This past spring, I graduated and accepted a Fulbright grant to conduct anthropological research in Costa Rica! For those of you who do not know much about this country, it is located in Latin America, bordered by Panama to the south and Nicaragua to the north, and is roughly the size of West Virginia. Costa Rica is also considered one of the happiest countries in the world, has not had a standing military since 1949, and generates more than 98% of its electricity from green sources!
At the museum, I work with skeletal remains from the La Cascabel archaeological site in the northwest part of the country, in the Guanacaste province. This site was inhabited by pre-Columbian tribes and is rich in stone, clay, jade and other artifacts, but little else is known. My goal is to use the skeletal remains from the site to create a demographic profile of the collection; basically, I am analyzing the bones to determine biological sex, age at death, possible living height, and if any injuries are present. I am also looking for any purposeful modification of the teeth, which was common in other Costa Rican and Latin American tribes. The data gathered here, when combined with the rest of the archaeological date from the site and compared to contemporary groups (meaning groups who lived at or near the same point in time) can give us a better understanding of what life was like for early civilizations in Costa Rica.
I cannot wait to share my research and adventures with you all! Let's go!
