Osteology in the Carolinas 2

Here's another post from my backlog. In February of 2014, I attended the first Osteology in the Carolinas meeting. This year's event was held on February 7, 2015, hosted by UNCG, and organized by our own Bob Anemone. Twelve papers were given, and there were around 20-30 attendees, some from as far away as Virginia and South Carolina. Another set of really interesting papers, one of which was given by a UNCG anthropology undergraduate, Alexa Uberseder (great job, Alexa!) on our work at Olduvai Gorge this past summer. Some snippets from my notes:

• Gwen Robbins Schug (Appalachian State) focused on re-imagining the idea of social collapse, a theme made very famous by Jared Diamond's 2005 book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." In that book, he cites examples of past societies that apparently outstripped their resources and thus collapsed. Gwen made the point that "collapse" may not be the best word, as a detailed examination of the archaeological record indicates that when societies undergo dramatic changes, significant reorganization usually occurs, but the cultural framework remains intact. In fact, what often happens, as her work among South Asian prehistoric sites demonstrates, is that people decide to either remain in cities or move to more rural settings. The latter typically results in a signature that can be misunderstood as a total collapse of society.  
• Megan Perry (East Carolina), who spoke at least year's meeting, and one of her graduate students, Kathryn Parker, both gave talks on attempts to identify the origin of people living in Byzantine and early Islamic times in the Middle East. By assessing the isotopic signatures in food items or geological formations on the landscape, it is possible to determine where people did most of their eating and to track trade routes.
• David Hines (University of Florida and Regime Crimes Liaison Office Mass Graves Investigation Team) summarized some recent work on extracting DNA from skeletons in mass graves in associated with ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Interestingly, they found that some bones are better for producing DNA profiles than others (as it turns out, the pelvis and femur work best).
• The last talk for which I took detailed notes was by Ashley Gosselin-Ildari (Duke University), who spoke about the use of clickers in large, introductory biological anthropology courses to encourage active learning. This was interesting, and timely, since I started using an on-line Student Response System (SRS) called Socrative to achieve the same goal. I am looking forward to hearing the student reaction at the end of the semester.

Overall, another enjoyable get-together...

Back from DC

As I said earlier, I was in Washington, D.C. last Wednesday and Thursday. I drove in a few hours before my talk was scheduled on Wednesday and decided, after checking in to my hotel (the 100-year-old Hotel Harrington, highly recommended for its location), to visit the National Archives. I was excited for two reasons. First, I really enjoy history, and second, I am a huge fan of the movie National Treasure, parts of which are shot (or at least are supposed to take place) in the archives. It was amazing. I was able to see the original Declaration of Independence (which is much, much more faded than the movie makes it out to be), Constitution, and Bill of Rights. They also have a copy of Magna Carta that dates to 1297 (the reign of King Edward I, who confirmed the rights laid out in the original 1215 version). No photos inside, unfortunately, but I did get this one from the outside:

National Archives from Pennsylvania Avenue. The temporary exhibit was

"Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History." 

Wednesday afternoon I spoke to the Anthropology Department for the Smithsonian's Paleoanthropology Seminar on our recent work at Olduvai Gorge. I gave the talk a cutsey title, "New Perspectives on Old Bones and Stones at Olduvai Gorge." That night I was treated to an excellent meal and great conversation by my hosts.

Thursday morning I was up early so I could visit the Woodrow Wilson House, which is a Georgian Revival on S Street SW where the Wilsons lived together from 1921, when the president completed his second term, until the president's death in 1924. His second wife, Edith, continued to inhabit the home until her own death in 1961. She graciously left the house and all its furnishings to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is beautiful, and the folks who run the house provided a wonderful tour (thanks Fay!) with a lot of interesting tidbits (they have Woodrow Wilson's famous fur coat, for example, which is made of kangaroo and wombat, and the huge tapestry given to Woodrow by the government of France apparently had a few too many exposed breasts and butts for Edith's liking). I was able to get some nice photos of the home:

A painting of an Armenian girl, done by her uncle, that hangs in the Wilson
sitting room. It was given to Woodrow Wilson in recognition of his service 
to the Armenian people.

The Wilson library. If you look just above the top row of books on the left, you
will see a rolled up screen, which the Wilsons would drop in order to watch 
movies.

Later that day, I met Briana at the museum to participate in an informal chat with Smithsonian volunteers about Neandertals. It turns out that I was on site for a little get together celebrating the five-year anniversary of the opening of the Smithsonian's David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. Rick Potts, who was the driving force behind the exhibit, talked a bit about the trials and tribulations associated with getting everything up and running (as you can imagine, it was a ton of work). Check out the awesome cake (those familiar with the hominin fossil record will notice the dental abscess, which was fashioned to resemble the Broken Hill, or Kabwe, specimen from Zambia):

Cake commemorating the five year anniversary of the Hall of Human Origins
at the Smithsonian.

After we had nibbled on cake, I sat down with several of the Hall's volunteers to talk about some of our work in Denmark and Armenia on Neandertals. They were all extremely well informed on the latest information, particularly the paleogenetics, and it was a lot of fun discussing things with them.

Giving a talk at the Smithsonian

I am off for our nation's capital tomorrow morning to give a talk for the Smithsonian Paleoanthropology Seminar. I'm very happy to be reciprocating the visit of my friend and colleague, Dr. Briana Pobiner, who came down to North Carolina last fall to talk about her outreach work. I'll be discussing some of the recent goings on at Olduvai Gorge, and then on Thursday I'll be sitting down with some folks to talk about research we conducted some time ago on the possibility of a Neandertal occupation of southern Scandinavia. Looking forward to it!