Preparing for winter!

After having just finished up my junior year at Emory, I'm preparing to go to the other side of the world and research in New Zealand for the summer! As an anthropology major, I have spent my last two summers excavating in Jordan, but now I will try my hand at studying in a lab abroad.

My research at Emory is with Dr. George Armelagos where I make thin sections out of ancient Sudanese Nubian bones to look for evidence of tetracycline labeling. These ribs are about 1500 years old and are extremely well preserved. Next year I will be writing an honors thesis on my work with these human remains and continue to examine the evidence left by this antibiotic and its possible origins of ingestion by the population.

This summer, I will be working on a project that is a bit different than my research in Atlanta - I'm going to be looking for evidence of erosive arthopathies, which includes diseases such as gout, in human remains from Polynesia. Rather than cutting up bones with a band-saw and creating thin sections to look at under a microscope, I'll be studying the gross anatomy of these bones to look for pitting and lesions caused by specific diseases. My mentor for this summer will be Dr. Hallie Buckley of the University of Otago in Dunedin. She, like Dr. Armelagos, is also a paleopathologist.

In the mean time, I'm here in Chicago, resting up from the school year and preparing for my adventure down under! I just purchased a pair of hiking boots suited for winter weather, as my other pair are meant for the desert and won't keep my feet very warm. Even though I will be working in a lab most of the time, I am going to definitely do some hiking over there and spend as much time as I can outside in that beautiful country! The only thing I'm sad about is that I will be missing summer, as I'm used to working outside all summer as either an archaeologist or a lifeguard, which is what I've done for the last 7 years, so this will be a definite change! To cope with that though, I have some warmer hiking clothing so I can ignore the fact that it's cold and spend time outside, so it should be just fine! :)

I have a week left before my departure and almost everything is taken care of, except for my laundry! I will have to get to that next ...