Monday, May 7, 2018

Bonding over bones, stones and beads


By Carol Clark

"I've really been into bones since I was little. I don't know why," says Emory University senior Alexandra Davis, an anthropology major. "Not fresh bodies, though. No soft tissues or blood. Just bones."

In fact, Davis loves bones so much that she was willing to spend seven weeks in Malawi with Emory anthropologist Jessica Thompson and four more of her students last summer, excavating bones and other artifacts in ancient hunter-gatherer sites, assisted by a team of locals.

Thompson will return to Malawi in July with another team of students to continue excavation of two sites that were started last summer. "We want to get into the deeper layers, because in both cases we did not come close to reaching the bottom of the sites," Thompson says. "Then, we want to find out how old they are."

Read more about the project.

Related:
Malawi yields oldest-known DNA from Africa
Have skull drill, will travel

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