in Anglo-Saxon Norfolk’ which analysed remains from many of the same archaeological sites Wells worked on.

Upon completion the catalogue will be publicly available via the Archives Hub, a national database of archives collections which covers several major UK Higher Education archives and special collections. Archives Hub is keyword searchable, so researchers will be able to search for material by site, date, persons, and, in some cases, pathology. The material can be viewed through the University of Bradford’s Special Collections at the J.B. Priestley Library.

Calvin and Freddie Wells with Vilheim Moller-Christensen, dated to 1962. Image credit: University of Bradford.

If researchers are unable to visit in person there are Reprographics and other services available upon request. Additionally any visual material on vulnerable formats, specifically Calvin’s large slide collection, will be digitised and made available via Special Collection’s digital repository which is currently in the development stage.

TBOM: ‘Putting Flesh on the Bones’ then sounds like it is doing a wonderful service to the work and life of Calvin Wells. Although I’ve been aware of his reputation as a palaeopathologist within the United Kingdom, and his importance in helping to establish the practice, I’m keen to learn of Calvin as an individual.

Having read Waldron’s 2014 review of his life and work in the Journal of Medical Biography, the reader is left with a strong impression of him as a somewhat intense, passionate researcher who, at times, read far too much into the skeletal remains of past individuals. Particularly so in his now notorious and problematic case of identifying rape from the remains of a skeleton identified as female and the graphic contextual details that he goes into, which is not supported by the archaeological or osteological evidence present.

Having worked with, and continuing to develop, the access and availability of both his professional and personal archive, what have your insights into his character been like?

JN:  It’s crucial for archive projects to be impartial in how they open up historical records for research and interpretation. Therefore the ‘Putting Flesh on the Bones’ want to reveal all facets of Calvin’s character, both positive and negative.  Similarly it’s our responsibility to provide historical context alongside the material, in order to bring greater understanding about the time which Wells lived and worked.  As an archivist I can only speak to Calvin’s character as it comes across in the archive material.  There is great deal more to be understood about Calvin’s personality from reading biographies written by friends and colleagues.  In addition to Tony Waldron’s article, I recommend reading Glyn Daniel, Gerald D Hart, Cecil J Hackett, and Keith Manchester and Charlotte Roberts. Some of these articles aren’t readily accessible, and the project will change that.

A shot of Calvin working in the great outdoors, analysing skeletal remains at White Horse Cottage, Norwich. Image credit: University of Bradford.

With the exception of memoirs from his service in the Royal Army Medical Core in WWII, the archive material documents Calvin’s life from 1955 until his death at age 70 in 1978.  This was a particularly eventful time Calvin’s life when he produced the bulk of his research and established his legacy in palaeopathology.  Whilst he didn’t keep a diary as such, Calvin was meticulous in preserving his professional and personal correspondence.  We are fortunate because he often kept copies of his own letters, meaning we can read both parts of conversation.  These letters provide unique insight into Calvin’s character and his relationships with others.

An obvious aspect of Calvin’s personality is that he was a gregarious individual, eager to converse with anybody in his fields of expertise.  As a result of the popularity of ‘Bones, Bodies and Disease’ Calvin received considerable correspondence from academics, researchers and university students.  He was particularly generous with the last group, who wrote to him asking about degree courses, research areas or future career paths.  In these instances Calvin expressed earnest enthusiasm for new scientific and academic endeavours, and in many cases established enduring pen-friendship with young scholars and researchers.  It is interesting to now Google the names of these individuals and to discover that many became top doctors, scientists and even politicians.

Given his privileged background, it might be assumed that Calvin was particular about his correspondents.  However he was pleased to converse with the many strangers who wrote to him following an appearance on national radio or TV.  An ITV profile about Wells’, showing the doctor analyse ancient bones, swinging Anglo-Saxon swords and water-ski, promoted an influx of letters from as far afield as Australia.  This included an enquiry from a Norfolk sheep farmers relating to the location of large churches in rural areas with a low population.  In another letter Calvin politely declines the services of a Welsh dowser who believes he can locate bog bodies in Dersingham Bog.  There are also numerous letters from parents and teachers enquiring about how to get children involved in archaeology and osteology.  In all of these instances Calvin is polite to a fault and comes across as natural educator who cherishes the opportunity to share his intellectual passions with others.

A selection of the human skeletal remains that Calvin helped to document. Many of the skeletal remains that he studied came from sites within Norfolk and the east of England. Image credit: University of Bradford.

Concerning the more negative aspects of Calvin’s character, it’s a shame that a small number of ill-judged interpretations of human remains have come to define him as a person.  It is true that Calvin could be intense and bombastic in expressing his professional and personal opinion.  This is evident in his correspondence with Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, with whom he collaborated on the series of controversial reports on an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Kings Worthy, Hampshire.  Without hashing out the detail the Ancient Monuments Laboratory – who commissioned Sonia to produce the report on the site – resisted Calvin’s involvement on the project.  This was less to do with Calvin dramatic over-interpretations of remains, and more to with his vocal contempt for a fellow palaeopathologist on the team.  In their correspondence Hawkes pleaded with Calvin to tone his comments down, writing that they are “far too hot and strong for anyone’s but my sympathetic and sympathising eyes and ears”.

Clearly Calvin was at his most hostile when interacting with journal editors or publishers who edited his work without permission or published it with errors or inaccuracies.  In fact Calvin wrote about it in an unpublished article called ‘Editorial Arrogance and Bad Manners’, where he lays into the ‘discourteous tempering’ of journal editors.  It appears that Calvin was extremely intellectually proud and felt he had seniority or ownership over palaeopathology at the time.  This is ironic because accepting some constructive criticism may have softened his language or persuaded him to omit some of the more graphic descriptions which have since left an indelible mark on his scientific bibliography.

Photograph of a slingshot wound on a crania, analysed by Calvin Wells, from ancient Cirencester. Image credit: University of Bradford.

However I think that Calvin’s archive material ultimately shows him to be a diligent and conscientious man, both at work and with friends and family.  I predict that the unlocking the collection will show a more thoughtful, progressive and accomplished Calvin than currently remembered.

TBOM: Calvin’s work has been fundamental in making the field of palaeopathology an integral discipline of study within archaeology itself. Indeed, the identification, diagnosis, and demographic attributes associated with studying both ancient diseases and evidence of trauma associated with archaeological remains allows, researchers to build up a detailed picture of human health over the ages. It also allows us to delve into ancient epidemiology within defined populations, allowing for patterns, observations and human behaviour to be identified and investigated.

However, as you have had prime access to his professional and private correspondence, I’m keen to learn what has become one of your favourite pieces of his research, whether it was his bone reports or articles on the value of human skeletal remains as portals into the past?

Related to this I’m keen to hear what you think drove Calvin Wells, the individual, to go from practising as a GP (general practitioner), from helping to heal and comfort the living, to working solely on the ancient dead, diagnosing signs of trauma and disease processes?

JN:  Being based in the School of Archaeological and Forensic Science alongside researchers and students has given me the opportunity to understand Calvin’s research in manner not immediately clear to an archivist such as myself.  Therefore I recognise the value of those parts of Calvin’s research which will be most useful and beneficial to the collection’s anticipated users – Palaeopathologists, Osteologists and Archaeologists.  In addition to his published reports on skeletal material, many of which are not currently available, the collection holds Calvin’s original research notes, graphs and tables, excavation maps, and photographs, slide and radiographs of skeletal remains.  This raw data will allow the researchers of today to reassess and reinterpret the human remains and archaeological sites initially reported on by Calvin and his colleagues.  With regard to Calvin’s bone work, I don’t have a specific favourite piece of research but rather appreciate the meticulously preserved empirical evidence which gives the archive material contemporary scientific value.

A collection shot of the archives that Calvin Wells left behind, including postcards, books, skeletal reports and photographs. Image credit: University of Bradford.

That being said I do personally enjoy the articles Calvin wrote for more popular publications, such as the Times Literary Supplements, the Reader and the US magazine Horizon.  Additionally Calvin wrote regular columns for the Eastern Daily Press under pseudonym ‘Calliphon’.  These articles show that Wells was just as enthusiastic about discussing current medical issues as he was waxing on about disease and injury in ancient history.  For example in an article from 1957 Calvin outlines the mounting evidence of direct links between tobacco smoking and cancer.  In another he provides medical and moral arguments for embracing the mass polio vaccinations in 1955, about which much of the British public were wary.  Wells also used the column to write biographies of Norwich’s great physicians or wax lyrical about primitive man in East Anglia.  It was a popular feature for which ‘Calliphon’ received a great a considerable amount of fan mail.  Adulation was something Calvin embraced, and it increased as he became more prominent in palaeopathology.

