Internet Unprofessionalism

            At this era of unlimited access to all kind of information please be careful. Like I said in a earlier post, sharing the scientific information to the general public stands one of the most important task of the scientific community but it has to be in a relevant, respectful, and at least in a vulgarized scientific way. Today, my professor suggests us to take a look at small video that runs through the Facebook community and for me it was chocking how unprofessional it is.

            In this video we see some, definitely, unprofessional archaeologists digging up some skeletal remains from the World War II. Both by their improper technic and their poor knowledge of the skeleton: e.g. they took a femur for a humerus because it was close to the skull and they did not know how to lateralized it, they dishonoured the discipline.

             This week the topic of discussion in class is about the respect of the dead and the burial. I think that this short video just does the exact contrary of what respect means. Even if they are very sensitive, crying and praising this individual, they have no idea of how to extract the remains; they dig up the individual out of the soil very carelessly. In my point of view, they should be arrested for destroying an archaeological site, because excavating human remains without a proper formation and permits is an illegal activity. Moreover, I just can't believe that a popular and fairly reliable vulgarized scientific magazine such as Natural Geographic would encourage those unprofessional actions.

        With the unlimited access to the scientific information in the Internet, people stopped questioning the sources of the information. As we know Internet is a useful tool for getting information, but it is not a really good one for getting knowledge, so therefore there is always the need to double check the sources. Excess of information versus actual knowledge maybe this is where Internet leads us.

The video has been shut down but you can still go see who had done it. Here is the link to their webpage:

http://natgeotv.com/za/nazi-war-diggers/videos/human-bone-removal

Today (April 1st, 2014), just wanted to give you an update on what happens with this. So the "grave diggers" are pulled out indefinitely according to this article:           http://conflictantiquities.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/national-geographic-clearstory-nazi-war-diggers-pulled-indefinitely/.

Rickets

            This week I decided to talk about a project I have been doing this semester about bone diseases. My teammate, student in 3rd year chemistry, and I chose to talk about rickets because it is relevant for both archaeology and pure science.

            First, rickets is skeletal growth disorder causing failure to mineralize bone and cartilaginous tissue before fusion of epiphyseal plates. In other words, while you are still growing, your body does not receive the elements, mostly vitamin-D, to mineralize your bones so they are fragile and deformities can occur. It is only seen in youth and has both genetic and environmental causes. In the picture, focus on the leg deformities of both the children from the right and left.

            The skeletal archaeological record shows evidence of rickets as soon as in the beginning of our evolution in Homo erectus, more precisely the "Man of Java". First written evidence of the disease can be read in early Chinese manuscripts of 200 AD and in Rome's manuscripts in 110AD, but they only describe the care of the children not the disease itself. In the Annual Bill of Mortality of the City of London in 1634, we can see the first medical description of rickets.

            A research done in 2006 by May presents proof of rickets in the UK from the 19th century, in the Churchyard of St.Martin's church in Birmingham. She recovered 164 immature skeletons from which 21 showed evidence of rickets.  In order to diagnose the disease on a skeleton we have can do a macroscopic analysis. Bowing of the long bones of the legs, some particular changes at the metaphysis of long bones and a change in the cortical bone porosity clearly prove that an individual died while having rickets.

            In sum, I think that study of the diseases in the past society remains a key in the understanding of our evolution and the fact that we have access to this information by study closely the bones is something magical in my point of view. Just an other way to get to know dead people.

This is a brief talk about rickets but if you want more information, here are some of my sources:

BRICKLEY, Megan and IVES, Rachel. The Bioarchaeology of Metabolic Bone Diseases.

Amsterdam, Academic Press, 2008, pp. 333.

BROTHWELL, Don. Diseases in Antiquity. Springfield, Illinois, Charles C Thomas Publisher, 1967, 766 pp.

MAYS, S., BRICKLEY, M. and IVES, R. "Skeletal Manifestations of Rickets in Infants and Yound Children in a Historic Population from England", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol 129, 2006, pp 362-374.

China's Mummy: Lady Dai

             The last few weeks we have been working on a project, which we have to make it accessible to the general public. As a team we chose to talk about mummies found in China. Lady Dai, this incredibly well preserved woman, remains one of the most famous mummies because of its unbelievable amount and value of grave goods surrounding her and because she is the best preserved mummy ever found. A way that she has been accessible to the general public is by a documentary. I think that documentaries always find a way to show the scientific information beautifully; I am a fan. Vulgarization of the information remains the most interesting point of the documentaries, but they also find a way to present those in an exciting way.

          For this particular documentary, they present the cultural background of her life as well as her incredible grave. They show how well preserved she was, describing her as the "world most perfect mummy". In fact, her body remained in a state of conservation that forensic anthropologists find on an individual whom past away a few months ago. They also explain how each artifacts were represented in the society and there symbolization. From her grave goods, archaeologists have concluded that she had lived only with the most luxurious food and objects. 

