Next week is the annual Society for American Archaeology meeting, taking place in Orlando, Florida. I am extremely excited for this year’s conference because it is the first time I’m publicly presenting my dissertation research and results! The SAAs is always a fantastic time for me to learn about new research in the field, and …
March 17, 2016 · by Katy Meyers Emery · in Bioarchaeology, Mummies, Overviews. · Skull and cross bones in salt, via Pixabay I’ve been reading a lot of interesting food non-fiction books in my sparse free time as a way to relax after long days of dissertation preparation and article writing. I’ve recently finished reading …
When people ask me why archaeology is important, or why I’ve chosen to study human remains and funerary practices, I often cite the importance of bringing individual stories back into history. As a kid, I was always intrigued by history and loved to learn more about the past. However, I often lacked historical individuals that …
Our bones are pretty amazing- they keep a record of what has happened to us throughout our lifetime. Bones show the trauma and disease we faced, how well we healed from these events, what muscles we used and activities we did repeatedly, the type of diet we had, whether we migrated to new locations, and …
Posted by Nicole Raslich on March 1, 2016 under CAPBlog | Be the First to Comment Vernor’s Bottle Found in Peoples Park In light of the Venor’s sesquicentennial (150th anniversary), we here at CAP decided to highlight one of our finds from the People’s Park excavations in February of 2011. We found an intact Vernor’s …
PH Kling Brewery Bottle Fragment – Gunson Unit D This past week, Lisa, the Campus Archaeologist, discovered fragment of two different beer bottles in the assemblage excavated from the remains of Professor Thomas Gunson’s household. The embossed words “PH Kling” appear on both fragments, although in different fonts, and an internet search quickly brought up …
Hi everyone! I’m heading off to Boston (if the weather cooperates) today for the Medieval Academy of American meeting. I’ll be presenting on some of my digital work, specifically the ieldran project. I’ll be sending an update on Boston and the meeting following. If you happen to be in the area, come check out my talk, …
Recently, the popular news has been fascinated with the discovery of an upright burial from a Mesolithic cemetery site in Germany. Rightly so! Upright burials are an extremely rare phenomenon, and incredibly interesting. However, these articles don’t really get into the nitty gritty details and the evidence surrounding the burial. Today, on Bones Don’t Lie, …
Paleoindian point – image provided by Dr. Lovis Our second CAP Cafe for the semester is right around the corner, February 25th. For those of you who haven’t been following, our new CAP Cafe series is designed to engage the general public with archaeologists and their research through informal events. At our previous CAP …
In the United States, historically we chose to bury our dead with our family and community. People would buy large plots within cemeteries where they could bury their relatives over time and maintain their family connections. My first ever GIS analysis of a cemetery involved one that was focused around the family. These plots consist …
As CAP fellows and volunteers continue to research and analyze materials excavated from the earth closet this past summer, we are slowly becoming more “privy to the past” (yes, I’ll wait for the laughter to subside). Thus far we have covered several individual objects from the privy, each item highlighting a new aspect of MSU’s …
Given the national focus on the Flint water crisis, where I am a resident, I thought I would take a closer look at water safety and its conveyance within MSU. Water and its safe supply has been a concern for human populations for thousands of years from the Neolithic into the present (history of water …
The Atlantic slave trade was a massive and horrific undertaking promoted by Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries to forcibly move people from Africa to America to be sold as laborers. During this period in America, there was a desperate need for cheap labor, and the demand led to at least 12 million people being taken from Africa to …
I am originally from Rochester, NY, and I head back here for the holiday season to spend time with family and friends. It was within this city that I became inspired to pursue archaeology and cemetery studies, so I thought it was about time I share some of the wonderfully morbid and archaeology related …
Just kidding, its just an illustration of the Italian ‘vampire’ skeleton but with a present instead of a rock! Enjoy the holidays, and stay tuned for more Bones Don’t Lie content in the New Year! In case you need some morbid and awesome posts for the season, check out these back posts on excavating Santa …
Incandescent light bulb Light bulbs, everyone has them in their homes, work, and public buildings. And although light bulbs have changed in recent years with the introduction of LED and CFL bulbs, for the most part when you think of a light bulb a specific design comes to mind: an Edison style incandescent light …
