Anthropologist in the Attic: An interesting summer.

Hello all,

I just thought I'd put in a personal note here to tell you about my amazing summer experience.

I belong to a search and rescue organization that is tasked by local and regional law enforcement to locate missing or lost people. We also handle evidence searches for the police. This past summer a skull was found in a forested area just to the west of our city. Our group was tasked to come in and look for the rest of the skeleton. Over four days we scoured the area and were able to identify and retrieve a number of skeletal parts. The best reward was when the person was identified and she could be laid to rest as her family had closure.

So why am I telling you this?

One. I would like to invite anthropologists and archaeologists to join their local search and rescue group. While not every search is a remains search, there is potential to hone your skills at identifying remains, etc.

Two. It is a good way to use your skills you developed through school. Not just the archaeological aspect, but also the cultural, social and forensic. We have to profile our subjects to get an idea of their movements. We develop stories of situations through search techniques, tracking techniques, etc. based on what the evidence tells us. (Although I have to admit that it is not as glamourous as on tv. We don't get to jet all over the country (okay, well, the military SAR do... but the civilians don't.)) For the summer remains search I spent 4 days on my hands and knees, shoulder to shoulder with fellow searchers and the police forensic unit. I could never describe how rewarding it was, nor how tired we all became. But as a team, we accomplished the goal of taking the bones, giving them back their humanity and let this woman be buried properly.

Three. It is a great way to give back to the community.

If you can't make the time commitment, at least see if you can help donate. As a friend of mine wrote describing what we do:

We are tasked out by the RCMP and local police to conduct lost/missing person and evidence searches/rescues whenever required 24/7 365 days a year. Our main area is Central Alberta however members have helped out as far away... as New Orleans and Haiti. We are 100% non-profit and each member is responsible for providing their own gear and travel costs, we also do not get paid for our services or time however we are provided with on going training. The majority of the costs for this training and group equipment maintenance costs are offset through fundraising and charitable donations.

Your Anthropology Library

Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction
Anthropology and Modern Life
Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity
Before Columbus: Exploration & Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492
Before European Hegemony
Colonialism and Neocolonialism
Coming of Age in Samoa
Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History
Debating Cultural Hybridity: Mulit-cultural Identities And the Politics of Anti-racism
Decolonization and the Decolonized
Doing Fieldwork
Encyclopedia of Social And Cultural Anthropology
English and Ethnicity
Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction
Ethnograpy Through Thick and Thin
Interpretation of Culture
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture
Migrations and Cultures: A World View
Misreading the African Landscape
No Bone Unturned
One River
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Popol Vuh
Prison Notebooks: Selections
Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings
Tape Recorded Interview 2nd Ed.: Manual Field Workers Forlklore Oral History
The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa
The Bone Woman
The Essentials of Anthropology
The Lost Cities of Africa
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Understanding Religious Conversion
Writing for Academic Journals

Anthropologist in the Attic

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

An interesting summer.

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