December Outreach

This is a bit of a housekeeping post, about some of the stuff I've been up to this month. Hopefully once I return from maternity leave in the new year, I'll have a bit more time to blog about things other than Bones and the Roman Bioarchaeology Carnival. But regardless, I'm pretty much always engaging in outreach...

• I learned last week that my PbO post on lead poisoning in Rome was chosen as one of the best science writing pieces on the web and will be featured in the 2013 Open Lab anthology. [You can check out the full list of entries here.] This particular blog post has been accessed over 35,000 times in the two years since I wrote it, which is truly amazing, especially considering the article it's based on has been cited 6 times. To me, this is an outreach win: I get the co-author publication important for my job, and I also get to reach thousands of people with a more accessible take on the article. Do check out Open Lab, though, as it features at least four anthropologists this year.

• The Ancient Studies Articles Podcast that Sarah Bond and I started last month now boasts nearly 200 subscribers. We'd obviously hoped that people would be interested in streaming audio articles, but I didn't expect such a rush of subscribers so quickly. Again, I count this as an outreach win. Best of all, in the new year we will be featuring several bioarchaeology articles, including three courtesy of Elsevier:
• Killgrove & Tykot, Food for Rome (JAA)
• Gregoricka & Sheridan, Ascetic or Affluent? (JAA)
• Perry, Is Bioarchaeology a Handmaiden to History? (JAA)

• And the newest issue of Science Uncovered is out.  In this edition of the pop-sci magazine, I answer questions about ancient Egyptian hairstyles and deviant burials, and there is a 12-page spread about human bodies (microbes, mummies, disease, etc.). It's pretty inexpensive to subscribe to the digital edition, and a fun read each month.

And now I'm off to "paint" icing on sugar cookies with my 4-year-old, show my newborn all the twinkly lights in the neighborhood, and make a batch of blintzes. Happy holidays, everyone!