Nichole Kyprianou

Hello everyone! I am Nichole Kyprianou and I welcome you to my senior project blog, Unearthing the Truth: Disease Patterns and Social Organizations in Nubia! As a first time blogger, I am excited to share my senior project experiences with you all.

I am a senior at BASIS Scottsdale and am counting down the days I have until my senior project journey begins. Outside of school, I love swimming, eating good food, and reading books. Some of my favorite books include Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I also enjoy playing piano and watching cooking shows(Beat Bobby Flay, Iron Chef, etc.) with my sister.

As for my academic interests, I enjoy biology, history, and literature. What am I going to do with my future you ask? Well, right now I am contemplating on pursuing global health and policy or possibly becoming a physician. I am thinking of majoring in public/global health or anthropology or both(depending on the college I go to). As you can see, I'm not the most decisive person at the moment.

During the senior project, I will be working under the guidance and supervision of my faculty adviser, Ms. Brittany Silbaugh and my on-site mentor, Dr. Brenda Baker. I am so thankful that I will get the opportunity to work with them over the course of ten weeks.

For my senior project, I will be working in Dr. Baker's lab at the ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Dr. Baker directs the Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition (BONE) in Northern Sudan and has skeletal remains and artifacts from her fieldwork in her lab. I will be involved in the cleaning and labeling of skeletal remains as well as some data-oriented investigations. As someone who loves history, I am excited to learn more about Nubia, an ancient region in Northeastern Africa located in Modern Sudan and Egypt. From my research, I hope to find out what social organizations/roles were present in Nubia from mortuary behavior and the health status of the skeletal remains.

I hope you've enjoyed my first post and are excited to journey with me to rediscover Nubia! Please feel free to comment/add suggestions on what you hope to see on future blogs and what you think of the project.

The Final Presentation

 Hi everybody!

 For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on piecing together everything for the final presentation today. I will be presenting this afternoon and I hope that everyone can make it! However, if you aren't able to make it, here is a link to my presentation: Senior Project Final Presentation

Thank you all for following and supporting me throughout my senior project journey! I hope you all have an amazing summer!

Saying Good Bye to the BONE Lab( For Now)

Hi everyone! I just cannot fathom how ten weeks went by so fast. It seemed like it was just last week that I was learning to clean and label bones. First, I did change my senior project title to Unearthing the Truth: Burial Patterns in Nubia because I feel like this title more accurately captures my research. Below I have the picture of the BONE lab logo! More information on what is around the thumb of the hand will be discussed in my graph analysis!

 I have to say that this week has been one of the busiest and most productive weeks I've had at the BONE lab. I spent most of the time creating more graphs as well as attending two dissertation defenses and a thesis defense. After discussing my graphs with Dr. Baker and Annie, I feel like I can now tell you more about what my results mean!

For my graphs, I looked at the Kerma period( oldest period) grave site (09-01, 09-30, and 03-14) as well as the large el-Ginefab school site ( 03-01 and 03-02). I further broke down the el-Ginefab site into the three different periods that graves exhibit: Late Meroitic, Post-Meroitic, and Christian. With all of these grave sites, I looked at burial orientation, body position, and grave goods. Below I have some( not all) of the graphs to help visualize what my results are.

Most remains in Kerma period sites 09-30 and 03-14 face expected northward site facing the flow of the Nile River. However, Kerma period site 09-01 has remains facing mostly east. Annie was thinking this may be due to temporal changes. For the el-Ginefab site, 03-01 Post-Meroitic grave remains seem to be evenly proportioned in many directions. This seems very unusual but two hypotheses are that this may be indicative of no burial pattern which seems to fit in with the Post-Meroitic period which was a time of social unrest. The other hypothesis was that the graves may all be facing a fixed point on the landscape like how Muslim remains are faced pointing towards Mecca. For the Meroitic period graves, remains mostly face southward which may be the customary burial orientation of the time( or just sampling bias). Finally, Christian period remains have their heads oriented to the west, which is the expectation for a classical Christian grave. All of these results are heavily influence by sampling bias since there are not many well-preserved graves that accurate data is collected from.

Looking at the body position, most Kerma period remains face the classical position of being flexed on their right side. Interestingly, Late Meroitic period graves are in a mostly extended position but also some remains are in a flexed position which is intriguing because this shows a mix of burial practices. None of the Post-Meoritic period graves seem to be in a flexed position, perhaps indicating the transition from flexed to extended burial position. But of course, these results are probably flawed with sampling bias.

Now,  I promise not to talk too long about grave goods! While all sites have a large proportion of ceramics and faience beads, Kerma period graves included leather and not any pots. The Late Meroitic and Post Meroitic period graves had many pots. A hypothesis is that Nubians in the Kerma period were pastoral and didn't find it necessary to carry heavy pots. In the Meroitic graves, archaeologists found many arrow heads and knocking stone in graves of males. These are evidence that archery was very prominent during this time. Knocking stone prevents injury when archers release the string of the bow and is what is around the thumb of the skeletal remain in the BONE logo!



