News
Stable Isotope Working Group Meeting 3/3-3/5
The Stable Isotope Working Group (part of the International Council of Archaezoology) will have its first meeting at the University of Georgia from March 3-5. Please see our website for more information: https://zooarchisotopes.wordpress.com/about/program-and-abstracts/
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the group coordinators, Suzanne Pilaar Birch [sepbirch@uga.edu] or Catherine West [cfwest@bu.edu].
Bioarchaeology talk: Aviva Cormier
Wednesday, February 10 at 12 noon: Aviva Cormier’s Brown Bag lecture on “The Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability: Skeletal Dysplasia during the Middle Woodland Period in the Lower Illinois Valley.” Lunch will be provided.
West published in Journal of Ethnobiology
Catherine West and Christine France recently published "Human and Canid Dietary Relationships: Comparative Stable Isotope Analysis from the Kodiak Archipelago, Alaska" in the Journal of Ethnobiology, issue 35.
Laura Masur, PhD Candidate!
Congratulations to lab manager Laura Masur, who advanced as a PhD Candidate in the Boston University Department of Archaeology by successfully defending her proposal!
NEEAN registration now available
Please join us for the second annual meeting of the Northeast Environmental Archaeology Network. This year's meeting with be hosted by the Boston University Department of Archaeology on Saturday, October 3. Register here!
Boston University in the news!
Watch as BU archaeology major Rachel Gill and professor Catherine West are interviewed about the Alutiiq Museum Community Archaeology Project for KTVA in Anchorage, Alaska!
BU undergrads travel to Kodiak, Alaska
Two BU undergraduates – Rachel Gill and Sami Kassel – have been selected to travel to Kodiak, Alaska to participate in the Community Archaeology excavation. They will chronicle their experience in blog posts throughout the summer.
West in the “New Generation of Polar Researchers”
Catherine West was selected as one of the New Generation of Polar Researchers and attended a week-long symposium in Catalina, California in May, 2015 to discuss the future and leadership of interdisciplinary polar research. 35 early-career scientists received funding from the National Science Foundation Division of Polar Programs to attend (http://disccrs.org/ngpr).
Goldfield research on Neanderthal cooking gains publicity
Anna Goldfield and Ross Booton's (former volunteer, Environmental Archaeology Laboratory, and current Ph.D. student, University of Sheffield) recent poster presentation at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting used mathematical modeling to consider how differential rates of meat cooking between Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans might lead to differential survival of the two species. It has gained considerable media attention, including coverage in the Daily Mail, Archaeology magazine, and Discovery News.
This work is a component of Anna's dissertation research into differences in reindeer carcass processing between Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans during glacial periods of the Pleistocene.
Arctic ground squirrel research featured by AIWG
Catherine West and Courtney Hofman’s (University of Maryland, Smithsonian Institution) research on the role of the arctic ground squirrel as an invasive species is featured in June’s entry of the Aleutian Islands Working Group blog.