On a surface level it could be argued that Calvin devoted himself full-time to palaeopathology primarily as a means of supplementing his pension whilst pursing his interest in the ancient dead.  However, there is something in the fact that Calvin wanted recognition beyond his work as a regional GP.  It’s clear that the career change opened up a new world for both he and his wife Freddie.  From around the mid-1960s, Calvin started to forge relationships with leading scientists and academics, began lecturing for prominent organisations, and received more opportunities to appear on radio and television.  As a natural showman, Calvin fully embraced the attention and respect that being an international authority on palaeopathology brought him.  This is not to say Calvin was cynically pursuing fame, as he invested a great deal of time and research into every job and appearance.  It is clear that Calvin seemed to be gearing up for a third act in his life before cancer struck unexpectedly.

TBOM: Do you think Calvin Wells would be surprised today that his work and research (and dare I say reputation) still plays such a fundamental component in the British history of palaeopathology? Do you think he would be struck by the diverse and wide-ranging courses available, and by the active number of researchers within the field?

JN:  With regard to how Calvin would feel about the development of palaeopathology, I think he would be awestruck by the methodological and technological developments in the subject.  Most of all I think Calvin would be compelled to revise his belief that only individuals with medical qualifications can practise palaeopathology, particularly when confronted with the scale of advancements made by researchers with backgrounds in physical anthropology, archaeology, medicine, biology, and zoology.  While the discipline has significantly evolved and diversified, I think Calvin would recognise his own passion and dedication present in today’s palaeopathologists.

A shot of Calvin Wells in action, helping to teach schoolchildren in Toronto on the value in studying human skeletal remains. Image credit: University of Bradford.

I was recently speaking with Dr Keith Manchester who remarked on how proud Calvin would be that his work continues to have influence almost two generations later.  Clearly he was conscious about leaving a legacy in palaeopathology, and this is evident in the extent with which the archive collection has been cared for and maintained.  Concerning the more contentious aspects of his legacy I think Calvin would be philosophical, probably following Oscar Wilde’s famous line that ‘the only thing worse in life than being talked about is not being talked about’.

TBOM:  Indeed, I think he’d be glad that his fundamental role within British palaeopathology, and palaeopathology as a discipline within its own right, would continued to be recognised.  Thank you very much for joining me at These Bones of Mine James, and I wish you the best of luck archiving the Calvin Wells collection.

Further Information

• Visit the Putting Flesh on the Bones project website for further information and frequent updates.  The site is a wealth of information on Calvin’s books, skeletal reports and other aspects of intriguing life and lifelong passion for palaeopathological topics.
• To visit the Twitter page for the project please follow @PFOTB_project, for the project Instagram page please check it out at puttingfleshonthebones.

Bibliography

Daniel, Glyn. 1978. ‘Calvin Wells Obituary; A Man’s Place in Nature by Glyn Daniel’. From The Times, 5 August 1978. [Available from University of Bradford Special Collections].

Hart, G. 1983. ‘Disease in Ancient Man: An International Symposium’. Toronto, Canada (1983).

Roberts, C. 2012. Calvin Percival Bamfylde Wells (1908-1978). In: The Global History of Paleopathology: Pioneers and Prospects. Edited by Jane Buikstra. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 141-145.

Waldron, T. 2014. Crooked Timber: The Life of Calvin Wells (1908-1978). Journal of Medical Biography. 22 (2): 82-89. (Open Access).

Wells, C. 1961. Bones, Bodies and Disease. London: Thames & Hudson.

Tips for Best Practice Bioarchaeology Blogging

In something of a cannibalized post, and one that I have been meaning to write for a while now, I discuss here some general ideas that may be useful for bioarchaeology bloggers when writing and presenting blog entries for both the general public and the interested researcher.  Primarily the focus is on the Bioarchaeology of Care theory and methodology, one which considers the archaeological and osteological evidence for caregiving in prehistory on a case study basis (Tilley 2014, 2015i).  However, there may also be some use for the general bioarchaeological and osteological blogger.  The first part of this post (the context) is taken from one of my previous posts on the publication here.  The second part is taken directly from my own chapter.  Enjoy!

Bioarchaeology of Care Context

The volume is titled New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory (£82.00 hardback or £64.99 ebook) and it is edited by Lorna Tilley and Alecia A. Shrenk.  The volume presents new research regarding the bioarchaeological evidence for care-provision in the archaeological record.  Using the associated Index of Care online tool, bioarchaeological researchers can utilize the four-stage case study approach to analyze and evaluate the evidence for care-provision for individuals in the archaeological record who display severe physical impairment likely to result in a life-limiting disability, or to result in a sustained debilitating condition which limits involvement in normal, everyday activities.

The four main step of the index of Care tool used to evaluate the archaeological and osteological evidence for caregiving and receiving. Click to enlarge. Image credit: Index of Care site.

In short, my chapter investigates the public reception and engagement of the bioarchaeology of care theory and methodology as proposed by Lorna Tilley in a slew of recent publications (see bibliography below).  As an inherent part of this the chapter discusses the ethical dimensions within the approach used for analyzing physically impaired individuals in the archaeological record, and the potential evidence of care-provision as seen on the osteological remains of the individual and contextual archaeological information.  Proceeding this is a walk-through of traditional and digital media formats, presented to provide a contextual background for the communication of the theory and methodology which is subsequently followed by two bioarchaeology of care case studies, Man Bac 9 from Neolithic Vietnam and Romito 2 from Upper Palaeolithic Italy, which help to summarize the public perception and importance of the research conducted to date within this new area of investigation and analysis.  In the conclusion best practice advice is provided for researchers conducting education outreach with regards to publicizing the bioarchaeology of care research and its results via both traditional and digital media formats.

Best Practice Bioarchaeology Tips

The following work has been quoted from the section of my chapter discussing and promoting possible best practice for bioarchaeology bloggers:

‘It is evident that the skeletal remains of historic and prehistoric populations and individuals remain a potent symbol of a tangible link to humanity’s ancestors and of mortality more generally. Caregiving, and the evidence for compassion, is a subject that is close to the heart of humanity – one only needs to realise that rarely are any individuals untouched by immediate family members needing caregiving, be it social, daily and/or medical care; it is a topic which is inherently easy to relate to. As such it is recommended that researchers integrate the archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence between the prehistoric and historical worlds to the present. No discipline is better placed, or more uniquely positioned to do this, than bioarchaeology . . .

The 2016 Springer publication edited by Tilley & Shrenk. Image credit: Springer.

. . . Yet what are the suggestions for aspiring bioarchaeology bloggers, microbloggers, communicators and outreach workers with regards to best practice in public engagement and communication? How do we, as practitioners of bioarchaeological research, integrate good communication practices within the discipline?

These are challenging questions for a new and developing digital medium, one that is constantly changing and updating. Both Bertram and Katti (2013) and Meyers Emery and Killgrove (2015) indicate a number of gaps in the current social media representation of bioarchaeology, as well as suggesting a number of approaches that would develop best practices across the social media range. Some of their suggestions are particularly relevant in terms of how, and why, we should consider public engagement (using all media mediums) as a relevant, ethical and productive factor in bioarchaeological research, and these are discussed as follows.

Making Yourself, and Others, Visible

Bioarchaeologists are a tough breed to find online, due to the conflicting terminology used within bioarchaeology and related disciplines. Make your professional online presence visible by clearly defining the focus of your work and by indicating your interests in a clear and informed manner for visitors (Meyers Emery & Killgrove, 2015). It is also recommended that researchers citing digital and social media sites in academic articles, or on other social media applications, should properly reference the authors, title of post, address, and indicate the date accessed, as routine.

Exploit a Variety of Approaches

Vary the approach taken. Videos, for example, are particularly rare phenomena in bioarchaeological outreach, but have the potential to reach a vast audience – much more so than an academic article. It is well-known that serialisations (such as Kristina Killgrove’s Bones reviews or this author’s Skeletal Series posts) keep the reader interested, whilst providing structured content. Joint posts, interviews, guest posts and video entries can also help reach different and varied audiences online and in-print (Bertram & Katti, 2013).

Provide Information on Latest Research and New Techniques

Bioarchaeology uses a range of different techniques, and new methodologies and approaches are also developed every year to investigate the archaeological record. The use of these techniques and methodologies can, and should, be discussed and contextualised in terms of, or in relation to, their use and limitations within the discipline. The majority of bioarchaeological research is published in journals in which the article itself is locked online behind a subscription block, a so-called pay wall, thus preventing interested but non-academic based readers the opportunity to learn about the detail of the latest innovations. Blogs, such as Bones Don’t Lie by Katy Meyers Emery for example, offer the reader concise summaries of the latest published articles in a timely and free-to-access manner. Edited volumes such as this are out of the reach of the casual reader who lacks access to a specialist research or university-based library.

Three of the best bioarchaeology bloggers. Katy Meyer Emery’s Bones Don’t Lie, Kristina Killgrove’s Powered By Osteons, and Jess Beck’s Bone Broke. Image credit: respective sites as linked.

