Tag: bones
-
Bones and All: A (Pre)History of Death & Display in “28 Years Later”
Please note that this blog post has some slight spoilers for Danny Boyle’s 2025 film 28 Years Later. Read ahead at your own risk! In the final act of 28 Years Later, the audience is introduced to Ralph Fiennes’ character Dr Ian Kelson, a former GP who is thought to have lost his mind in
-
The (Entirely Inaccurate, Completely Nonsensical) Plastic Skeleton Wars Continue
Let’s be real – you know exactly what this blog post is about. I’ve been writing about these cursed plastic objects for years now. After doing an overview of the worst iterations of animal skeleton decorations in 2017, an investigation as to why they look as horribly and inaccurately as they do in 2021, and
-
Why Do We Love (Plastic, Inaccurate) Skeletons So Much? A Halloween Investigation
This blog post is part of the first ever Real Archaeology festival! Myself, along with several other archaeology-focused content creators, have come together to celebrate real, factual (not pseudoscience!) archaeology over the next few days, with new content coming out on a variety of themes. To see the full schedule and learn more about the
-
The World Wide Reference Collection: Zooarchaeological Twitter and the Case for an International Zooarchaeology Database
The following text is an expanded version of a Twitter conference paper I presented back in 2018 (remember the world pre-pandemic?!) for the Computer Applications in Archaeology Twitter Conference. As such, it’s a bit out of date – however, I think some ideas from the paper are still worth considering, particularly as Open Access and
-
Beyond Domestication and Subsistence: A Call for a Decolonised Zooarchaeology
The following text is a transcript of a talk I gave in 2019 for the Decolonising Science Narratives workshop held at the Science Museum in London, UK. Although I have since changed my mind a bit on the topic (see my follow-up seminar talk I gave here), I feel like its important to have my
-
Gesturing Beyond Bones: Proposing a Decolonised Zooarchaeology
This is the text from a talk I gave at the Approaches to Decolonising Research event organised by the Decolonising the Curriculum Working Group at Liverpool John Moores University. If you’re interested in reading the talk that formed the basis of this one, you can find that transcript here. The call to decolonise archaeology is
-
Should We Respect Rover’s Remains? A Discussion on Ethics, or the Lack Thereof, in Zooarchaeology
The following text is a transcript of a conference paper I presented in 2019 for the Animal Remains Conference at the University of Sheffield. Archaeology is currently in the midst of an ethical crisis. From pseudo-archaeological “fake news” (Halmhofer 2019; Wade 2019) to the longstanding fight for repatriation of artefacts and remains (Gilyeat 2019; Kremer
-
The Radical Potential of Making an Archaeology of Care Visible
What is “an archaeology of care”? Well, it can mean a few things. It has been used, for example, to describe a form of archaeological practice developed by Caraher and Rothaus (2017) in which care and support for the present day communities associated with the fieldwork is considered as important as the archaeological research itself.
-
One Bone to Represent Them All: The Enduring Legacy of the Femur Bone
Note: This blog post includes some images of human remains. Long time readers of this blog will know that Halloween is my favourite time to complain about skeletons – I mean, as much as I love to get spooky around this time of year, it’s hard to supress the professional urge to point out that
-
The Witcher is a Bioarchaeologist – Okay, Let Me Explain…
Okay, I mean…technically the Witcher is more of a zoologist with a bit of forensics training, but let me shoe-horn in my expertise please! After years of being yelled at to play the Witcher 3: the Wild Hunt (2015), I am finally playing the Witcher 3: the Wild Hunt (round of applause please). And I’m
Animal Archaeology 