Museo del Prado

A few weeks ago (3.15), my wife Noell and I visited the Museo del Prado, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. It is an impressive museum indeed. We did see most of what the museum considers to be its masterpieces. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes's El 3 de Mayo de 1808 en Madrid and its less well-known companion piece El 2 de Mayo de 1808 in Madrid are both very powerful images. The museum also has a vast collection of Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age paintings. However, I have to say that my favorite piece was Dona Juana la Loco (Queen Joanna the Mad) by Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. What struck me most about the work is the artist's ability to capture movement, especially with the candles. Any photo I could take would not do it justice, but I do have the information panel! (Apologies for the blurry image, my phone's camera is not fantastic.)

Information panel for Pradilla y Ortiz's Dona Juana la Loco.

One thing I noticed: among the hundreds of pieces of art on display, not one that I was aware of was the work of a woman. A sign of the times, I suppose.

Research in Spain

I am very lucky to have received a Giner de los Rios fellowship from the Universidad de Alcalá for the 2018-2019 academic year.  During my stay in Spain, which will last from March to the end of April 2019, I will be working as a visiting researcher at the Instituto de Evolución Humana en África (IDEA), which is co-directed by my friend and colleague, Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo. My main goals are to work with colleagues on the analysis of faunal material excavated from sites at Olduvai Gorge and to construct a comprehensive database of neotaphonomic studies.

My family and I have been here in Madrid for just over a week now and are enjoying what I am told is unseasonably warm weather. I will be posting now and again during our stay...

Rocky Mountain dinos

If you had to guess where the holotype for one of the most widely recognized dinosaurs--the species Stegosaurus armatus--was housed, what would you say? The American Museum of Natural History? The Smithsonian? Some Ivy League laboratory? Nope. They are in the tiny Morrison Natural History Museum in Morrison, Colorado. While I actually grew up not 15 miles from the place, I was not aware of it until this past January when, during a week-long trip with my family back to Colorado, I came across it in a tourist magazine. Our five-year-old son, Simon, loves fossils and prehistoric life so I knew we had to take him, and boy was it worthwhile.

The Morrison Museum of Natural History.

The museum lies near Dinosaur Ridge, which is a section of Jurassic and Cretaceous age fossiliferous deposits along the prominent hogbacks, or narrow ridges, that lie just west of Denver at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The area is famous for the hundreds of dinosaur fossils, including beautifully preserved footprints, that have been unearthed since the late 1870s. It was at Quarry 5 between 1877 and 1879 that the first fossils of the dinosaur genus Stegosaurus were uncovered by Arthur Lakes and his crew. Lakes supervised the recovery of fossils from many other now-famous dinosaurs, including the sauropod Apatosaurus ajax. Most of these specimens were shipped to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University for preparation and description by Othniel Charles Marsh. Some of these specimens were eventually returned to the Morrison Museum for further preparation and display (This blog post from the museum summarizes all of this.)

Vertebrae of specimen YPM 1850, the holotype of Stegosaurus armatus
(Marsh, 1877), on display at the Morrison Natural History Museum.

Long bones of specimen YPM 4676, one of the first Apatosaurus fossils ever
discovered.

We stopped by on a Wednesday morning, and all visitors receive a personal tour from a museum guide. Our guide, Sharon, was wonderful, especially with Simon. The museum's prehistoric reptile displays are very nice, and upstairs there is an excellent exhibit on Cenozoic mammals, including a cool replica of a Colombian mammoth. Sharon also took us into the prep room to visit with the volunteers extracting fossils from the Dinosaur Ridge deposits. That day's volunteers, Amy and Walt, were working on blocks of sandstone. They even handed over their Dremel drills and let Simon take a wack at it. This is a gem of a museum, and I didn't even mind blowing $15 on a cheesy "Ice Age Animals" set for Simon. Money to a good cause.

Surrender

April 9th, 1865. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant meet at the home of Wilmer McLean near Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, to discuss the surrender of Lee's battered Army of Northern Virginia, which had by then dwindled to about 28,000 men. While Lee's surrender effectively ended the American Civil War, this was not the last nor even the largest Confederate surrender of the conflict. The latter distinction belongs, in fact, to the capitulation later that month of Joseph E. Johnston to William T. Sherman at Bennett Place just outside Durham, North Carolina. Johnston, in addition to surrendering his ~39,000-man army, saw to it that an additional 50,000 Confederate soldiers operating in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida laid down their arms.

