Human Osteoarchaeology

I know that I promised updates with pretty pictures, but first I'm going to put in a quick overview of the programme that I'm enrolled in. Mostly because if I'm writing about my classes, then I'm thinking about my classes. And if I'm thinking about my classes, then I'm practically studying for my classes...right?

A bit of information about the course:

I will be a full-time taught masters student for one year. A taught masters means that I am required to take a set course of study (specific classes) in addition to researching and writing my dissertation. My classes for the year are:

Regional and Topographical Anatomy

Mortuary Theory

Archaeogenetics

Biocultural Approaches to Human Remains

Paleopathology

Quantitative Methods in Bioarchaeology

Osteology Laboratory

These classes last anywhere from 6 weeks to the entire academic year in length, though, thankfully, only the anatomy course has a written final (because it is not specific to archaeology students).

As for my dissertation, it is expected to be approximately 20,000 words in length and is due on my birthday next year.

The programme currently has 6 students (there was a max of 8), though we originally had 7. One girl dropped out after the first day, though that really wasn't a surprise to anyone. There are 2 Americans in the class, including myself. The other American is a student from California (studied at UCLA) named Gereme (pronounced like Jeremy). He is the only student in the class who has not previously studied at UCC. The rest of the class is made up of 4 Irish girls who all graduated from UCC in the past 2 years.

So far the programme seems challenging but pretty interesting, though I won't really know the extent of the workload until mid-October when all of the labs and whatnot have started up.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way I'll move on to putting up some posts with pretty pictures!