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The Four Stone Hearth is up at Prancing Papio! This is the 93rd edition and there are some good articles to peruse (your’s truly included). The next FSH will be hosted by Anthropology in Practice in just under a fortnight, so gather your posts and submit. If you’d like to host the FSH, contact Martin Rundkvist. I think the June 23 slot is still open!

• If you never seen it, Louise Leakey's presentation on TED is inspiring: http://goo.gl/OqAm #

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• http://goo.gl/QPoM Thanks to all who submitted and who I listed! 90th ed. of the 4SH is up! #

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That means this biweekly tradition of gathering the best examples of anthropology blogging currently on the web has gone on for at least 180 weeks!

Unfortunately, participation has waxed and waned a bit over these few years. I only received four submissions and one of these wasn’t, strictly speaking, a post on anthropology. But I’m including it anyway. I’m willing to accept the responsibility for the low turn-out, and here’s why: The Four Stone Hearth blog carnival depends on us, the writers and bloggers to keep it going. The readers will be there. Some of us that host routinely get a thousand or more blog hits a day and have hundreds of unique subscribers (not me… but I’m working on it. some).

We anthro-bloggers need to rally up if we want to keep the Four Stone Hearth going. I propose using the comments section here to brainstorm ideas. Side-bar badges? Advertising? Link-Love? Get PZ Myers to submit?…

But, on to the posts! (all links to posts will open a new window or tab)

UV, You See? Black Light Reveals Secrets in Fossils (potentially: archaeology, bioarchaeology)

The first comes from GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life. GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist and the post isn’t directed to anthropology or archaeology, rather it is one that deals with paleontology. Still, this is a post that describes a real research application in the fields of paleontology and evolutionary biology that may have some methods relevant to archeology. I’ve never used UV light as a method, but, while reading the post, my brain was sorting out all sorts of possibilities. For instance, with in situ examination of burial sites -will clothing or textiles leave any traces? GrrlScientist describes: “A simple but powerful technique — UV illumination — has finally answered Microraptor gui’s critics as well as adding another simple but powerful technique to paleontologists’ methods for extracting as much information as possible from every specimen, even from “exhausted” fossils.”

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Sexual and Natural Selection: Why Humans Are Still Evolving (biological anthropology)

Raymond at The Prancing Papio gives us the next post. In it, Raymond briefly discuss a couple of blog articles that deal with the ever changing and evolving morphology of Homo and why this might be.

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RSVP – A Cultural Construct? [Updated] (cultural anthropology)

Next up is Krystal D’Costa at Anthropology in Practice. She discusses the concept of the RSVP, something I have a vague memory of from my own wedding oh-so-many-years-ago. It’s a very interesting read and provokes some thought about how we go about our day-to-day lives in our own culture. Anthropologists are so often interested in the cultures of others that we seem rarely to take a few moments to be critical of our own, so I really enjoyed this article.

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What are the “Hard Problems in Archaeology”? (archaeology)
and
Is ‘Religion’ One of the Hard Historical Archaeology Problems? (archaeology)

These next two were submitted by Alun Salt. The first is a brief article posing the title question and can be found on Publishing Archaeology and the second is Alun’s response. I find the question to be both provocative and a good one. And, I must admit, I only just started reading Alun’s response, but I’m eager to see his thoughts on this since it’s an area of specialization for me as a budding archaeologist.

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[update: last minute submission!]Taphonomy of hominid sites, or what geology can tell us about our origins (paleoanthropology)

This comes from David at Cryology and co. and he’s a geologist “dedicated to the study on rockglaciers and quaternary geology fo the south tyrolean central Alps” and his article is definitely relevant to paleoanthropology. Go check him out!

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Those are the submissions for this fortnight. What follows are posts I found from browsing the web this week or today that I thought would be of interest to anthropologists.

Carl Zimmer [Slate.com]. Yet Another “Missing Link” (paleoanthropology)
A brand-new Australopithecus fossil is fascinating and important. But it’s not one of our direct ancestors.

afarensis. Australopithecus sediba: Was the Embargo Broken (anthro-blogging)
If you’ve been blogging long, you’ve probably encountered a news embargo or two or at least know what it is. Here’s an interesting case discussed where a reporter did his own independent fact-finding rather than depend on embargoed press release -should he be held to the embargo. Afarensis discusses.

John Hawks. What if anything, is Australopithecus sediba?
When new fossil hominids are in the news, John Hawks should be your first stop for the facts.

Anthropology.net. Australopithecus sediba (UW88-50) of Malapa, South Africa. (paleoanthropology)
Okay.. the last one for A. sediba. I promise. But there are some cool photos and an slightly different perspective on the story. Nothing shocking… just a different angle.

Time Travelling. Interesting Philippine Tarsier Facts (primatology, primate evolution)
bonvito is one of the new additions to my blog roll (as is Krystal D’Costa above). His blog’s subtitle reads, “[t]he purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences,” which is a quote by Ruth Benedict (author of The Sword and the Chrysanthemum). This is a really cool, quick post of facts about tarsiers that anyone interested in primatology or hominid evolution will like.

Abnormal Interests. New Esarhaddon Vassal Treaty Found in Turkey(archaeology)
Duane always has the most interesting posts on ancient writing, particuarly of the Near East (and not so ancient writing of Mark Twain).

Sexy Archaeology. Scientists ponder NAGPRA lawsuit. (archaeology)
“Scientists are considering a lawsuit against a new rule that would help repatriate thousands of Native American remains to tribes across the nation.” Go! Read the rest!