Try Bi, or Even Trilingual, Entries

The majority of online bioarchaeology social media content is in English. Using a second language (Spanish, Mandarin, Persian or French, for example) alongside an English translation would enable readers from different areas of the globe to gain access to the content. This could be achieved through transnational projects and international academic partnerships; for example, sponsored online content or conference workshops, spanning both national and language borders, might investigate ethics ‘case studies’ or develop ways of promoting research best practice. Benefits would include greater exposure of research to a wider audience, achieving an increased understanding of the importance of this research, alongside the building of ethical frameworks across cultural divides. It could also lead to a more integrated approach to the physical and cultural analysis of osteological material.

Discuss Your Pedagogy and the Dangers of Digital Media

The methods by which anthropology, archaeology and bioarchaeology are taught are rarely discussed on social media sites. A pedagogical approach, such as an introduction to the elements of the human skeleton and the importance of their study, would enable the public and researchers to understand how, and why, the topics are taught in a particular manner, and the expected outcomes of this. For instance, an introduction to the terminology used in osteology designed for the lay public can help to break down the ‘ivory tower’ view of academia (Buckberry, Ogden, Shearman, & McCleery, 2015). Furthermore, there should be open lectures and discussion at university level alongside engagement on the pros and cons of digital and social media use, including understanding the impacts and dangers of online sexism and trolling (Armstrong & McAdams, 2010). The ethics of public communication should be considered – what are the support frameworks for the digital advocacy of bioarchaeology online?

Define Disability and Highlight Differential Diagnoses

With reference to the bioarchaeology of care methodology, discussion must be focused on the available archaeological and osteological evidence and, where the material evidence is available, the cultural context for the understanding of what a disability would entail (Battles, 2011; Doat, 2013; Spikins, Rutherford, & Needham, 2010). Due to inherent limitations in osteological evidence, a specific disease diagnosis cannot always be determined (Brothwell, 2010). Therefore in bioarchaeology of care analysis differential diagnoses must be included when examining possible disease impacts on function and the need for caregiving. Each candidate diagnosis should be considered, as these may have different effects in different cultural, geographic and economic environments.

Factor Public, Social and Digital Media Engagement into Bioarchaeological Projects

Blogging, microblogging and engaging with newspaper reporters and television producers take time and effort. Factor this into the initial research as a plan of engagement from the beginning. Identify key communication aims and develop strategies for how to achieve these aims over the course of the research project. Do not be afraid to contact bioarchaeology bloggers or other social media users with details of the project that the research team wishes to make public at a given time (this will depend on client or other stakeholder agreement and timing for release of the research via academic journals and conference presentations). Engage with users and produce content that is in line with both professional and personal ethical standards, state possible conflicts of interest if necessary, and, when discussing original research, indicate the funding bodies that have supported the work.

Meyers Emery and Killgrove (2015) indicate a number of best practice suggestions that are pertinent to repeat here. They are: to write for an educated public, to write or produce content regularly, be sensitive to your own bias and the biases of others, and to repudiate the hysteria and hype of the media in a clear, productive and informative approach. There is a responsibility on a part of all bioarchaeologists who partake in public engagement to educate and inform on the standard approaches practiced in bioarchaeology and the ethical considerations that inform this, particularly to counter sensationalism and ethical misconduct. The above are all important aspects that each bioarchaeologist should use in their approach in disseminating and discussing bioarchaeological content and approaches to public audiences.’ (The above is taken from Mennear 2016: 356-359).

So there you go, a few general tips on bioarchaeology blogging best practices.

This chapter would not have been possible without last-minute editing, endless nights and bottomless coffees. All mistakes are, of course, my own. Image credit: imgur.

Further Information

• The online non-prescriptive tool entitled the Index of Care, produced by Tony Cameron and Lorna Tilley, can be found at its own dedicated website.  The four stage walk-through is designed to prompt the user to document and contextualize the appropriate archaeological and bioarchaeological data and evidence in producing the construction of a ‘bioarchaeology of care’ model.

• Kristina Killgrove has, in her Forbes bioarchaeology reportage, recently discussed one of the chapter case studies of a Polish Medieval female individual whose remains indicate that she had gigantism, or acromegaly.  Check out the post here.

• My 2013 These Bones of Mine interview with Lorna Tilley, of the Australian National University, can be found here.  The interview discusses the origin of the bioarchaeology of care and the accompanying Index of Care tool and the surrounding issues regarding the identification of care-provision in the archaeological record.  Previous Bioarchaeology of Care focused posts can be found here.

Bibliography & Further Reading

Armstrong, C. L., & McAdams, M. J. 2010. Believing Blogs: Does a Blogger’s Gender Influence Credibility? In: R. Lind, ed. Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audience, Content and Producers. Boston: Pearson. 30–38.

Battles, H. T. 2011. Toward Engagement: Exploring the Prospects for an Integrated Anthropology of Disability. Explorations in Anthropology. 11 (1): 107–124. (Open Access).

Bertram, S. M., & Katti, M. 2013. The Social Biology Professor: Effective Strategies for Social Media Engagement. Ideas in Ecology and Evolution. 6: 22–31. (Open Access).

Brothwell, D. 2010. On Problems of Differential Diagnosis in Palaeopathology, as Illustrated by a Case from Prehistoric Indiana. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 20: 621–622.

Buckberry, J., Ogden, A., Shearman, V., & McCleery, I. 2015. You Are What You Ate: Using Bioarchaeology to Promote Healthy Eating. In K. Gerdau-Radonić & K. McSweeney, eds. Trends in Biological Anthropology. Proceedings of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. 1. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 100–111.

Doat, D. 2013. Evolution and Human Uniqueness: Prehistory, Disability, and the Unexpected Anthropology of Charles Darwin. In: D. Bolt, ed. Changing Social Attitudes Towards the Disabled. London: Routledge. 15–25.

Killgrove, K. 2016. Skeleton Of Medieval Giantess Unearthed From Polish Cemetery. Forbes. Published online 19th October 2016. Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/10/19/skeleton-of-medieval-giantess-unearthed-from-polish-cemetery/#476236b6413b. [Accessed 28th October 2016]. (Open Access).

Mennear, D. J. 2016. Highlighting the Importance of the Past: Public Engagement and Bioarchaeology of Care Research. In: L. Tilley & A. A. Shrenk, eds. New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory. Zurich: Springer International Publishing. 343-364. (Open Access).

Meyers Emery, K., & Killgrove, K. 2015. Bones, Bodies, and Blogs: Outreach and Engagement in Bioarchaeology. Internet Archaeology. 39. doi:10.11141/ia.39.5. (Open Access).

Spikins, P. A., Rutherford, H. E., & Needham, A. P. 2010. From Hominity to Humanity: Compassion from the Earliest Archaics to Modern Humans. Time and Mind. 3 (3): 303–325. (Open Access).

Tilley, L. & Oxenham, M. F. 2011. Survival Against the Odds: Modelling the Social Implications of Care Provision to the Seriously Disabled. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 1 (1): 35-42.

Tilley, L. & Cameron, T. 2014. Introducing the Index of Care: A Web-Based Application Supporting Archaeological Research into Health-Related Care. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 6: 5-9.

Tilley, L. 2015i. Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care. Zurich: Springer International Publishing.

Tilley, L. 2015ii. Accommodating Difference in the Prehistoric Past: Revisiting the Case of Romito 2 from a Bioarchaeology of Care Perspective. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 8: 64-74.

Tilley, L. & Shrenk, A. A., eds. 2016. New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory. Zurich: Springer International Publishing.

These Bones of Mine Round-Up Post for 2016

… Hmm I didn’t actually write that much in 2016 compared to previous years!  Regardless it is now 2017 (happy new year folks) and I think a little round-up post of the entries that I wrote, or helped to edit, for 2016 is in order.  This post is inspired by my reading of the round-up entries by Jess Beck, who blogs over at Bone Broke, and by Zachary Cofran, who blogs at Lawnchair Anthropology.  I recommend that you check out both their entries for haunting film posters and wonderful animal photographs (but stay for the fossils and osteology goodness!).  I digress, so let’s get this round-up rolling.  Firstly we’ll have a little look into the statistics for the year in order to see where the website stands in comparison to previous years on this site.

Site Statistics: Meaningful or Merely Visiting?

The total number of site views for 2016 was 227,920 compared to 2015’s 253,985, whilst the total number of site visits for 2016 totaled out at 167,317, comparable to 2015’s 182,605.  Not bad at all considering I use the site as a central focus (i.e. there is no associated Twitter or Facebook account for the blog, so the blog itself is the central output for posts, information, etc.).  The statistics are comparable for previous years until 2012, when WordPress implemented the distinction between views and visitor, in order to establish clicks per view I believe.  So, for example, the statistic for views in 2012 was 536,562 whilst visitors only totaled 20,955 as a result of the distinction in views/visits coming into effect towards the end of the year.

