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From the Question Bag: Fish Remains in Scotland
James Green asked: I know in the US South amia calva is one of the most common fish remains found in sites. What is the most common there? Well, as someone who seems to have been knee-deep in fish bones since 2014, I’m glad you’ve asked! Let me preface this by saying my area of…
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A Thanksgiving Blog Post Without Turkeys, ‘Cos I Don’t Have Any Turkey Bones
As an American, I feel a bit obligated to make a themed-post for Thanksgiving. But here’s the problem: I don’t have any turkey bones in my collection. So, what’s a zooarchaeologist blogger to do? Well, the next best thing: here’s a minipost looking at the bones of domestic fowl and why it’s important to differentiate…
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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…
Animal Archaeology
All things archaeology…but mostly dead animals.