During my recent trip to San Francisco for the Society for American Archaeology meetings, I was co-author on a poster detailing new research on the Bioarchaeology of Looting. While I devoted the remainder of my trip to sampling as much regional cuisine as possible (e.g. dim sum, churros, tacos al pastor, It’s-Its, spicy shrimp tacos, paletas, pho, crispy ahi tacos, secret breakfast ice cream), I also somehow found the time to present a talk that covers a sampling of my current Iberian bioarchaeological research.

For the uninitiated, an It’s-It is an oatmeal cookie ice cream sandwich, made with either vanilla or mint ice cream, dipped in chocolate.

The fifteen-minute presentation was titled “Commingled, Communal and Complex: Reconstructing Iberian Copper Age Mortuary Practices”, and was part of the session “Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology in Europe”. The abstract is here:

In the event that for some reason you weren’t in Hilton conference room Golden Gate 6 this past Saturday at 1:00 pm, yet still want to hear my presentation, I’ve uploaded a video of it below*. It’s pretty much a verbatim copy of the actual presentation, including my signature cheesy jokes. It’s also worth noting that the values for my % of expected values and my dental MNIs have shifted slightly since my AAPA poster – I reconfigured my dental MNI calculation strategy (now using only the RuC1 for each mortuary area), which means the values produced by this study are different from my initial analysis. This is the sort of quantitative aspect of my research that I’ll be playing around with a considerable amount in the next few months as I conduct my exploratory data analysis, so bear with me.

*Recording the audio for this video was a rude awakening. Like most people I know, I’m consistently astonished when I hear my voice on tape. Though I’ve always been viscerally certain that my voice is deep, commanding and authoritative, falling somewhere between a more feminine Alan Rickman and a less musical Annie Lennox, in reality it’s irritatingly high-pitched, like the voice of a cartoon cat. Vocal issues aside, take a look at the video if you’re interested in the Copper Age or fragmentary remains.

 
Finally, if you’re ever in San Francisco and find yourself in need of a pick-me-up, I highly recommend a trip to the Presidio area underneath the Golden Gate bridge. I don’t think I’ve ever seen happier dogs, and there were so many of them! They made the last day of my trip to the West Coast pretty fabulous.

Image Credits: Image credits are listed on the last slide of the video. All photos of skeletal remains were taken at the Museo de Jaén in summer 2013 and 2014, and photos and scans from site reports were accessed at the Consejería de Cultura, Delegación Provincial en Jaén.