While Appomattox Courthouse is seared into our collective American psyche, Bennett Place--the largest troop surrender of the Civil War--is often overlooked or even forgotten. But why? (Full disclosure: I actually knew nothing about Bennett House myself until a few years ago when my sister and I visited the park. Bennett House belongs to North Carolina's wonderful collection of State Historic Sites. That same day, we visited Alamance Battleground, which is another interesting historical episode of which I was completely unaware.) On November 16th, Durham Technical Community College (DTCC), as part of its Social Sciences/Humanities Speaker Series, invited Dr. Stephen Cushman to offer an answer to this question.

Cushman, a poet and historian in the Department of English at the University of Virginia, is interested in how literary expression (letters, poems, books, etc.) shapes memories of the Civil War. In other words, how did those who lived through the conflict actually write about it, and how did their writings influence the way they, and others, remember and commemorate the war?

There are several commonly cited reasons why Bennett House plays second fiddle to Appomattox. The first is what Cushman referred to as "Virginia-centrism." There were, of course, several battles fought outside of Virginia, but many of the largest and most well-publicized were fought within that state. That the Appomattox surrender occurred in the Virginia theater, then, and the fact that it involved the war's two most celebrated generals (Grant and Lee) helped ensure its central place in memories of the war. Bennett House also lacked the pomp and circumstance and pathos of the Appomattox performance. Appomattox thus contributed to and exemplified the powerful and appealing idea of a valiant, but defeated, Confederacy. (This so-called "Lost Cause" myth still permeates contemporary remembrances of the Civil War.) What is more, the events at Bennett House were drawn out over several days (as opposed to the relatively short and sweet event at Appomattox) and were ultimately overshadowed by the assassination of President Lincoln. Cushman acknowledged that all these elements contributed to the primacy of Appomattox. However, his reading of Civil War-era literature suggested a different, and much less-well known, factor: the nature of the personal relationship between Johnston and Sherman.

To grasp Cushman's thesis, we first need to understand the dual meanings of the word "surrender." It can mean "to cease resistance to an enemy" or "give up the fight," which are, of course, what we typically think about in a military context. However, it can also refer to the act of giving up something, either an object (usually weapons in a military context) or even one's self.

The second key component of Cushman's argument is the way Johnston and Sherman wrote about their relationship with each other. Unlike Grant and Lee, who faced each other on the battlefield only during the last year and a half of the war, Johnston and Sherman squared off several times going back to 1861. In his memoirs, Sherman often refers to Johnston as a friend (Johnston, however, never uses such language when speaking of Sherman) and repeatedly praises Johnston's generalship. While Sherman no doubt respected Johnston, the assessments of Johnston's skill as a commander also served to elevate the impact of his (Sherman's) triumph at Bennett House.

The last issue revolves around how later authors wrote about the relationship between the two men. Johnston served as a pallbearer at Sherman's funeral in 1891 and died himself of pneumonia only ten days later. It was reported afterwards in Oliver Otis Howard's autobiography that Johnston refused to protect himself from the chilly February weather, stating in response to someone's plea that he put his hat on, "If I were in his place and he [Sherman] standing here in mine he would not put on his hat."

While this is unlikely to be a word-for-word quote, this exchange was repeated in slightly modified form by later authors and probably reflects the gist of Johnston's response. Given the way that people wrote about this episode, Cushman argued that it was only after Johnston's death--and the symbolic surrender of his body to his "close friend" Sherman--that the surrender at Bennett House finally reached its conclusion. In doing so, writers essentially created the myth of reconciliation that the country yearned for some twenty-five years after the end of the Civil War.

Cushman's analysis testifies to the power of the written word and its ability to shape memory. 

Not guilty, or not proven?