Besides analyzing my graphs, I got to go to two dissertation defenses and an honors thesis defense this week! One dissertation defense was on Social Mobility at Teotihuacan, Mexico and the other dissertation defense was on the Islamic conversion of the Iberian Peninsula. It was really interesting to see how the presentation on Social Mobility at Teotihuacan focused a lot on biological anthropology while the one on Islamic conversion of Iberian Peninsula focused more on historical records on theories on how Christian and Jewish people of the Iberian Peninsula were converted to Islam. Also, the honors thesis defense I attended was on Transition Analysis, a relatively new method on predicting the ages of skeletal remains. From this presentation, I found out that Transition Analysis at the moment isn't better than traditional analysis in the accuracy of predicting the ages of ancient remains.

I know this is probably my longest post, but I can't end without giving a huge thanks to all who have supported and guided me throughout my senior project journey. I want to thank Dr. Baker for taking me on in the BONE lab, introducing me to the amazing field of bioarchaeology, and always having the time to answer any questions I have. Also, I want to thank Annie for showing me how to clean and label bones properly, and taking the time to explain some osteology and the background of Nubians. Thank you to my faculty advisor Mrs. Silbaugh for guiding me throughout the research project. I couldn't have been able to do this without the support of my family, especially my mom who drove me everyday to the BONE lab at ASU.

Finally, I want to give a big thanks to all who follow my blog for supporting me through my senior project journey. I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend and feel free to ask any questions you may have about my results!

Looking at Grave Patterns

Hi everybody! Only one more week to go and I have to wrap all of my data analysis up. Right now I'm trying to have an optimistic and confident attitude like the GIF below.



In the BONE lab this week, I did pretty much the usual things: clean bones, label bones, try not to choke on too much bone dust. Burials 1 and 2 of grave site 14-04 are now cleaned and being labeled. I have some cool pictures of skeletal remains below so this is the time to look away if you don't like viewing remains. The first picture is of two conjoined phalanges and the second picture is of vertebrae I've been cleaning. I find that I feel most uncomfortable when cleaning vertebrae over other types of bones.

As for my data analysis, I created more graphs on R this week! Like I promised, I have a graph on the proportion of grave goods. Also, I have a graph on the proportion of body positions for site 03-01. From the graphs below, you can see that faience beads comprise the majority of grave goods. Next, there are also quite a few burial shrouds present. This makes sense since the majority of the graves in 03-01 are Christian graves. You can also see from the proportion of body positions graph that the majority of remains are buried extended on their back instead of flexed to their right like the site 09-01. This is because Christian burial practices usually lay the remains on their back while in the Kerma period remains are usually flexed to one side.

Instead of an article discussion this week, I was invited to a brown bag meeting by Annie to see Dr. Tina Jacob of Durham University in the UK speak about her research in central Sudan. This presentation was really interesting as it featured similar results to what I've been analyzing in our data sets. For example, Dr. Jacob found that mostly women seem to be present in the grave sites. I found this to be true in our data as well. However, what I found really interesting is that she found no burial orientation patterns in her grave sites. In the El-Ginefab school site, I found quite obvious patterns that people are buried with their heads oriented to the west and feet facing the east. Another interesting topic Dr. Jacob talked about was of the practice of teeth avulsion found in three of her remains. In tradition Sudanese practices, which continue to this day, the canine/incisor teeth are removed during childhood. Bioarchaeologists are still not certain where this practice stems from or what the purpose of the avulsion or removal of these teeth are. Dr. Baker also finds evidence of this in her skeletal remain collection.


Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this post and the direction my research is going in so far. I will try to knit a word document of all the graphs I have created and try to discuss what the results mean with Dr. Baker so I can make more sense of all the patterns I'm finding. I wish everybody a joyous weekend!

The Osteological Paradox

Hi everybody! As I'm writing this post I'm realizing that time is flying by so fast. It seems like it was just yesterday that I just started my research project.



This week at the BONE Lab was quite interesting and fun. Now that I'm scrolling through my pictures, I realized that I did not take any pictures of bones since I only spent to day cleaning bones. Instead, I spent my week inputting data and photo logs into the BONE database on the laptop in the BONE lab. Also, I did some more analysis for my project using R. Below is a photo of the data I was inputting and I thought it was pretty funny that the local informants for the archaeological site were noted as "boy on a donkey".

