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RayK!Prof wanted my anthropology class to get some hands-on experience with the concepts we've been covering in lecture, so we got a session in the osteology lab today, which may rank shortly behind my AmLit prof's office as most awesome single room on campus.
I know I should know better by now, but my mental conception of anthropology and archeology was heavily influenced by Stargate and Indiana Jones, respectively (and some rather extensive reading on mummies and Egyptology I undertook in my youth), and part of me still expects that at some point one of my professors is going to come out with a pith helmet and a whip and take us on Exciting Adventurs. That the closest most of my professors get to Adventurs with Undergrads is having class outside when the weather is nice is immaterial. A girl is entitled to a few highly unrealistic dreams, and one of mine is that anthropologists are hired by the government to study alien cultures and archeologists lead lives of danger and excitement.
But the point (there was totally a point to this), is that after my class had Exciting Adventurs and found the Holy Grail or Alexander's Tomb or that aliens built the Pyramids as space ships, we could go back to the osteology lab to dissect everything we found. Because it is really neat! And full of bones and pictures of people's teeth (SO FREAKY) and all that neat stuff. There was an entire gorilla skeleton in a box! Possibly I am easily impressed, but I don't give a fuck, because I've never gotten to hold a human pelvis before.
Also, now I can tell the difference between the bone of a person who's been stabbed with a knife versus a person who's been stabbed with a sword. Handy, that.
I know I should know better by now, but my mental conception of anthropology and archeology was heavily influenced by Stargate and Indiana Jones, respectively (and some rather extensive reading on mummies and Egyptology I undertook in my youth), and part of me still expects that at some point one of my professors is going to come out with a pith helmet and a whip and take us on Exciting Adventurs. That the closest most of my professors get to Adventurs with Undergrads is having class outside when the weather is nice is immaterial. A girl is entitled to a few highly unrealistic dreams, and one of mine is that anthropologists are hired by the government to study alien cultures and archeologists lead lives of danger and excitement.
But the point (there was totally a point to this), is that after my class had Exciting Adventurs and found the Holy Grail or Alexander's Tomb or that aliens built the Pyramids as space ships, we could go back to the osteology lab to dissect everything we found. Because it is really neat! And full of bones and pictures of people's teeth (SO FREAKY) and all that neat stuff. There was an entire gorilla skeleton in a box! Possibly I am easily impressed, but I don't give a fuck, because I've never gotten to hold a human pelvis before.
Also, now I can tell the difference between the bone of a person who's been stabbed with a knife versus a person who's been stabbed with a sword. Handy, that.