The itinerary

For the next seven weeks, I'm on the road collecting data. The research is designed to test a number of existing hypotheses about why modern human crania tend to be less robust than human crania from 100,000, 10,000, and in many cases even 1,000 years ago.

I'm in Lexington, KY first, looking at skeletal remains from a hunter-gatherer population several thousand years old (the Green River Valley Late Archaic). Then Springfield, IL for three weeks to look at a skeletal population in both a hunting and gathering phase (about 1,200 years ago) and an agricultural phase (about 700 years ago). Finally, I go to Tucson, AZ for two weeks to study the remains of a pueblo agricultural group about 600 years old.

One of the proposed explanations for more recent reductions in cranial robusticity relates the decline to the shift from hunting and gathering to agricultural subsistence. The data I gather ought to be well-suited to testing that hypothesis... I could go on, but this blog isn't really meant to be about my research. It's just a way to keep in touch with folks while I'm on the road--without actually speaking to anyone. Check in now and then.