Fifteen years ago last month (October), Michael Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife, Kathleen Peterson, at their home in Durham, North Carolina. The case and the trial, which dragged off and on from 2003 to 2017, was summarized in the Netflix documentary "The Staircase." My wife Noell and I watched the first episode a few months back and were instantly hooked.

The defense attorney during the original trial, David Rudolf, and the producer of the documentary, Allyson Luchak, visited the Carolina Theatre on October 3rd, and Noell was able to procure tickets for us. David Crabtree, a reporter and anchor for WRAL down in Raleigh, moderated. The purpose of the production was to discuss the trial, the documentary, and the state of the judicial system in the United States.

One critical matter revolves around the original purpose of the documentary. After all, it was Peterson himself that asked for it to be filmed, and Crabtree's first question focused on this very point. Rudolf and Luchak responded that Peterson, who wrote several newspaper pieces in the early 1990s that were very critical of Durham's police force specifically and its criminal justice system in general, felt a documentary was the only way to ensure that he received a fair trial. Essentially, he hoped the district attorney, the judge, and the police would be less biased with a film crew on hand.

Another matter concerns the stairway itself. As viewers, it was impossible to ignore the amount of blood--it was absolutely covered. Head wounds like that suffered by Kathleen tend to bleed profusely, and one of the more shocking parts of the documentary was the common, even gratuitous, appearance of that bloody stairway. In fact, Noell and I repeatedly turned to each other and asked, "How can the family continue to walk by that bloody staircase every day?" Rudolf explained that the blood was not washed off the stairs or the wall because the defense's forensic experts needed to continue to analyze the spatter. However, the portion of the stairway that was covered in blood--the area that opened right onto the kitchen--was usually covered up with a panel of wood so that the family did not, in fact, have to constantly look at it.

One questioner asked about Duane Deaver, the State Bureau of Investigation blood spatter analyst whose questionable methods and misleading testimony for the prosecution played a significant role in convincing the jury that Kathleen Peterson was bludgeoned to death. Deaver was eventually fired by the SBI in 2011 (his appeal of the firing lasted until 2014, when it was finally upheld in a North Carolina court). Could charges be leveled against Deaver? Rudolf responded that only the District Attorney could bring charges against a prosecution witness--something that is very unlikely to happen.

What was particularly striking was how quickly some of Michael Peterson's family turned on him during the trial. The turning point, as we later learned from Rudolf, seems to have been the autopsy photos showing the bloody wounds on Kathleen's scalp. Once these were revealed, many family members, including Kathleen's sisters and Caitlin Atwater, Kathleen Peterson's daughter from a previous relationship, felt strongly that she (Kathleen) had been assaulted and killed by Michael Peterson. While the photos are indeed horrifying, Rudolf speculated that this was an intentional ploy on the part of law enforcement to split the Peterson family. One of the documentary's last episodes records a moving scene in the courtroom when, after Michael had accepted an Alford plea, one of Kathleen's sisters made a statement in front of the court that expressed her anger and sorrow.

Perhaps the most bizarre story to emerge from the trial and its aftermath is the so-called "Owl Theory." I'll admit that I thought the whole thing was ridiculous--after all, how could an owl kill someone? After learning more about it, however, I've come to think that it is at least plausible. The origin of the idea can be traced to the Peterson's neighbor, who suggested that a barred owl attacked Kathleen as she walked back into the house that night. According to this scenario, the attacking owl's talons caused Kathleen's scalp wounds and, reeling and bleeding from the attack, Kathleen then fell down the staircase and eventually bled to death. There are a couple pieces of evidence that lend some support to this idea. First, barred owls are apparently pretty ornery and are known to attack people. Second, there was a small feather found in Kathleen's hair and a twig found on the staircase. Third, her wounds were not consistent with a blunt force object. Finally, blood was found just outside the house, which suggests that Kathleen was bleeding before she fell down the stairs.

The defense, of course, argued that Kathleen's injuries were caused by a fall down the stairs--let's call this the "Fall Theory." (Rudolf was not aware of the "Owl Theory" until it was too late to include in the defense.) Someone asked a very interesting question: Was the Fall Theory created by the defense to protect Michael Peterson, or did they actually believe it? Rudolf responded that this is what Michael claimed to have thought happened, so that is what his team set out to demonstrate.