A quick visual of the views and visitor statistics for 2016, by calendar month, for These Bones of Mine. We can see a confirmation of the pattern I’ve talked about before for previous years where the views start, and end, strong but take a downward trend in the summer months (as they do on weekends compared to week days). Likely due to the viewing of the blog by students, staff and interested individuals who may be at university, college or school during regular semesters and not visit the site during non-academic periods. Alternatively, or in conjunction to the above, it may all be due to archaeologists being in the field excavating in the summer and having no internet access!

The total number of entries produced for 2016 was 22, a blog low for the site since its inception (for example, 2014 saw 67 entries posted and 2013 54 entries posted, although it is a follow on trend from 2015 where only 25 posts were produced and posted).  A total of 12 posts remain in varying states of drafting, and honestly I doubt that at least two of them will be posted in any format.  The top posts for views last year were, as it always is, the home page/archives to the site.  The next nine top posts are related to the Skeletal Series of posts where each section of the human skeleton is introduced and discussed from a bioarchaeological perspective.  Again, there are no great surprises here; indeed this is actually the main aim of the blog itself and it helps support my intention behind it!  2016 however saw the production of no Skeletal Series entries (though check out the Skeletal Series Human Osteology Glossary from December 2015), this is something I hope to rectify in 2017 by focusing on how bioarchaeologists, or human osteologists, assess skeletal remains in order to assign the biological sex and age for individuals.

So, are statistics useful?

I believe so, generally speaking, as they give me a good indication of what the individuals who visit the site want to read, what they use the site for, and how they navigate the site more generally.  Of course I’ve largely circumnavigated these wants with posts on literary topics of interest or books mentions instead this year!

A Few of My Favourite Posts

The year started with a fairly personal post on A Personal Anthropology of Driving, wherein I discuss the impact that driving has had on my life and I present brief thoughts on socio-cultural issues surrounding the car itself and the environment in which it drives by taking a whistle-stop tour of the world.  The entry let me write loosely on my thoughts and demonstrate that anthropology really can be found all around us, that there is no strict division between the person and the social.  It is a post I very much enjoyed writing, going from the personal osteological endeavors expected when one has a bone disease that has led to multiple fractures and (planned and unplanned) surgical interventions to the great freedom that driving a car can bring, so much so that across much of the world today it is considered a coming-of-age rite – indeed, it is up there with the biological terror of becoming an awkward adolescent!

One of my most treasured posts was Bones of Contention: A Personal Reflection on Animal Relations, which had a lot of reflective and creative similarities with the Personal Anthropology of Driving post.  I was able to combine my love of poetic writing with the tangible grain of my film photography, as well as to talk about the adorable three chickens that make their home in the back garden.  I also managed to sneak some zooarchaeology into the post as a through-line technique that helped to anchor the post with regards to human-animal relationships.

I mean look at this beautiful bird! The chicken, a Gingernut Ranger breed, is but one of three that currently terrorize the garden and step on the author’s books. Photograph by the author using a Pentax ME Super camera and Lomography Lady Grey black and white film, artfully manipulated in Media player.

For guest posts and interviews in 2016 I was lucky enough to be able to host a discussion between artists Natalie Marr, David Ashley Pearson and myself as we debated their short film Visitor, which has personal ramifications for each of us as we lost a close mutual friend of ours in 2015.  The interview discusses a number of topics, including the nature of grief, space and the influence of certain artists and film makers in the production of Visitor.  The film is pretty damn beautiful and is currently in a final edit, the trailer can be found on the link above and I recommend watching it.

The site also played host to a tantalizing guest post on artificial cranial deformation in the Great Migration Period in Europe by Maja Miljević.  In it Maja introduces the theory behind the aims of artificial cranial deformation, the methods and types of cranial deformation, and the context for the migration within Central Europe, presenting illuminating case studies on an area I had not read about or researched before.  In the third, and final, guest post of the year Jennifer Crangle and Greer Dewdney presented the launch of the Rothwell Charnel Chapel project website, backed by the University of Sheffield.  I’ve written about the Rothwell Charnel Chapple a number of times now for this blog, helping to promote the research carried out by my friend Jennifer Crangle as she promotes the importance of this rare English medieval site and involves the local community and members of the public.  I’ve been down to Rothwell to help participate in an open day, as well as helping to promote the project on this site and I recommend you give the site a visit and check it out!

A selection of crania at the medieval charnel chapel at Holy Trinity Church, Rothwell. A photographic essay by the author on this site can be found here with a background history on the charnel chapel itself. Photograph by the author using a Pentax S1a camera and Ilford black & white film.

As always, I heartily welcome guest post entries from around the world on a whole range of subjects related to bioarchaeology, human osteology, and archaeology more generally.  I also welcome discussion posts and interviews, where I act as the interviewer helping to ask questions and guide the discussion as necessary.  If you feel that this may be of interest please do read my Guest Post page for previous entries, see the areas that I am interested in and read through the advice post.  Most importantly, please feel free to get in touch either by dropping a comment below or by emailing me using the address on the About Me page.

An important update to one previous post was to highlight the sheer range of postgraduate masters degrees (either taught or research-based) available in bioarchaeology or human osteology related topics on offer in the United Kingdom, alongside the rising cost of the courses themselves.  The post also raised the spectre of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union and the recent changes made in a government White Paper for the direction of higher education within the country.  Expect a lot of change within the education sector over the next five to ten years, and to the economy of the United Kingdom more generally.  As always I console any students, or interested individuals, who want to pursue a masters focused on the analysis of human skeletal remains, from archaeological contexts, to think of what they want from the course; what research you hope to conduct; what research is conducted at the department itself; what resources are available to the student; what projects do the department carry out and, finally, who the course leaders are and their interests.  I always recommend a visit to the department, if you can, to get a feel for the course and for the location of the university itself.  Furthermore, always try to think of the next step after the masters itself: where do you want this degree to get you to and how will it help on the way?

I finally wrote up a conference review from 2014!  The Day of the Dead, a three-day conference held at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in October 2014, was a truly fantastic event which mixed human osteology and funerary archaeology to provide an engaging, informative and vital series of presentations on a wide range of topics.  In the review I also managed to grab a quick few words from famed bioarchaeological researcher Christopher Knüsel, who helped lead a workshop on the archaeothanatology method of interpreting the burial position of the body in-situ.  I also blogged about the upcoming conference entitled Skeletons, Stories and Social Bodies that is to be held at the University of Southampton in March 2017.  Registration for that conference is still open at the normal rates, so book your tickets now!

A really quite wonderful conference. let’s hope it makes a comeback in some form. Image credit: Queen’s University Belfast.

Last year also continued a strong trend on this blog – I love reading and I am not afraid to tell you the readers just what I’ve been reading.  From non-fiction that covers the impact of momentous 20th century events in Russia and the USSR to the Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives and Fractures and Spanish novelists, I’ve covered a lot of ground sparingly!  Reading is fundamental to understanding the world around you, but also to escape the world around you.  It can give you a much deeper understand of the history of the various countries and regions of the world, as well as offering profound socio-political background knowledge.  I love it and I’d love to hear what bioarchaeological or archaeological textbooks you have been reading and where you have drawn your influences from.

Alongside my recommendations of books to read, I also discussed the pros and cons of academic publishing, the Open Access movement and the horrors of trying to access articles and book reviews, with a particular focus on the Sci-Hub, Academia and ResearchGate websites.  The post itself didn’t get any love from the Sci-Hub founder, or associate perhaps, but I was trying to present a balanced viewpoint of the options available to the student, researcher and layman of accessing academic research.  Clearly I did not succeed!  The year also saw a post by perennial blog favourite Stuart Rathbone’s new collection of archaeological work, entitled Archaeological Boundaries: Discussions, Experiments, and Unprovoked Attacks.  The post contains a first for this blog – a video review of the volume produced by Stuart himself for publicizing the volume, along with a few questions asked by yours truly.  The volume is published by another These Bones of Mine favourite Robert M. Chapple, whose excellent blog on Irish archaeology can be found here.

The cover of the volume with the chapter in by yours truly. The chapter marks the first publication in a book. Image credit: Springer international publishing.

Even better I became a published bioarchaeological author in 2016!  The publication of New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory, edited by Lorna Tilley and Alecia Shrenk and published by Springer in September 2016, saw my chapter published in a volume which itself was the outcome of a session on Bioarchaeology of Care theory and methodology at the 2015 Society for American Archaeology annual conference, which took place in San Francisco, USA.  My chapter takes a look at the public response, both online and in the traditional and digital media, to the case studies produced by Lorna Tilley as a part of her PhD research on identifying instances of care-provision given to disabled individuals in prehistoric contexts.  My chapter also presents a few best practice suggestions for engaging and communicating to the public the importance of bioarchaeological research.  I cannot tell you what it means to have a bioarchaeological book with my name in it, what a thrill!  You can read my chapter from the volume here. 

