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Bones That Look Like Other Bones: A MiniPost About Rodents and Fish
Yet another minipost in my comparative anatomy series! But this one might be the strangest paring of all. Rodents and fish – could there be any more different animals? And yet, I find that students just starting out in archaeology tend to confuse the two together. To be fair, it’s very understandable – the size
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On The Average Day of a Zooarchaeologist, or “So like, what do you even do?”
There aren’t many zooarchaeologists in my department…in fact, I could probably count the amount of zooarchaeologists in my department on one hand. Which means that most people in my department probably don’t even know what I actually do in my day-to-day work life! Let alone my non-archaeologist friends and family (I’m pretty sure my own
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Spooky, Scary, Inaccurate Skeletons
Happy Halloween from Major Buzzkill! To celebrate, I’m going to ruin everyone’s fun and take a look at a recent trend in Halloween decorations: the inaccurate animal skeletons. Let me preface this by saying I think these decorations are super cute and if I ever get past my ever-growing student debt and get a house,
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On Imposter Syndrome, or What Are We Even Doing?!
With my transfer report coming up within the next month or so, things have been pretty stressful over here. Unfortunately I find myself not having fun poking around things in the lab, but pouring over drafts and corrections and trying to synthesize my transfer report*. So I figured this might be a good time to
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Bones That Look Like Other Bones: Rodent Week Edition
According to Twitter, last week was #RodentWeek. So here’s another comparative anatomy minipost about some commonly found rodents: squirrels, rats, and mice! Now, when it comes to differentiating between these three, size matters. As you can see from the above photo, there’s a huge difference between the skull of a squirrel and the skull of
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Bones That Looks Like Other Bones: A MiniPost About Birds and Rabbits
I’ve been quite busy doing analysis on assemblages for my PhD project, so I don’t have much time for blogging these days. But in (belated) honour of International Rabbit Day, here’s a quick comparison of rabbits and birds! For the most part, rabbits and birds are quite distinguishable animals. I mean, one has wings and
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#FolkloreThursday – Magical Flight with Birds
My current PhD research is focused on looking at animals in ritual, so I’ll be making short blog posts examining the different ways animals are seen in cosmological contexts as part of my own contribution to the #FolkloreThursday feed on Twitter. In my recent work with mixed assemblages involved in funerary rites, I’ve come across
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On Finding Your Calling, or How Not to be Overwhelmed By Archaeology
One of the great things about archaeology is that, since it’s the study of life in the past in all it’s iterations, there’s a plethora of things to become an expert on within the field. One of the bad things about archaeology? There’s a plethora of things to become an expert on within the field…and
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On Animal Teeth, or Why I’m Not a Dentist
Since my last post using comparative anatomy was rather popular, I figured I should write a similar post for this week, starting with the most important part of the skeleton for zooarchaeologists (in my opinion) – teeth! In my experience, teeth are the best skeletal elements to recover. Why? They’re one of the more easily
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On Seals, the Dogs of the Sea
The other day, a group of archaeologists (myself included) stood around trays of assorted animal bones from a recent surface collection. It was just a cursory glance at the assemblage, but of course the mind immediately starts identifying bones that jump out at you. “That’s a dog mandible…that’s a cow tooth…that’s bird, for sure…and that’s…a
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Animal Archaeology 