After a whirlwind trip to Madison, I’ve landed in St. Louis for the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’ meetings. If you’re interested in visiting my poster, I’ll be presenting it at the conference tomorrow:

Date: Thursday, 26 March 2015
Session: 9. Bioarchaeology
Location: Archview Ballroom
Poster #: 40

It will go up at around 8am (which will be challenging as for some inexplicable reason all of the coffee in my hotel room is decaf), but I’ll actually be standing in front of it from 10-1030am and 4:45-5:30 pm. If you’re in town for the meetings, please swing by and help keep me company!

For those of you not at the meetings, the poster details some of my initial attempts at grappling with the problem of analyzing commingled remains. N4, one of the three necropolises*  that I examined over the past two years, contained such a massive volume of human bone that I decided to focus on conducting a dental analysis. However, because I conducted a full bioarchaeological analysis for the other two mortuary areas (N1 and N2), I have comparative data that includes both dentition and the rest of the skeleton. Since N1 contains a mixture of distinguishable primary and secondary burials, and N2 contains only secondary burials, I have dental signatures for these different forms of mortuary treatment. Accordingly, I’m trying to figure out ways to suss out what form, or forms, of burial people were likely practicing at N4 by comparing its dental signature to those at N1 and N2. It’s interesting stuff, and this preliminary analysis has produced some intriguing results that I’m hoping to delve into in more depth and run some stats on this summer.

The poster will, of course, be updated in the fullness of time after I correct the myriad grammatical and formatting errors that will surely spring up like the heads of Hydra after I spent five minutes in front of the poster. These generally become glaringly apparent 30 seconds before big name bioarch faculty stop by my poster.

*Yes, in contrast to the vehement argument made by one of my faculty members, “necropolises” is an appropriate plural for necropolis. To paraphrase a classic: I know these things [faculty member], I’ve looked them up!

Image Credits: Photo of St.Louis skyline found here.