…And Finally

I re-wrote the 2002 song Lose Yourself, which is by the rapper Eminem for the 8 Mile soundtrack, and re-titled it Lose Yourself (In Mud) to include observations from an archaeological viewpoint.  It is also lovingly annotated with a few choice remarks.  Enjoy!

The Face of Academic Copyright & Sci-Hub: A Quick Look with Reference to the Open Access Button, Academia.edu and ResearchGate Sites

Over at Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week (SVPotW) there have been a number of posts recently discussing scholarly copyright with reference to recent media and general academic attention paid to the pirate site Sci-Hub, where any number of academic articles (47 million and counting) can be searched for, and read, for free.  The site is of great boon to people such as myself, who currently hold no ‘proper’ researcher status and lack academic affiliation (alongside the access to journals that goes along with that), and to pretty much everyone you can think of who isn’t involved firsthand with research itself or affiliated to an academic or scientific institution.  From politicians who implement international and national regulations and guidelines to families who want to learn more about a specific disease and health treatments, those individuals who want to make informed choices but find that knowledge and research is locked away behind paywalls each and every day unless you can afford to pay a substantial sum for access, or are a current university student or researcher and have validated affiliation.  Those higher education institutions themselves are, of course, paying heavily to maintain access to the journals for their students, researchers and staff members.

Lets not twist words though, Sci-Hub infringes copyright on a huge scale by illegally granting access to the articles it has access to.  This goes markedly against the grain of academic publishing, where normal publishing procedures include authors, the creators of the content and research, handing over scholarly copyright (and sometimes even money!) to the publisher as part and parcel of publicizing their work to the wider academic community.  It is also a world where paywalls are de rigueur across access to many articles published online in academic journals.  (This is, as SVPotW points out, the opposite of creative copyright where the author of the work generally retains copyright).  Access to both full journals and individual articles can be costly, as are annual subscriptions to such material.  Academic book publications, both single authored and edited volumes, are also noticeably expensive, prohibitively so to individuals who are merely interested in reading about a subject in greater depth and to students who receive little public or private funding.

But since this is a blog primarily interested in archaeology and human skeletal remains from the past, let us first take a look at a few bioarchaeological examples to see how much it can cost to access knowledge within the discipline. Afterwards I’ll discuss some options available for both the reader and researcher of such material with regards to accessing and producing the material.

To Buy or Not to Buy: A Bioarchaeology Example

A book I have recommended on this site for budding bioarchaeologists, The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict (ed. by Knusel, C. & Smith, M. 2013, published by Routledge), costs £150.00 in hardback or £142.50 for a Kindle e-book (who needs good quality images!).  Another book I have mentioned on this site, and which I do heartily recommend, is Bioarchaeology: An Integrated Approach to Working with Human Remains (by Martin, D. L., Harrod, R. P. & Pérez, V. R. 2014, published by Springer) which, in hardback, retails for £84.53, paperback for £36.99, and in Kindle e-book form for £35.14.  All of these prices are taken from a popular online source of cheap books.  They are not cheap.  They are even more expensive on the publishers’ homepage (again, for example, the Bioarchaeology: An Integrated Approach publication retails for £117.00 on Springer’s own site for both hardcover and paperback volumes, or you can purchase individual chapters for £23.94).

Life at the Trowels Edge: Archaeology as Employment

It is a notorious joke that archaeology, as a commercial sector and as a profession, can be poorly paid compared to similar skilled sectors even though the staff are often highly educated and indeed highly skilled.  It is worth checking out Doug’s Archaeology entry on British Archaeology Jobs 2014-15 for a glimpse of the bounties that await those who dig, analyse or plan for a living, but remember this is before any consideration is made on the physical and mental toll that life as an archaeologist can take on a person over time.  (On a related side, currently archaeology isn’t very diverse either).

Although the archaeology commercial and academic sector is the target audience for such specialized publications, academic books (minus popular archaeology books) and journal articles can be, and are often are, prohibitively expensive to a large proportion of its core audience, as exampled above.  There are of course exceptions to this, but they are rare for seriously detailed archaeology publications.  The below (Figure 1 & 2) is something which I find frankly ridiculous and leads me to wonder if anyone buys an academic article from the publisher themselves, or whether the paywall is just there to part the fool from their money?

Figure 1. To access this book review of Barrett & Armelagos’s  (2013) An Unnatural History of Emerging Infections on the International Journal of Palaeopathology’s (IJPP) journal site costs $31.50 (£22.26) for a one time download of the article. (Click to enlarge the image).

Figure 2. To buy a firsthand copy of the An Unnatural History of Emerging Infections book online (with free international postage) it costs $27.15 (£19.99), a saving of $4.25 (£3.06) on accessing and reading the book review if you were not subscribed to the International Journal of Palaeopathology (or a member of the Palaeopathology Association for $65.00/£45.94 for a years subscription, which includes access to the IJPP). (Click to enlarge the image).

So, what are some of the options available for the reader and for the researcher who want to use, access and contribute to making knowledge open access? And what is open access any-how?

Open Access: Bits and Pieces

A relatively new movement, generally titled under the Open Access (OA) term, has been slowly building across the globe since the coalescence of its origins across a number of public statements and conferences from various academic and institution organisations that were made in 2002-2003 (see OA history here).  Generally speaking, the open access movement sees the paywalling of research as a major international problem as many researchers and non-researchers believe intellectual knowledge, and the information generated from scientific research (which can often be funded by taxpayer money via distributive research councils) more generally, should not be copyrighted and should be openly disseminated as a matter of course.  This involves both unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse.  I’ve stated that the movement, as academics would largely recognize the ‘Open Access’ movement, started in the early years of the 21st century yet it is also well-known that there have been various discipline, or research specific, open access track routes open for a good number of decades now.

What we have seen within the past few decades is a growth in the general international understanding of what open access is and what its general aims are.  With a number of major research journals (see a few paragraphs below) opening up their archives and making some of their current journal content open access, we are seeing a movement that has had influence on major publishers of research and influence on the researchers who both write and choose where to publish their research and how to publish it.  Not all research is capable of being openly published due to a number of reasons (again, some outlined below), but a general move towards the ability to freely access that information has taken hold within the digital age.  This is not without precedent or without congruence within digital media and the issues of access to that material – one only has to look at the damage that illegally downloading music and films has done, and continues to do, to those areas. (There is a handy metaphor here with the online music content providers of Tidal, Deezer or Youtube providing varying models of access – pick your poison!).  However innovation and invigoration can drive change within seemingly disparate media formats.

Open Access Button

From its launch in November 2013 the Open Access Button is an application aimed at enabling the public, students and researchers access to scholarly research and to report it when the research is blocked by a paywall.  The brainchild of Joseph McArthur and David Carroll, the Open Access Button aims to highlight to users were paywalled research may be legally available elsewhere on the web and also lets users report which articles are not free and for what purpose the individual wanted to access the paper (Figure 3).

Figure 3. The three stages of the Open Access Button and how it works. The button aims to promote the use of access to academic research across the globe. Image screenshot taken from website here. (Click to enlarge the image).

It really is that simple but this little button has been a fantastic addition to my own internet browser for when I cannot access research and I really do recommend its use.  The makers of the button, and the largely voluntary team that help keep it running, state that it is not a long-term solution and support advocacy to help promote the issues that open access faces within the academic and business worlds.

Academia & ResearchGate

There are also the social media sites available for scientists and researchers to join, in which the general public can also join or view research articles on.  Two of the most prominent and widely used are the United States based Academia.edu and the German based ResearchGate sites, both of which launched online in 2008 and which offer free access to researchers profiles where book chapters, articles, theses and dissertations can be uploaded, viewed and downloaded by the sites users.  Both sites are free to join and are geared towards similar audiences, including academic and corporate researchers and the larger medical world.  Academia boasts a total of 34 million plus academics using its website (as of March 2016) whilst ResearchGate has a user base of around 9 million plus (again March 2016).  Academia hosts more than 10 million plus scientific papers whilst according to the business fact sheet ResearchGate host 81 million plus publications.

It should be noted here that these sites operate as great content providers of published and non-published academic research, however not each title is necessarily uploaded as anyone who has had the frustrating feeling of finding a dream paper only to find the author hasn’t uploaded it will recall.  (Papers can be handily requested from the author themselves however).  The sites are also fairly great at leveling the playing field of being able to distribute unpublished research from relatively junior researchers, especially of theses and undergraduate/postgraduate dissertations, or the work of independent researchers.

As a pair the sites seek to distribute knowledge of scientific research and aim to help users of the sites to create research networks across the globe, which increase the spread and depth of knowledge.  Interestingly, although the Academia site ends in the .edu suffix it is not affiliated with any academic institution per se and instead receives a portion of its funding instead from venture capitalists or angel investors, just like ResearchGate, who invest in or provide financial backing for the company.