Fagan Talk. Mt Toba — the 73,000 year-old cataclysm(archaeology)
If you’re an archaeologist, you probably have a couple of Brian Fagan’s books. Did you know he blogs? “Mt. Toba vanished into space at a critical moment in human history, when Homo sapiens, anatomically modern humans, ourselves, were flourishing in sub-Saharan Africa.” Check out the rest of the post -its short but interesting.

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Thanks for dropping in and leave a comment, especially with suggestions and discussions on making 4SH a more prominent experience among the anthrosphere. The next host will be Sexy Archaeology on April 28, 2010. So get writing! I’m already putting something together.

At Ad Hominin. has a St. Patrick’s Day special edition of this blog carnival, which is dedicated to the four fields of anthropology. Topics covered span the four major fields of anthropology: archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, bio-physical anthropology and linguistic anthropology. If you would like to host the carnival, please write to Martin Rundkvist. The next issue will be hosted at the Greg Laden’s blog on 31 March.

Oh, and I’ll be hosting the Four Stone Hearth right here in April! So start getting those ideas for good anthro blogging down. Greg Laden’s blog is a good opportunity for some visibility since his is one of those high-traffic anthro blogs!

In the meantime, visit Ad Hominim and read some of the best anthro-blogging of the fortnight!

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• Four Stone Hearth 88 (adhominin.com)

Vampire Forensics presents the lore and myth of vampires with an eye for science, particularly anthropology, psychology, physiology and, more to my liking, archaeology.

I have always enjoyed stories and movies about vampires. At age four, I was hooked on Dark Shadows, a bad soap opera that featured gothic ghouls like vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. But it was Barnabas Collins who made blood sucking cool. I think I was a vampire for Halloween more than once and always considered the vampire to be the king of Hollywood monsters. The Mummy, the Wolfman, all the ghosts, witches, and zombies -they all bowed to the vampire. Even the word itself looks sinister: vampire.

Now, in my studies of anthropology and archaeology, I was simply beside myself to discover Vampire Forensics. Mark Collins Jenkins presents a side of vampirism that I hadn’t previously considered and I suspect I’m not alone. Mixing pop culture, ancient mythology, and the evidence of physical remains and modern forensics, the author paints a picture that is both engaging and interesting; both entertaining and informing. Jenkins begins by highlighting vampires in pop culture, such as the novels of Anne Rice and Whitley Streiber as well as Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. He then moves quickly into pathological explanations for vampirism that might explain the origins of superstitions and myths that erupted as “vampire epidemics” that coincided with 18th century outbreaks of disease or petulance, such as rabies and the plague.

What follows is a style of writing that compels the reader to turn page after page as he moves fluidly from historical records of sociopathic criminals and their gruesome behaviors, forensic and physiological evidence, and and the myth and lore associated with vampires in early historical accounts.

Consider this paragraph (pp. 32-33):

This litany of latter-day vampirism seems inexhaustible indeed. But it may have reached its grisly apogee in 1980, when 23-year-old James Riva, using gold-plated bullets, shot and killed his 74-year-old disabled grandmother. Riva then drank her blood as it spurted from the wounds. He had attacked her, Riva later claimed, because the voice of a vampire had instructed him to do so. Riva further declared that he himself was a 700-year-old vampire who required his grandmother’s blood to survive, only to discover that she was too old and dried up to serve that purpose. In 2009, he came up for parole. It was denied.

Compare with this one (pp. 127-128):

The tuberculosis bacillum, with justifiable exaggeration, might be said to consume the life force of its victim, overwhelming the victim’s will to live. Yet the pathogen has also evolved to spread via contagion, feeding off a new host before its old one dies, and so on down the line. Take away the understanding of microscopic pathogens, however, and what is left? A mysterious life force consuming one person after another, and believed powerful enough to act from afar — even from the grave.

And contrast with this one (p. 124):

Back on the knoll near Griswold, when the archaeologists had opened the coffin labeled “JB-55,” Bellantoni was momentarily taken aback. The skeleton looked like no other he had seen: These bones had been rearranged in a classic skull-and-crossbones pattern. This grave had been desecrated, apparently many decades earlier.

And you get an inkling of what you might expect from Vampire Forensics. One of the central stories in the book is that of ID6, a skeleton excavated from a from a 16th century mass grave that resulted from the plague outbreak in Venice, Italy that began in 1510. Half the population of the city was infected with the plague by 1576, most of them dying from it. Graves were opened and reopened in order to dispose of the bodies. 400 years after the fact, archaeologist Matteo Borrini excavated the remains, and happened upon the partial skeleton of an elderly woman who had a brick shoved, post-mortem, in her mouth. The mystery led Dr. Borrini to the legend of the “chewing dead,” which was held by superstition to mean that a corpse would exhibit vamipire-like behavior of eating neighboring corpses.

That ID6 was thought to be a “chewing corpse” or Nachzehrer (“after-devourer”), was likely fueled by the superstitions held by people of the day, understandably frightened by the horror of the plague. Perhaps the blood on a death shroud near the mouth, flowing during the decay process and the bloating from gases, giving the appearance of having just gorged on a meal of fellow corpses was enough to cause some poor grave digger to take no chances and, thus, ram a brick in its mouth before reburying in hopes that the vampire might starve to death.

As an archaeologist and anthropologist who’s primary interest is in the ancient beliefs and superstitions of people in prehistory and early history, I found Vampire Forensics to be informative and inspiring. For me, the approach was fresh and I learned a few things. As a fan of vampire lore in both mythology and pop culture, I found the author’s work to be as entertaining as any modern thriller and it was difficult to put the book down and do other things… like sleep or work.

If your interested in Vampire Forensics, follow this link to the book at Amazon or check the link in my sidebar, just click on the book cover.

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