We spent time in the Archaeology lab today. I felt like a kid in the candy store. There were skeletal remains of 2 bodies laid out for us. Both about 200 years old. I was FILLED with excitement.
Most of you will never know the feeling of being able to touch history like that. It's not a book, you can't read it and automatically know who, what, when, where, and why. These bones are amazing! I touch them and I feel an instant connection to whomever they belong to. My job as anthropologist and archaeologist is to find out who this person really is and how they ended up here.
In skeletal remains, I can figure out if you were abused, or if you were a man or woman, hunter, or gather, or a young child born with a disorder, or if you broke your arm, or didn't eat enough vegetables, or drank unfiltered water (or sometimes I can even determine their "race" but it's getting harder with the amount of multi-race reproduction). Can you even imagine that?
I'm still even surprised at myself for taking on this career path. One that I definitely plan on utilizing later in life. Right now, I want to be in brand marketing and fashion show production/makeup artistry, but I can't even explain the power I feel when I see bones. Power, but uncertainity....because regardless of what my schooling has taught me, this is still someone's core. Someone's structure. Someone's history. Someone's malnutrituion. Someone's accident. I have to decipher everything. It's a scary but inviting thought.
'Globalization of Genes'
'Race is soft tissue, not hard bones.'
'Race is becoming self-identify. Cultural.'
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