        Furthermore, the documentary explains the context of her findings and all the process over connecting the dots around her surprising state of conservation. In general in China, because the country changes so fast, the people recover archaeological site from construction site. While working in Changsha, people found an incredible tomb over 2000 years old never touched before. During the excavation, archaeologists have been stunned about how carefully concealed the tomb was. Four wood boxes, a layer of concrete, and a layer of dirt consisted Lady Dai tomb.

Simply, Lady Dai is an incredible bridge for explaining the history of China.

For more information here's the link to the documentary: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/diva-mummy/

Also, in a few days there will be a blog on China's mummies; here's the link: http://mummycase.blogspot.ca

Gender, What About That?

         For the last couple of weeks we have been looking at the determination of gender in an archaeological context and this have me wondering how important this determination is in order to understand the culture of the archaeological society we study. Basically gender is "the cultural interpretation of sexual difference that results in the categorization of individuals, artefacts, spaces and bodies" according to the definition given by Gilchrist in 1999. Osteological evidences themselves cannot help with the interpretation of the gender because it is a creation of the society and it varies between society and over time.  

            Even in our days we notice some difference every day according to the gender: e.g. pink is a color reserved for girls. The construction of gender begins really early in life when we are babies and don't even see everything that surrounds us. Therefore the signification of the gender is extremely deep in our conception of life. In saying this, trying to interpret this conception of society from the past can be highly subjective because the signification of gender for us is likely to be a different one than the one of the society in study. If this conception takes a huge place in the culture today it surely had one as well for the older society. Furthermore, in certain actual societies, gender changes according to the life cycle, so it adds an other difficulty to the study of gender.

       Indeed, gender is an important factor in order to understand our evolution and the past communities. By putting our conceptions of gender aside and having a great understanding of the meaning of the position of the body and artifacts which surround the individual in the burial that is how we can understand the gender in an archaeological context.

Fieldwork Experience

            A few weeks earlier we had this assignment to do; it was a fieldwork, we actually had to look up some graves and fill up a grid before working a table and analyse our data. My teammates and I went to the Ross Bay Cemetery and we chose to study the Asian society of the old Victoria.

            The fieldwork went fine but I would have chosen a different day because it was so cold that we rushed out to finish as fast as we could. It was so cold and the cemetery is on the waterfront so the wind was annoying; the only thing I could think about was to rush back to the car. We knew which part of the cemetery we wanted to study and how many burials we needed but I don't think we were actually prepared enough. We took some tombs randomly, but at the end we made some nice conclusions.

            Personally I chose to focus on the signification of the difference between the infant burials and the adult burial in the Asian community of Victoria.

           If it was to be done again I would definitely be more prepared. I think the best way to do it would be to go first at the cemetery and look what is around and where are the differences between the sections and the tombs before actually thinking for questions. Also, I would take as my database some Asian burial and some Canadian burials in order to compare them and see where are the differences.  Obviously differences between those two communities must show somehow because even if they shared the same town the different sections in the cemetery show an evidence of segregation between those two groups.

            Anyway the fieldwork was really nice if I have an other chance I would definitely do it again!

Here are some pictures of our database!

Infant and Adult Burial- For more pictures go to : http://www.flickr.com/photos/116418296@N06/

Gay Caveman

            This week we have been ask to react on the burial of the famous "gay Caveman". After some research I think that the conclusions about the sexual orientation of this particular individual may be a little excessive.

            This individual is found in Prague at the Bronze Age period. People from this period of time are known to have very precise rituals, which they are known to respect them accurately most of the time. But this male is found in a semi female position (on its left side, which represent female orientation but head facing west, which is a male position) with grave goods normally found in the female burials.

            According to its position and grave goods researchers concluded that this individual most have a different sexual orientation.

           A lot of factors can interfere with this conclusion; such as a wrong determination of the sex or that this individual had a particular status in this society. From what I have read, there is no DNA analysis in order to determining the sex, so this individual might have been a strong woman whose skeleton entered the male variation and had been identifying as a male. Furthermore, if it was a wrong determination, this "female" individual might had some male responsibilities in the society because she was very strong, this could explain why this individual had been positioned on its left side with female related grave goods but with its head facing west.

           On the other hand, this individual might had played a particular female role in the community, which would explain the position and the grave goods. But this explanation has been dismissed because the archaeologists have not found any proof that would head this explanation up.

         Anyway, I think that it makes more sense if it is an error than to describe him has the oldest homosexual of the human kind. This relates to the determination of genders, so we have to be careful about our personal signification of gender and what gender meant at this time. Also, we can see homosexual comportments in some ape so why would it be such a big deal?