Despite the fact that Sunday was Superbowl XLVII, one of the top trends on twitter Monday was Richard III. Beginning Monday morning at 10am GMT, a press conference at University of Leicester revealed that the bones that were discovered last September in a car parking lot in the British Midlands were indeed those of Richard … Continue reading »
Today I am off to Ann Arbor today to present on my experience with excavating cinerary urns over the summer to the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology. You can see details about the presentation on their website here. Here is my abstract for the presentation: This presentation will discuss the excavation of cinerary urns … Continue reading »
Agriculture represents a drastic change in the evolution of complex human societies. Archaeological data collected regarding this period attests to a wide ranging adaptive responses including changes in sociopolitical structures, population size, mortuary patterns and health. In the southeastern United States, prehistoric groups varied in the extent of their use of agriculture and therefore in how … Continue reading »
Prior to the 1980′s, individual attributes like gender, age and ethnicity were assumed to be biological traits that manifested themselves in different cultural ways. In archaeology this meant that if we found a grave filled with weapons, but the skeleton too degraded to do an analysis of sex, we could assume it was male. Regardless … Continue reading »
As we have seen from other recent articles, it is important to look at changes in environment when addressing changes in population and culture in the past. A re-examination of environmental trends from the medieval period revealed that volcanic eruptions caused changes in weather patterns in England. The increased cloud cover caused by the eruption … Continue reading »
When looking at archaeological sites there is a tendency to forget that the environment we are excavating in was not often the environment that the site was created in. My work for Campus Archaeology proves this time and times again as we excavate the modern Michigan State University Campus and consistently find sites which don’t … Continue reading »
As far as our narrative of the rise of social differentiation goes, archaeologists posit that the earliest pre-agricultural communities were for the most part egalitarian. With the rise of agriculture comes the increase in social differentiation. However, how and when this occurred is not well understood. In order to determine status differentiation there has been … Continue reading »
Political economy refers to the social relations and political structures that guide the economic practices of a group. Traditionally this has meant looking at the coercion and control of the commoners by elites. However, newer interpretations include the role that the non-elites play in structuring these relations and shaping the economy, as well as the … Continue reading »
Manipulation of human skeletal material is not unusual. The deceased may be moved to a new location, or singular pieces can be removed as relics or memorials. However, when we find what appears to be a complete skeleton we make the assumption that it represents a single individual. New research may call this assumption into … Continue reading »
Burials are a result of individual and group identity, social relationships and the construction of social memory. Therefore we can examine social structures of the past by looking at burial forms; with differentiation in burial practice indicative of social statuses, whether individual, vertical hierarchy or horizontal group distinctions (Joyce 2001). It is because of this … Continue reading »