Returning to Sci-Hub & Digital Rights

Sci-Hub isn’t particularly a new site as such, nor has it moved into novel territory.  Rather it is both a symptom of the problem of academic publishing itself and it is a symptom of the greater role that digital media is playing in modern business practices, and the way that individuals and groups can circumvent both pre-digital and current business practices.  The issue of digital rights is an important issue to raise at this point, both in the specialized world that I am interested in (the discipline of bioarchaeology) and the wider world of how digital content and media is challenging traditional copyright law and the philosophical inquiry of intellectual ownership (not to mention testing the boundaries between the state and the individual).  Intellectual ownership is perhaps one of the most important points so far mentioned – lives across the globe are ruined due to the implementation of strict copyright laws in various countries, where individuals, such as Aaron Swartz and Diego Gomez, have been pursued by national agencies on account of sharing academic research in the public domain.

A part of this is the non-universal application of Digital rights management (DRM, sometimes labelled as copy protection) schemes which refer to access control technologies that are used to prevent the copyright infringement, modification and distribution of digital material and media formats (DVD’s, CD’s, e-books, etc.).  DRM controls are often used with academic publications or e-books where the reader is allowed a number of options to access paywalled research articles.  For example, the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (Figure 4) offer a number of approaches to read research articles that it publishes on the journal homepage for those readers who do not have access to the journal via an educational institution.  The instant access options (see below) include the ability to rent the article for a set period of time, to being able to read it on a cloud system, or to download it as a PDF file and then being able to print and save it.

Figure 4. The instant access article options available to reader with no institution access, courtesy of the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. The source of the screenshot can be found here. (Click to enlarge the image).

It is worth mentioning here that the majority of articles and e-books are widely available in the EPUB or PDF formats, including the bioarchaeology e-books mentioned at the beginning of this post, from journal websites directly and from more commercially-minded book sellers.  Shockingly it is well-known that e-books in particular can be stripped of their protective DRM status using Calibre and shared illegally (or at least against the licence of the copyright).  However, you may also just want to save a copy of the e-book that you have brought with your hard-earned money on more than one device.  Perhaps even more damningly e-books can be purchased on sites, such as Amazon, stripped of their DRM status, and returned to the seller for a refund of the original price whilst retaining a copy of the digital publication, essentially ripping off the merchant and publisher (and arguably the author(s) themselves).

A growing number of academic journals are including Gold or Green open access models as a standard means of accessing the research that they publish.  Most journals archive their articles as a matter of course and some are now offering free access to those archives after a set period of time has elapsed (often a number of years in order to make their business model work).  This should rightly be seen as a positive move towards more open research and data.

Brief Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, I cannot in all seriousness offer any conclusion.  Academic publishing seems to me to be partly mad (for the researcher) and partly genius (for the actual publisher) (Figure 5).  Are sites such as Sci-Hub, Academia, ResearchGate, etc. a part of the solution?  Possibly, but I don’t think they are long-term solutions as such but they are vitally important cogs of the publishing machine, cogs that allow dissemination and access to the scientific and humanities research that is so often funded by public money.  It is also clear that there is a bafflingly broad range of payment methods for the honest purchaser of a research article – you really do have to shop around to find the best deal, if you are willing to pay an exorbitant price for a single article.

Figure 5. It can be hard to explain to family and friends the nature of academic publishing. When I announced that I was researching and writing a book chapter for a forthcoming bioarchaeology volume I was often asked how much I would be paid for this, either in an advance or as a percentage of the sales of the volume. I could only reply with a half grin at the thought of countless hours of my free time being spent on writing, and re-writing, the chapter for no monetary gain (the contract stipulates that, as an author of one of the chapters in the volume, I can purchase a copy of it with a 1/3 off – hooray! The book will be sold for around £80 or so in hardback form. Still, one of my dreams achieved. Image copyright courtesy of Kirsty Sedgman, source. (Click to enlarge the image).

But, what if you are an archaeological researcher and you want people to read what you have to say?  What if you want to reach a larger audience with your work because you think it is important, and you do not want it to sit behind a paywall in which only a relatively small number of people have access to it?

We, as researchers, can take a stand against the locking away of the research that we generate by targeting the method of delivery of the research itself.  We could pick journals that support open access (journals such as the peer-reviewed International Journal of Palaeopathology which supports open access in part, or peer-reviewed Internet Archaeology, which is fully open access, others such as PLoS advocate open access via the use of the Creative Commons by Attribution licence with the authors agreement).  We can directly sell or market our research to the public and to interested researchers (see a previous post on Stuart Rathbone’s new volume, where you get to decide how much you want to pay to the researcher and publisher directly).  We can take advantage of new digital media, such as blogs or producing videos, opening up grand new avenues of academic and public interaction.  We could do these things, and we could do more to make our research accessible for the benefit of (almost) everyone.

But there is a sting in the tail of this approach.  No one researcher, if they are seeking a long-term career in academia, can do this approach alone.  Researchers need publications in journals where impact factors can be measured, where influence can be scored, where importance can be ranked.  Certain strands of research may be covered by legally binding non-disclosure agreements within public spheres, or may be curtailed by the ethical demands of the nature of the research itself.  The very existence of intellectual and image copyright in the digital realm faces huge challenges with unaccredited digital reproductions and illegal downloads littering the net.  (For osteo enthusiasts I heavily recommend you check out and join the pertinent Digital Ethics in Osteology JISCMail group for the establishment of a working group for best practice guidelines).  On top of this academia, as many know, can itself be relentlessly competitive which, together with the normal stresses and strains of a job which inhabits many roles under its terminology, can lead to rapid burnout through sheer exhaustion and financial worries.  What we publish and where we publish is but one factor facing the life of a researcher and sometimes we cannot control who has access to what, where, when, or why.

Further Information

• The Open Access Button site can be found here.  Simply follow the instructions and add the plugin to your browser page.  Each time you come across a blocked, or pay walled, research article click the button to let the Open Access Button community know about it and have the site information indexed.  The button will suggest other possible accessible routes for the article, as well as alerting the community to your need to access the research. The data that you enter into the plugin, such as the reason for accessing the article and the location you are based in when doing so, will go towards helping build a global interactive map documenting the problems accessing research.

• The Sci-Hub site can be found here.  Sci-Hub aims to eliminate all boundaries that stand in the way of accessing scientific research.  According to the website Sci-Hub has 47 million papers in its library and that number is set to grow.  Please be aware however that the site address may change or be mirrored elsewhere around the web, so it is recommended that a search engine is used to locate the current iteration of Sci-Hub.

• The venerable social media sites for academics and researchers, Academia.edu and ResearchGate, are sites where individual researcher profiles can be created and where articles, book chapters and conference presentations can be uploaded for public view.  This is, in research consent to publish lingo, an example of fair use of sharing scientific work between an academic community.  The sites let you set up a profile of your academic affiliations and research interests, which help to find other individuals interested in these areas and forge research relationships across the world.  (Or leads to you intently refreshing your own profile page in the hope of enticing more readers to view your much-maligned undergraduate dissertation).

Interview with Lorna Tilley: The ‘Bioarchaeology of Care’ Methodology

Lorna Tilley has just completed her PhD studies in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.  Her PhD thesis focused on the behavioral and social responses to the individual experience of disability in prehistoric communities.  Lorna has developed a methodology titled the ‘bioarchaeology of care’ that contextualises, identifies and interprets care-giving in the archaeological record.  Lorna can be contacted at lorna.tilley@anu.edu.au.

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These Bones of Mine: Hello Lorna and welcome to These Bones of Mine! Firstly could you tell us a little about yourself and your research interests? 

Lorna Tilley: Hello David – and thanks for having me.

I’m a latecomer to archaeology.  Ten years ago I decided I needed a change in life direction, so I returned to university to  indulge a long-held passion for prehistory.  I studied for a Graduate Diploma in Archaeology at the Australian National University (this was a ‘bridging course’ for people with qualifications in another field), and was then awarded a scholarship to undertake the PhD research which resulted in the bioarchaeology of care approach.

Stepping back, my first degree (1981) was in behavioural and social psychology – in other words, a focus on the study of human behaviour in the present, which from the very beginning provided an invaluable perspective for addressing questions about behaviour in the past – because, for me, archaeology is fundamentally about understanding people and their agency.  My background in psychology made a major contribution to constructing the conceptual foundations for the bioarchaeology of care.

I’ve had the usual range of mundane to exotic jobs, all of which are part of the life history I bring to interpreting evidence from the past.  But it’s my work in the healthcare sector that’s most immediately relevant to my archaeological research into the implications of healthcare provision in prehistory.

For example, after leaving school and through part of my first go at university I did quite a bit of nursing – in public and private hospitals and in nursing homes, including work in general nursing, care of the intellectually disabled, rehabilitation and aged care.  While I didn’t go on to qualify as a registered nurse, this hands-on experience clearly helped to inform development of aspects of the bioarchaeology of care methodology.

