Tag: Archaeology
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“Death Positivity” for Pets: Are We Changing Our Attitudes Towards the Death Of Animals?
Content Warning – Today’s blog post will talk at length about animal death and will have some photos of taxidermy animals. Please proceed with caution and feel free to skip the blog post entirely if this is too upsetting. The “Death Positivity” movement has truly become part of the mainstream discourse recently, ranging from a
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Terror and Tradition Over Time: A Look at the Material Culture Of Halloween
Oddly enough, I didn’t really expect to run into that many significant cultural differences when I first moved from the United States to the United Kingdom. So I was actually a bit surprised when Halloween first came around. I expected there to be streets covered in decorations, but was surprised to see only a few pumpkins
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Bones that Look like Other Bones: A Mini Post about Foxes and Badgers
It’s been a while since I’ve made a Comparative Anatomy post! But after running into an issue with a possible fox/badger bone fragment, I figured it might be time to make a new one. And if you have any particular comparative anatomy posts that you’d like me to make in the future, please feel free
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Deciphering the Past and Present: Secret Codes in Fallout (and in Real Life!)
“Secret codes”, like archaeology, can set off the imagination, prompting images of spies, secret agents, and hidden treasure. It is easy, based on popular culture, to imagine that archaeologists are constantly stumbling upon glyphs that must be translated to find secret rooms or solving puzzles using hidden codes to evade dangerous traps. But unfortunately, like
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A Brief Introduction to the Vague World of Ritual: From the Past to the Present
The term “ritual” has a bit of a reputation among archaeologists. Well, less of a “reputation” and more of a “running joke”, if I’m being honest…one of the first things I learned as an undergraduate taking an “Intro to Archaeology” class was that “ritual” is what archaeologists write when they don’t know what’s happening
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The Sadness Of Skin: Emotional Reactions to Remains
Content Warning: This post will be talking a lot about death and the emotional resonance of dead bodies, both human and non-human. No images of human remains will be shown, but there will be images of non-skeletal (mummified) dead animals, so if this may be upsetting, please skip this post. I was on Twitter the
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An Exercise in Archaeological Analysis: Fandom, Fealty, and Funko Pops
The Funko Pop. Anyone who has had even a passing interest in pop culture will have come across these figures. Although they have a basic template (large, squared head with tiny bodies and beady eyes), these figures cover a huge range of franchises, from the most mainstream, popular series to niche, cult classics. Funko Pop
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An Archaeology of Sudden Death: A Fallout Case Study
Content Warning: This post will discuss human remains and death from disasters and acts of mass violence. Although I will not be posting any actual images of real human remains, I will be using images of human remains from the video game Fallout 4. There may also be discussion of disasters and violence that may
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Monoliths Of Memory at Disney’s EPCOT Center
The dawning of the year 2000 was a big deal for everyone, but perhaps most especially for Walt Disney World. To mark the new millennium, the resort set up a series of new events and attractions as part of their “Millennium Celebration”; this included a new parade called the “Tapestry of Nations”, a new evening
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Preserving Play: Video Games as Digital Artefacts and the Status of Games Preservation
Archaeology and video games have been a hot topic in the past few years – not only is it a growing sub-discipline of its own (for more information, check out archaeogaming.com or the new Archaeogaming book that has come out of that website), but we also seem to talk about video games and archaeology a
Animal Archaeology 