Rudolf was continuing on to Scotland, and he mentioned that in Scottish law, one of three verdicts can actually be rendered: guilty, not guilty, or "not proven." While this last one is, of course, unfamiliar to Americans, Rudolf argued that it can, in some cases, be a more accurate reflection of a trial's outcome, including perhaps the Michael Peterson case. An interesting point, although there is some pressure to remove this verdict from Scottish law.

Building a taphonomy database

The use of databases is deeply embedded in scientific research. Any table of information you put together is, in fact, a type of database. However, advances in computing power now allow us to accumulate and analyze huge digital datasets in a variety of formats. Before these datasets can be analyzed, though, they must be compiled and digitally transformed. Archaeology and paleobiology now have several large online databases, including Neotoma (paleoecology) and the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database, among many, many others.

Josh Miller and Russ Graham, who invited myself and a group of other researchers to the University of Cincinnati for a workshop on August 23rd and 24th, thought it was high time that taphonomists thought seriously about the creation of an online database. Over the course of those two days we discussed a variety of issues, including the data that might be included in a database, how those data should be coded, the degree to which they should be standardized, and where one might store a taphonomy database.

Welcome poster for the taphonomy workshop in the
University of Cincinnati library.

We are still in the process of putting our ideas into practice, so I can't reveal much as this point, but I do hope that something emerges from what was a very stimulating workshop. I am very thankful to have been invited and to have learned so much.

Oh, and if you ever fly into Concourse B of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport, be sure to check out the beautiful replicas of North American Ice Age mammals:

Replica of a Megalonyx jeffersonii skeleton.

Replica of a Mammut americanum skeleton.

This was a pleasant surprise for a zooarchaeologist and taphonomist!

Paleoanthropology Society meetings 2018

The Paleoanthropology Society meetings were held in Austin, TX on April 10th and 11th. I'd never been to Austin and, for some reason, I envisioned a sleepy-ish college town, but boy was I wrong...it's big! There were, as always, several really interesting talks, but I was only able to stay for the first day. Also, this post is tardy by several months, so I'll keep it short.

The most important talk, in my opinion, came from Robyn Pickering, who presented an integrated view of U-Pb dates from flowstones in South Africa. Essentially, these things form during wet phases, when water is entering the caves and minerals are precipitating out of it. The fossil-bearing deposits occur between these flowstones, which means that sediment deposition occurred only during dry phases. The fact that hominin fossils are associated with drier habitats, then, appears to be largely an artifact the patterns of deposition within the caves, rather than a true reflection of habitat preferences. The other really fascinating talk involved the 3.6-million-year-old Laetoli footprints. The most famous, of course, is the "G" trackway that preserves the footprints of at least three bipedal individuals. Much less well-known (heck, I had forgotten all about it myself), however, is the "A" trackway originally identified as hominin but later hypothesized to have been formed by an ursid. Ellison McNutt and her colleagues reexamined the ursid hypothesis by convincing several American black bears to walk bipedally through mud. The Laetoli A prints, interestingly, are similar in some regards to bipedally walking bears and chimpanzees. However, the stride width of the Laetoli A prints is much narrower than that seen among bears or chimps, which McNutt et al. interpret as evidence for a pelvic stabilizing mechanism and/or a valgus knee--both of which are only seen in human bipedalism. So, they conclude that while the Laetoli A prints are not modern human in form, they most likely belong to a hominin, perhaps a species that did not utilize a modern human form of bipedalism.   

Our team, with Faith Wilfong as lead author, presented a poster about our ongoing work with modern bone scatters on the eastern edge of the Serengeti. Of particular relevance, too, was a poster from Charné Nel, Jason Heaton, and Colin Menter that provided a taphonomic analysis of baboon carcasses from Misgrot Cave, which is one of the comparative samples my colleagues and I used in our recent PNAS paper.

To wrap up the trip, I had a quintessential taxi experience on the way to the airport. The driver, a really nice dude named Chris, told me all about how he had moved to Austin from New England in the 1970s for college, tried to slip into the music scene, and eventually found himself working for a music shop that built guitars for members of the Rolling Stones. Ah, Austin...