I’ve also helped develop public health policies and programs, and for almost a decade before beginning archaeological studies my job included advising on, monitoring and disseminating research on health outcomes assessment and health status measurement. All this fed into my work in developing a bioarchaeology of care methodology that, while qualitative and – inevitably – restricted to individual cases of care-giving, nonetheless provides a level of standardisation that allows review and replication by others.

My PhD thesis is titled Towards a Bioarchaeology of Care: A contextualised approach for identifying and interpreting health-related care provision in prehistory, so it’s fairly obvious where my research focus lies – the provision and receipt of health-related care in prehistory, and what such instances of care can reveal about both the community in which care occurred and the agency and identity of those involved in the care-giving relationship.

Being insatiably curious, however, my interests are even wider – any evidence of superficially anomalous behaviour in the past grabs my attention.  Why did the people of this community make pots in this way rather than that?  Why are people in one cemetery buried in seemingly random orientations and positions, when people in a contemporary neighbouring cemetery are all buried supine, extended and with heads to the east?  Why are stone tools found in a certain site made from materials sourced over a hundred miles away, when there is perfectly serviceable stone available in the immediate vicinity?  And so on.

TBOM: Could you explain your methodology, the ‘bioarchaeology of care’, and a bit of background as to why you thought it was necessary to produce such a method?

Lorna: Firstly, the methodology itself.  I won’t go into a lot of detail here (this would take pages), but for readers wanting more I’m attaching the text version of an invited article describing the bioarchaeology of care approach for the theme issue ‘New Directions in Bioarchaeology’, published in the Society of American Archaeologists’ journal The Archaeological Record, May 2012. 

In brief, the bioarchaeology of care is an original, fully-theorised and contextualised case study-based approach for identifying and interpreting disability and health-related care practices within their corresponding lifeways.  Its goal is to reveal elements of past social relations, socioeconomic organisation and group and individual identity which might otherwise slip below the radar.  And that would be our loss.

Before describing the applied methodology, some scene-setting is necessary.

In archaeology, the experience of pathology during life may be expressed in human remains through anomalies in either bone or preserved soft tissue.  Health-related care provision is inferred from physical evidence that an individual survived with, or recovered from, a disease or injury likely to have resulted in serious disability.

Following from this, I define ‘care’ as the provision of assistance to an individual experiencing pathology who would otherwise have been unlikely to survive to achieved age-of-death.  This care-giving may have taken the form of ‘direct support’ (such as nursing, physical therapy, provisioning) or ‘accommodation of difference’ (such as strategies to enable participation in social and economic activity) or a mixture of both.

I use the term ‘disability’ in the same way as the World Health Organisation – to refer to a state (temporary or longer-term) arising from an impairment in body function or structure that is associated with activity limitations and/or participation restrictions, and – very importantly – given meaning in relation to the lifeways in which it is experienced.

The central principle driving the bioarchaeology of care approach is that caring for a person with a health-related disability is a conscious, purposive interaction involving caregiver(s) and care-recipient(s).  Care is not a default behaviour – care giving and care-receiving constitute expressions of agency.

Neither does care take place in a void – understanding the context of care provision is absolutely essential in trying to understand (i) what constitutes ‘health’, ‘disease’ and ‘disability’ in the first place; (ii) the options available for care and the options selected; and (iii) what the likely choices made in relation to care reveal about the players involved.  If we can deconstruct the evidence for care within this framework, then we may be able to achieve some insights into aspects of culture, values, skills, knowledge and access to resources of the society in which care-giving occurred.  And if we can draw out some understanding of how the person at the receiving end of the care equation responded to their experience of disability we can even, perhaps, achieve some feel for aspects of this individual’s identity.

If you think this sounds deceptively easy, you’re right.  There are important caveats, and some of these are identified in the attached article.

The bioarchaeology of care methodology comprises four stages of analysis: description and diagnosis; establishing disability impact and determining the case for care; deriving a ‘model of care’; and interpreting the broader implications of care given.  Each stage builds on the contents of preceding ones.

Stage 1 is triggered by human remains showing evidence of living with, or following, a serious pathology.  It records every aspect of the remains, the pathology, and the contemporary lifeways.

Stage 2 considers the likely clinical and functional impacts of the pathology on the subject.  Modern clinical sources are used to consider likely clinical impacts.  This is legitimate because human biology is a constant; tuberculosis, for example, would elicit the same potential range of physiological responses in the past and present (it’s important to remember that each individual with this disease will respond in their own way, and that we can never recover this level of individual detail).

Estimating functional impacts involves considering likely demands, obstacles and opportunities in the contemporary lifeways environment, and evaluating the probable effects of clinical symptoms on the subject’s ability to cope with these.  For example, could the individual have carried out the most basic tasks necessary for personal survival – such as feeding or toileting themselves – often referred to as ‘activities of daily living’?  Or an individual may have been independent in this regard, but could they have fulfilled all the requirements of a ‘normal’ role (whatever that might have been for someone of their demographic) in their community?

The second stage establishes whether, on balance of probability, the individual experienced a disability requiring either ‘direct support’ or ‘accommodation’.  If the answer is ‘yes’, then we infer care.

Stage 3 identifies what – in broad terms – this care likely comprised, producing a ‘model of care’ within the parameters of the possible and the probable in the contemporary context.  The fine details of care will always be inaccessible, but basic practices – such as provisioning, staunching bleeding, massage and manipulation – don’t change.  Sometimes there may be evidence of treatment intervention in the remains themselves, but most often the practical components of treatment will be deduced from knowledge of the likely clinical and functional impacts.

Stage 4 unpacks and interprets the model of care developed over the first three stages.  It explores what the constituent elements of care-giving – singly or in combination – suggest both about contemporary social practice and social relations and about group and individual (care-recipient) identity.

I’ve presented the case of the Burial 9 (M9) so frequently over the last few years that I almost feel I know him personally – M9 was the young man from Neolithic Vietnam who lived for around a decade with total lower body paralysis and limited upper limb mobility following complications of a congenital condition (Klippel-Feil Syndrome).  His survival with (partial) quadriplegia for approximately 10 years, under very physically and psychologically challenging conditions, provides an indisputable example of past health-related care. There is simply no way that he could have survived without constant and often intensive care provision.

In the graphic that follows I’ve mapped the analysis of M9’s experience against the four stages of the bioarchaeology of care methodology described above.  More detailed information can be found in ‘Tilley, L. and Oxenham, M.F.  2011  Survival against the odds: modeling the social implications of care provision to seriously disabled individuals.  International Journal of Paleopathology 1:35-42.’ (anyone having difficulty obtaining the article can email me).

Source: Tilley (2013: 3).

You also asked me why I thought it necessary to develop the bioarchaeology of care approach.

Researching my thesis I found at least 35 publications, dating back over more than 30 years, that explicitly identify the ‘likelihood of care provision’ in respect of archaeologically-recovered individuals.  But none has analysed the evidence for care in a structured, systematic manner capable of providing access to the sort of information illustrated in the case study of M9.  It was obvious to me – particularly given my pre-archaeology experience – that a very rich source of information was being overlooked.  True, the bioarchaeology of care only allows us to look at individual instances of care-giving (this is elaborated in the attached article) – but this case study focus provides a very intimate look at broader aspects of past lifeways.  Not quantity, perhaps, but quality.

TBOM: Are there any boundaries as to when the ‘bioarchaeology of care’ model can and can’t be applied to individuals in the archaeological record?  Could you apply it to historic and prehistoric contexts, or is it mainly a tool for prehistoric cultures and periods?

Lorna: In developing the bioarchaeology of care I concentrated exclusively on evidence for health-related care-giving in small groups up to, and around, the period of the ‘early Neolithic’ – in other words, the time before the establishment of larger, more socially and economically complex, settlements.  This was entirely pragmatic – to make my task simpler, I wanted to deal with lifeways contexts in which it would be justifiable to assume that an individual with a disability would likely be known to all community members, and where it would also be justifiable to assume that, if care provision entailed substantial cost, that cost was likely to have been an impost born by the group as a whole.  This made it easier to figure out how analysis and interpretation might work.

I don’t see any reason why the bioarchaeology of care couldn’t be applied to later prehistoric and even historic settings – and actually, I’d love to do this.  It would obviously involve looking at some additional and/or different questions – for example, how might individual status within the group be related to need for, and receipt of, care?  What happens to care-giving when healthcare provision is outsourced to ‘specialist’ carers?  And how do documented approaches to healthcare (particularly in early historic periods) tally with what the archaeological evidence suggests?  Exploring such questions will be a lot more complicated than I’ve made it sound here.  But how challenging to look for possible answers!

TBOM: As stated in your 2011 article in the International Journal of Palaeopathology, the ‘bioarchaeology of care’ models the social implications of disability for the impact on not just the individual afflicted but the society as a whole, why is that such an important part of the model?

