This Month at Forbes - Bioarchaeology, forensics, palaeoanthropology, tattoos, and more!

I've been derelict in posting a link round-up of my Forbes stuff here at PbO.  So here is the month of September.

• September 3 - What archaeologists really think about ancient aliens, lost colonies, and fingerprints of the gods. In which I tl;dr the tl;dr'ed book reviews of pseudoarchaeology.

• September 6 - 10 boneheaded interpretations of ancient skeletons.  Hate all those sensationalized news stories about aliens that are actually cranial vault modification?  Here's a post just for you!

• September 10 - Clues indicate newly discovered species Homo naledi disposed of their dead. I stop short of saying "buried" in this article because I'm not convinced the evidence adds up to purposeful and/or ritual burial.  Disposal, almost certainly yes.

• September 10 - A new human ancestor arises from the depths of a South African cave. I actually got embargoed access to this so that I could have an article ready to go when the announcement came, so I felt pretty spiffy.

• September 16 - Forensic anthropology testimony in Haiti's Raboteau Massacre digitized at Duke University. Awesome anthropologist Laura Wagner is working on this collection and thought the forensic testimony of Karen Ramey Burns would make an interesting post.  

• September 20 - Preserving tattoos of the dead is a little macabre but not new.  A new company has a new way to preserve your tattoos after you're dead, in case that's the kind of memento your family wants.  I was honestly surprised how few hits this post got.

• September 22 - Bones of indigenous victim reveal brutality of European colonization of Gran Canaria. The photos were so striking and the location so exotic, that I couldn't pass up writing about this fascinating article. 

• September 24 - The hunt for Mona Lisa's bones is a publicity stunt, not science.  *le sigh* I've written here at PbO about Mona Lisa's bones every.single.year and it's gotten tiresome.  This post hasn't gotten very many hits, but it's gotten some quality engagement from people who also agree that this is more show than science.

• September 26 - Staten Island students brew chicha beer to learn about ancient Peruvian migration.  Who doesn't like stories about ancient beer?  This is a neat experimental project by bioarchaeologist Celeste Gagnon.

• September 30 - Brawny bones reveal Medieval Hungarian warriors were accomplished archers. Besides the alliteration, I liked the combination of archaeological artifacts and musculoskeletal stress markers. A nice case study of activity in the past.

Coming up in October... Bones is back tomorrow, and I'll actually be covering it at Forbes (but will put links here too). I'm a little nervous to bring the reviews there, and you'll see a bit of a format change, but some of the snark will stay.

Not sure how much else I'll be able to do, since I have a lot of research and writing projects coming up.  Then again, I say that every month...