Best of Powered by Osteons - 2011

Somewhere in the middle of 2011, I totally revamped this blog.  It got a new name, a new URL, a new format... and I've also gotten more involved with science blogging - writing about scientific discoveries in the news, offering critiques, and discussing my own research as well.

This year, I've posted 145 times and have gotten over 110,000 page views. Since everyone else is doing an end-of-year retrospective, here are the top 10* posts of 2011:

1. "Line on the left, one cross each": the Bioarchaeology of Crucifixion (November 4)
2. Gay Caveman!  ZOMFG! (April 6)
3. Cranial Vault Modification or Alieeeeens? (November 22)
4. Ethnic Cleansing of Jews May Date to 12th Century (June 23)
5. Witches and Prostitutes in Medieval Tuscany (September 23)
6. Sickle-Cell Disease, Oxygen Isotopes, and Malarial Romans (June 15)
7. Why is anthropology needed?  (October 11)
8. Holding Hands into Eternity (October 21)
9. Viking women immigrated to England, but were they warriors or wives? (July 22)
10. QR Code for Academic Posters (April 3)

* The top 10 above doesn't include any Bones reviews.  The top Bones-related post is the Season 6 finale, which - surprise, surprise - I didn't particularly care for.

Some other popular posts of mine that I particularly like, which were posted here and elsewhere in 2011: 

• The Accidental Anthropologist - Powered by Osteons (February 22)
• Men Talk about Mars, Women Talk about Venus - Powered by Osteons (July 8)
• Let's Talk about Evolution - Powered by Osteons and the SCOPE Project (November 21)
• The Skull with the Mona Lisa Smile - Past Horizons (May 26)
• Teaching Preschoolers about Anthropology - ThenDig (August 2)
• Biocultural Bodies and the Anatomy of Controversy - Anthropologies (August 1)
• So you want to be a Roman bioarchaeologist... - Day of Archaeology (July 29)

So thanks, everyone, for reading Powered by Osteons this year!  In 2012, you can look forward to more Bones reviews, some updates on the Roman DNA Project, conference papers I'll be giving at the Paleopathology Association and American Association of Physical Anthropologists meetings, the Roman Bioarchaeology Carnival, and of course reports and critiques of biological anthropology in the news.  

Happy new year!