Lorna: I hope that I’ve already answered this question – at least implicitly – in what I’ve written above.  Perhaps it would be acceptable to limit bioarchaeology of care analysis to teasing out the impact of disability on the individual alone, but it would only be part of the story – and it seems to me that to stop at this point would be a criminal waste of the sparse evidence we have about  past lives and lifeways.

I think it’s quite possible that some archaeologists dealing with evidence of likely care-giving may have to stop at Stage 3 of the methodology, because not enough is known about the social, cultural and physical environment in which care was provided to enable an attempt at further interpretation.  That’s fair enough.  However, I also think that some researchers may be so uncomfortable in attempting the interpretive analysis demanded in Stage 4 that they’ll decline to do so, on the grounds that such analysis is merely ‘speculation’.  I think that’s a shame.

I don’t think there’s ever 100% certainty in archaeological interpretation. But what matters is that we approach the task of interpretation systematically, rigorously and transparently, presenting arguments in such a way that others can follow the steps taken and, where appropriate, challenge both the evidence and the reading of the evidence – refining and even recasting conclusions reached.

Even putting forward possibilities later shown to be improbable opens our minds to considering a broader vision of the past.  This sounds a bit abstract, I know – but I’d invite readers to return to the graphic summarising the bioarchaeology of care analysis of M9’s experience.  M9 comes from the Man Bac community.  Before the bioarchaeology of care analysis we knew quite a lot about how this group lived in general terms – their diet, economy, demography and mortuary customs.  But we didn’t know anything about who they were – and now I think we do.  I think the bioarchaeology of care analysis revealing the agency of caregiving can pay rich dividends.

An in-situ photograph from the early Vietnamese Neolithic site of Man Bac displaying the individual known as M9 immediately before removal. Man Bac burials were typically supine and extended, but M9 was buried in a flexed position – this may reflect muscle contracture experienced in life and unbroken in death, or a deliberate mark of difference in mortuary treatment. M9’s gracile limbs show extreme disuse atrophy, a product of quadriplegia resulting from complications of Klippel-Feil Syndrome (Tilley & Oxenham 2011: 37).

TBOM: Dettwyler, in her 1991 article ‘Can palaeopathology provide evidence for compassion?’, questioned the assumptions underlying the inferences of archaeologists and human osteologists, and famously stated “what, then, can we learn of compassion from a study of bones and artifacts?” The answer must be, “practically nothing”.  How does your own methodology change or challenge this view?

Lorna: While it’s true that the title of Katherine Dettwyler’s article is ‘Can paleopathology provide evidence for compassion?’, the real argument in this article is that archaeology can tell nothing meaningful about individual experience of disability in its entirety.  The author questions whether archaeological evidence for disease can be used to infer a disability requiring care in the first place, and uses ethnographic analogy to support this position.  I’ve probably said enough about the bioarchaeology of care approach to make it clear how strongly I oppose this view.

While I greatly admire Dettwyler’s passionate support for the modern disability rights agenda – which I see as the sub-text of her writing – I disagree with almost every point she makes in her article about archaeology’s (lack of) ability to identify care and compassion in the past.  I’ll just make a couple of general observations here.

I think one of the most fundamental problems with this paper is that it doesn’t provide clear definitions of concepts central to its argument.  Disability (or ‘handicap’, a more commonly used term twenty years ago) is referred to as a purely social construct throughout, and this allows the proposition that what constituted disability in prehistory must forever be unknowable because the social values that determined disability are inaccessible through archaeological analysis.  But this ignores the reality of the at least partially ‘knowable’ clinical and functional impacts that people with health-related disabilities also have to manage in their lives.  Discerning social disadvantage may be problematic, although arguably not always completely impossible, but – as demonstrated by the bioarchaeology of care methodology – given adequate contextual information it’s possible to identify some of the likely barriers to participation in cultural, economic and physical activities that required a care-giving response.

The paper also conflates ‘care-giving’, which is a behaviour, and ‘compassion’, which is a motivation, and fails to define either.  This is of significant concern, because these terms have very different meanings.  It is undeniably easier to infer the likely provision of care-giving from physical evidence in human remains than it is to identify the motivation(s) underlying this care, which are always going to be multiple and messy – because this is simply how life is.  I believe that this semantic confusion, allied with a lack of consideration of the clinical and functional implications of disease, invalidates both the five ‘implicit assumptions’ presented by the author as underlying archaeological interpretations of disability and the paper’s criticisms of the three studies (Shanidar 1, Romito 2 and the Windover Boy) used to illustrate supposed deficiencies in archaeological claims for care.

Katherine Dettwyler’s 1991 article has had a powerful negative influence on archaeological research into health-related care-giving, and it’s widely cited in explaining why such research is ‘impossible’.

I think the bioarchaeology of care approach shows the exact opposite – not only is research into past care-giving eminently possible, but in terms of getting an insight into complex, interpersonal dynamics operating in prehistory it’s potentially one of the most rewarding areas of focus available.

TBOM: Having now completed your PhD study at the Australian National University, what is the next step for yourself and your research?  Are you continuing projects in South East Asia, with on-going excavations in Vietnam?

Lorna: I’ve got a couple of projects in mind.

Firstly, I’m hoping to turn ‘Towards a bioarchaeology of care’ into a book.  There’s already been some interest in my dissertation from (bio)archaeologists as well as from researchers in other disciplines, so I’m hoping that such a book would have an audience.  Anyone interested in exactly what my thesis covers can email me (lorna.tilley@anu.edu.au), and I’ll send you my thesis abstract.

Secondly, my thesis introduces the Index of Care, which is a non-prescriptive, computer-based instrument intended to support ‘thinking through’ the application of the four stages of the bioarchaeology of care methodology.  I describe the Index as a cross between a prompt and an aide-mémoire, and I’m planning to develop it as a web-based application freely available to anyone who wants to use it.  The present Index is in the very early beta version stage – I’m responsible for the content and interface design, and I’m open in saying that these require a lot more work!  (My partner did the actual IT production, so I take no credit for this aspect – which actually works!)  I’ll be calling for volunteers interested in helping to test and provide feedback on the Index in the near future, and I’d love to hear from anyone interested in learning more about this project.

Regarding excavations – well, immediately after submitting my thesis for examination I went out to dig for four weeks in the Northern Vietnamese pre-Neolithic site of Con Co Ngua (~6000BP).  It was great to get my hands in the dirt again after the extended dissertation-writing vigil in front of the computer!  However, analysing the over 140 remains recovered from this site will likely take years – so, even as we speak, I’m chasing up other options for expanding on the bioarchaeology of care work done to date.

The Man Bac excavation site in Vietnam where the individual M9 was found and excavated. The archaeological site can be seen centre right, whilst a modern cemetery takes precedence in the foreground.

TBOM: That brings us to the end of the interview Lorna, so I just want to say thank you very much for your time!

Lorna: David – and any readers that have made it this far – thank you for asking me along and for being interested.  I can’t sign off without saying how much I value this website – it is dangerously seductive in coverage and content.

Select Bibliography:

Dettwyler, K. A. 1991. Can Palaeopathology Provide Evidence for “Compassion”? American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 84: 375-384.

Tilley, L. & Oxenham, M. F. 2011. Survival Against the Odds: Modelling the Social Implications of Care Provision to the Seriously Disabled. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 1 (1): 35-42.

Tilley, L. 2012. The Bioarchaeology of Care. The SAA Archaeological Record: New Directions in Bioarchaeology, Part II. 12 (3): 39-41.

For further Information on SE Asian Archaeology and it’s Bioarchaeology:

Oxenham, M. & Tayles, N. G. (Eds.) 2006. Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oxenham, M., Matsumura, M., & Nguyen, D. Kim. (Eds.) 2011. Man Bac: The Excavation of Neolithic Site in Northern Vietnam (Terra Australis 33). Canberra: Australian National University E Press.

A Broken RSS Feed (Now Fixed)

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I recently joined the Research Blogging website, as These Bones of Mine is blogging site where scientific articles are regularly discussed and commented upon.  However, because the RSS feed is broken my posts are not being picked up by the Research Blogging site.  It is hoped that this can be fixed soon, but please note that although my posts are currently not featuring on the Research Blogging site, These Bones of Mine has been approved to join and proudly displays the logo on the relevant blog entries.

Update (03/06/2013):

The RSS feed has now been fixed courtesy of a poster on the WordPress forums.  I mainly use Google Chrome when writing and editing the content on this blog and the helpful poster pointed me in this direction (A Google RSS Subscription Extension) which, when added to Chrome, seems to fix the problem.  Internet Explorer also displays the feed now.  I feel that the previous posts with ‘Research Blogging’ code probably won’t show up on that site, but future posts hopefully should.  If you have any continuing problems please feel free to comment below.