The field school kicked off for real towards the beginning of the second week. Things are going quite well. Bob and I are impressed by how quickly the students are learning. They’ve already handled a large spectrum of peoples, from stillborn babies to older men. On Monday they will start another round of skeletal material.
Meanwhile I have been taking their comments to make an improved skeletal inventory form. The form that we use right now is from another MU researcher. While it does a good job at organizing the collected data, it uses many abbreviations that confuse the beginning bioarchaeologist. My goal is to make a form that records the same information, but with a much clearer layout. I believe the new form will be done just in time for Monday’s class, so they won’t have to relearn too much to use my form.
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On a completely different note, we saw a homeless guy take a dump on the side of the street today while we were walking home from KFC. I’d feel sorry for him, but he obviously is not starving, judging by his output.