Death of the Discworld via Wikipedia Scythes and sickles have a very clear symbolic association for modern populations. The personification of death is traditionally pictured with a scythe (full size version pictured to the right) or sickle (the handheld version), a metaphorical link between the reaping of the crops and the taking of lives. Death …
One of the questions I get quite a bit is “when do bodies turn to bone?” This may be a question relating to general curiosity about what has happened to the remains of a loved one, questions about the accuracy of popular TV shows, or concerns about whether one is going to run into an …
Let’s just say that you are an Iron Age herder living in Switzerland. You’re out walking through your flock of cattle, and one of them gets fiesty and kicks you in the head. Ouch. Over the next couple days, a pressure builds in your head and becomes unbearable. The elders in your village discuss the …
Over the past few years various CAP fellows, including myself, have examined sustainability at MSU. In contrast to modern sustainability research, which has focused exclusively on the present and future, CAP has examined how past practices functioned and how these have changed over time. Through the use of both archival and archaeological evidence, how past …
We’ve been chugging through cataloging the artifacts from the Admin/Gunson assemblage this semester. We should finish unit A sometime next week. This may seem like slow going, but to say that the artifacts are plentiful would be an understatement (6,951 thus far in Unit A with one more level to go!). In addition to the …
Listerine Bottle from Level B Lisa Bright, the reigning Campus Archaeologist, wrote to me recently to say that she had discovered a Listerine bottle in the Admin/Gunson assemblage that was excavated during the CAP field school this past summer. While a Listerine bottle may seem like a fairly innocuous item (especially when found in the …
Here is “City Council votes to stop recognizing Columbus Day” from the Michigan Daily. Tweet
There is an amazing relationship between human behavior and space. Our landscape and environment shapes what we can do on it, how we move through it, and where we can be; but it is also shaped by us- we can alter the landscape through construction and building, we designate certain spaces to have specific functions, …
At the Midwest Archaeological Conference, Lisa, Amy and myself got the opportunity to present some of our preliminary findings from the privy that we uncovered during Summer 2015. Here, I’m going to share some of the findings from our poster, and the poster itself for those who are interested! In June, 2015 during routine construction …
The coffins from the Hyett family vault in the Gloucester Cathedral, shows how the archaeologists would have seen them when it first opened An extremely well preserved family burial vault was recently accidentally discovered in the Gloucester Cathedral in the UK. The tomb was found in the north transept of the cathedral, and …
Halloween is a beloved day of the year, perhaps because, for some reason, we love to be scared. For many people, nothing causes more fright or fascination than ghosts, the spirits of those who have passed out of the physical world but whose lost souls remain behind. It is widely believed that ghosts remain tied …
[This article is being co-written by myself, Katy Meyers Emery, and Lisa Bright, a graduate student at MSU in the mortuary archaeology program.] Today’s article is a continuation of yesterday’s review of Bigfoot- if you haven’t already, read the first article, and then continue onto this one. To briefly review, Mitchel Townsend was featured in an article …
[This article is being co-written by myself, Katy Meyers Emery, and Lisa Bright, a graduate student at MSU in the mortuary archaeology program.] In 2015, Mitchel Townsend was featured in an article that announced that they had found archaeological evidence of Bigfoot, the mysterious ape-man said to wander the woods in the Northwest of North America. …
Regardless of how many articles I read on scurvy, or how many skeletons I’ve seen showing evidence of the deficiency of vitamin C, or how many times I’m reminding that this can occur to anyone around the world… my first thought is always pirates. Scurvy = pirates, right? Not just any pirates. I think about …
Putting out the Walmart Halloween costume fire. Oh No! All the sexy archaeology costumes were destroyed. Dang! The big news today was that a man in California set fire to an aisle of Halloween costumes in a Walmart. Honestly, this shouldn’t be the biggest news story of the morning, but there it is. The …
That title is not a mistake. When I read the recent articles about the earliest example of a decapitation, my first thought was “wow, look at those illustrations; we really need to teach archaeologists to do this more”. Maybe it is because I get to read articles about decapitation fairly frequently, maybe I’m jaded- but …
Throughout its years of survey and excavation at Michigan State University, the Campus Archaeology Program has found only one pre-contact archaeology site on campus; that is, a site that pre-dates the arrival of Europeans into the region. Thus the majority of CAP’s research has concentrated on exploring the history of the university itself, which is …
