Return to Cardiff Museum

Sorry I didn’t post anything late week I was rather busy so it slipped my mind, so this post will talk about my last 2 weeks of work. This includes another trip to the stores of the Corinium Museum, volunteering at the Royal College of Surgeons, a trip to the Cotswold Archaeology office and another up to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.

My visit to the Corinium Museum stores was successful again. I got through another load of Anglo-Saxon skeletons for my data collection. It’s such a good collection and its going to be very useful for my PhD project as it includes lots of juvenile individuals. This makes me very happy! However, I’ve got quite a few more trips to make to their stores as it’s such a large collection.

The day after my trip to Cirencester I was back at the Royal College  of Surgeons volunteering in the museums department. It’s been a few weeks since  I’ve been there as the museum has been quite busy and haven’t been able to have me in. However, it was great to be back packing more skeletons into boxes ready for the move. Of course, it was also great to see the staff members again. I do enjoy working there!

So that was last week. I started this week by coming up to Kemble, which is near Cirencester. The purpose of this trip was to visit one of the office of Cotswold Archaeology, as they had a couple of Bronze Age and Iron Age skeletons. Whilst there I got to meet a couple of lovely people, including Sharon Clough who gave me some great information regarding some of the other collections I’m intending to use in my research. I also got to chat to Sharon about commercial archaeology units and learn a bit more about them. I’ve only really visited museums and universities so far, so it was a really good opportunity to learn about the commercial sector – a completely new area for me!

This week has ended with a trip but to the National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff. In my last visit I went through the prehistoric human remains in their collection. This time I was going back to the relevant specimens and taking measurements. I’ve now managed to get collection of Neolithic individuals recorded, plus a few Bronze Age remains, which is always good!

So another day, another lot of data collection completed. I think it’s all going well – I feel like I’ve got a lot done, but then I still have a load more to do! As a little fish called Dory once said ‘just keep swimming!’

New Page – Identifying Molars

It’s been a while since my last post and I’ve been meaning to create a page for identifying and distinguishing molars a while now, but I’ve finally gotten round to it.

At university and during my time as an undergraduate I found it quite difficult to  distinguish between the different teeth – particularly the molars. As my PhD project focuses on these teeth I had to quickly gets to grips with identifying molar teeth correctly. I’ve therefore created a new page to help other osteologists out there who need some extra help!

This page only includes the upper and lower permanent molars as they are the teeth I am most familiar with. Also, some of the tips and features I have mentioned below are from my own observations although the majority come from Simon Hillson’s book ‘Dental Anthropology,’ (1996) which I highly recommend if you are going to spend any time looking at teeth.

Go and check it out here! Also, I’m always happy to receive feedback and comments 🙂

Onto the Next Step….

Outside of the Royal College of Surgeons. Image taken from http://nobelbiocare-eyearcourse.com/fgdp.html.

 

I have just come back off a lovely 2 week holiday and I am now about to start the next chapter/step in my career and life. In one of  my last posts I said I will be starting a PhD at the Univeristy of Southampton looking to imporve the methods used for aging adult human skeletons from their dentition. In order to do this I have had to stop volunteering at the Royal College of Surgeons. This came to a natural end as I finished inventoring the last collection I worked with, which included neonatal dentition. I hope to return to the College in the future to volunteer once I’ve settled into the PhD but only if time allows.

I therefore wanted to write a thank you to the Museums Department for giving me the opportunity to work with some incredible human remains collections. It was great to be able to apply the knowledge I had gained at university to good use and I learnt so much. With the first two collections I worked with I was able to appreciate the extent of normal variation that can be observed in the human skeleton and increase my knowledge of neonatal pathology.

The third and final collection I worked with has provided me in good stead for the next step in my education and career. At the end of September I will be starting a PhD in dental morphology and inventorying the Stack collection of neonatal dentition has been a great help. Although my PhD will be using adult dentition to improve current age estimation methods for skeletal individuals having the knowledge base of neonatal dentition will, I’m sure, come in great use.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time volunteering for the museums department and I do hope to come back in the future. Not only has the collections I have worked with been incredible but so are the people. My time at the college would not have been nearly as good if the department wasn’t filled with such lovely, friendly and interesting people.

I will miss coming into the College once a week but I will definitely be going back – I’ve already booked myself onto two lunchtime lectures! So thank you again, it’s been an invaluable experience. 

Now on to the next chapter…

June’s Skull of the Month – the Domestic Cat

I can’t believe that it’s June already. That means that this is my 7th skull as my 8th month with this blog – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun! I was trying to decide which animal to look at this for this month’s Skull of the Month and thought what about the domestic cat; I’ve done the domestic dog so why not cats?!

Click here to go straight to the page.