Digging in flesh

Reading Cameron's 'Dont talk about death' post (http://cameronmackintosh.blogspot.com/) made me think of the project in which I took part while in my last year of Undergrad at McGill, as it was in itself a very disgusting (and immensely cool) project to explain to non-archaeologists...

For a term, we had to dig up dead animals in a zoo cemetery in order to map the distribution of the corpses and reconstruct a skeleton (in order, in the end to make an educational display). This project was my introduction to fieldwork methods and... most importantly my introduction to the delights (!?) of digging in a pile of bones and sometimes in stuff that wasn't completely decomposed yet (some of that was affectionately called 'cream cheese', you get the picture!). I'll always remember fondly when my colleague digging next to me shouted "Oh crap! I'm digging in brain!!" (which relates to the picture attached here, as it was the ram's brain that was being 'dug up').

Picture credits to Jess Beck (I think), taken from the McGill Zooarchaeology blog.

For the moment, I'll spare you the details on the leaking plastic bags we found in the pits, and the hair (animal, not human of course) we would find at the end of our trowels. You can ask questions if you want, though!

I'm attaching here the address of the blog we wrote during this project, as it relates to this class in a way (I know, they were animals, not humans but we were dealing with death and decomposition, believe me the smell reminded us of that every week!).

http://mcgillzooarchaeology.blogspot.com/2008/10/week-1-initial-survey.html

By the way, it is still an ongoing project, so you can follow their latest discoveries on the same blog!