Leprosy warning sign, via Flickr user Mandy Leprosy is a fascinating disease- not just for its effects, but for the social implications of having the disease. Leprosy was an epidemic disease that not only infected millions of people over a span of thousands of years, but it still remains a threat in Third World countries. …
It is the first week of school here at Michigan State University, and not surprisingly, we’ve got super high temperatures and crazy humidity. It feels like you’re entering a steam room when you step outside. The start of the school year means I get to start looking forward to cooler weather. I love Michigan in …
When I saw this word I just knew it would make a great new morbid terminology. If we take the word apart, there are two major pieces: cemento and chronology. Chronology is the easy one; it means the arrangement of events or dates in the order of their occurrence. When we are talking about building …
Right now I’m working on the historical background to my dissertation, which means reading a lot of historical texts and history books on early medieval England. As an archaeologist, I’ve been trained to find direct evidence of events and not to rely on text- so I’ve been struggling a little with accepting the interpretations I’m …
Grave robbing isn’t always about stealing artifacts or grave goods, nor is it just a thing of the past. A couple weeks ago, police discovered that the crypt of F.W. Murnau was being used for occult ceremonies. Wax drippings confirmed that the crypt was being used by the living, and the cemetery caretaker confirmed that it had been …
Grover Krantz and Clyde in life and in death. From the Smithsonian Magazine Article.On the inside of my left wrist, I have a tattoo of an Irish sixpence. The sixpence features an Irish Wolfhound. When I was younger, my family owned a large Irish Wolfhound named Buddy. Getting that dog was a turning point in …
During the month of June, I will be the teaching assistant for the Michigan State University Campus Archaeology Field School. This is a unique field school because it gives students the opportunity to excavate their own campus and add to the university’s history. Sadly, we won’t be finding any human remains (well, hopefully we won’t), …
I’m happy to announce that my journal article with Kristina Killgrove (poweredbyosteons.org) on blogging bioarchaeology has finally published! It is featured in a special Internet Archaeology issue that was created by Colleen Morgan and Judith Winters. You can read the full open access article online here: Bones, Bodies, and Blogs: Outreach and Engagement in Bioarchaeology Meyers …
When we study history, we tend to focus on the big events. This is especially true for medieval England where history is defined by wars, plagues, famines, and major changes in political structures. Archaeology provides an important counterpoint to this perception of history as defined by big events and big names. It can give us …
Every once in a while, I’ll get sent an article that is something so fantastical and bizarre that I’m not so sure I even believe it. This is a very good approach to have when dealing with popular news and morbid topics- don’t believe what you read. Yes, we find evidence of vampire related burial …
Human remains are powerful statements. They can be a symbol of violence, veneration, respect, disrespect, memory, or art. As archaeologists, we need to be careful about the ways that we display human remains since they do carry so much weight. Artists like Francois Roberts have used human bones as a way to make artistic statements …
Beheading was a popular mode of execution throughout human history- it is dramatic, final and is often part of a public display of power by the victors over the soon to be deceased. Whenever I think about this type of execution, I think back to the famous paintings of Judith slaying Holofernes. When I was …
I’ve been indulging in a little HGTV this week as a way to recover from post-conference exhaustion. I know that shows like House Hunters aren’t real- they already have bought the house so it’s just a sham discussion of other houses. And yet, I can’t help myself. Sometimes this mundane drama is just what one …
This past week, I’ve been at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in San Francisco, CA. Sadly, many of the interesting mortuary and bioarchaeology sessions overlapped with one another so I wasn’t able to attend as many of the talks as I was hoping, but I did learn about a wide range of new exciting …
Earlier this week, researchers at Nottingham University were able to recreate a 9th c Anglo-Saxon medical remedy using garlic, onion and part of a cow’s stomach. When I first heard about this, it sounded like one of those horrible medical remedies discussed on Sawbones that doesn’t actually work. But here’s the crazy part- this Anglo-Saxon …
There are a lot of times when I’m reading an article from a popular news source and just hoping that it is a joke, or that I accidentally read The Onion instead of a real news organization. So in honor of April Fool’s Day, here are some of the topics in Mortuary Archaeology that I wish …
Today in my ANP 203: Introduction to Archaeology class, we are talking about ethnicity vs ancestry, so I thought it would be a good time to repost this article on asking the right questions about ethnicity. Ethnicity is a tricky thing- as an American I have a highly mixed ancestry with German, Dutch, English, Irish, …