As for my data analysis using R I focused on looking at any patterns in body positions in grave sites 03-01 and 03-14 (el-Ginefab school site). I found that half of people in 09-01 were buried in a flexed position on their right side. Also, most of the people in 09-01 and 03-14 are female which is interesting since Dr. Baker  says that there is a hypothesis that females are buried on their right while males are buried on their left. In 03-14, 63.3% of the remains are buried in a flexed position on their right side. Below I have pictures of both graphs for you. The first graph is of 09-01 and the second is of 03-14. The graphs are of the proportion of body positions the remains were buried in.

09-01

03-14

After inputting lots of data and conducting data analysis using R, we completed the week by having a wonderful article discussion about the Osteological Paradox today. The Osteological Paradox really changed how bioarchaeology was conducted and is pivotal to how bioarchaeology has changed in the 21st century. First, the article discussed the major issue of not having an operational definition of health. Though there is a set definition set my the World Health Organization and in the medical field in general, we must consider that biology and culture are deeply intertwined. Annie gave the example that in Western culture, a 15 year old is considered a child. However, in other cultures, a 15 year old may be considered an adult. The Osteological Paradox identified three main challenges to interpretations of health in the past: remains being examined could not be assumed to be stationary, not all individuals have the same susceptibility to mortality, and the remains examined cannot be an accurate depiction of the living because they are dead. The paradox is that bioarchaeologists are trying to reconstruct the lives and health status of people in past populations by using dead individuals so we are looking at life in death.

Anyways, I hope that my post was not too confusing and I'm sorry if I rambled on the Osteological Paradox but I just find the whole concept so amazing. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week and has a great weekend!

Violence in the Ancient World

Hi everyone! This week in the BONE lab has been really interesting and fun. Honestly, it is very hard to get bored in this lab. Below I took a photograph of a baby dragon!

Just kidding! I'm actually holding the temporal area of the skull which is situated at the sides and the base of the skull. Annie told me that she got her osteology students to remember the temporal bone by saying that it looked like a dragon. As for what I did in the BONE lab this week, I finished cleaning and labeling the skeletal remains for burial 8( which is where this temporal bone is from), helped clean burial 1 of the burial site 14-04, and worked on data analysis using R from the data I collected on the burial sites.

This week I also saw a little bit of forensics on ancient people in action when Dr. Baker and Annie were looking at the remains of a child who seemed to have suffered major trauma. This trauma can be seen on his/her ribs and mandible which I will be showing in pictures below. The first photograph is of the mandible that is broken on both sides which indicates that the child was hit by a weapon on the side of his/her jaw. Also, one of the ribs is broken as you can see from the fifth rib that is cracked. Dr. Baker says that from the spongy growth of the rib that it was beginning to heal( so the child did survive a little while longer after the ordeal). However, Dr. Baker and Annie hypothesize that the child died from the infection that came from an untreated broken rib.

Instead of an article discussion this week, I had the amazing opportunity to watch Sofia Pacheco-Fores, a bioarchaeology doctoral student at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, defend her proposal, "Ritual Violence and the Perception of Social Difference: Human Sacrifice in the Epiclassic Basin of Mexico". Sofia has been traveling to Mexico for the past couple of summers looking at skeletal remains in Teotihuacan and an anthropogenic(man-made) island which she called Non-Grid 4. Non-Grid 4 is a marshy island which she and other archaeologists found to be an Epiclassic shrine site in the marshes of Lake Xaltocan. The Epiclassic period was a time of dramatic political reorganization in the Basin of Mexico characterized by increased violence and migration. In Non-Grid 4, Sofia proposes to examine the skeletal remains in a sacrificial deposit which seem to be males around 20-30 years old. She wants to examine how individual's social identities such as geographic origin and biological kinship predispose them to be victims of ritual violence. In comparing Nubia to the Epiclassic basin of Mexico, I thought it was interesting how ritual violence wasn't as prevalent though interpersonal violence most certainly was.

As for my R analysis, I have a bar graph below that shows the proportion of which direction heads were facing in the burial site 03-01. You can see that the majority( 67%) of heads are facing to the west, although this makes sense since they were mostly Christian burials. Next week, I hope to do more analysis on grave goods and the body positions of remains.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and I wish you all a lovely weekend! See you for the next post!

Looking at Life in Death

Hi all! I hope everyone had a wonderful spring break for those who took their break last week. After a rejuvenating break, I can go back to the BONE lab with a very optimistic and positive attitude!



This week in the BONE lab, as usual, was great! I finished inputing data from the field records into Dr. Baker's data base and also started cleaning Burial 8. What was amazing was getting to see skeletal remains of "Breech Birth Lady" and her baby. Just as a warning, I will be showing pictures of the remains below. The skeletal remain dubbed "Breech Birth Lady" was found in a Kerma period grave where the skeletal remains was found with the remains of her baby still in her pelvis which obviously was the result of a breech birth. The first picture below is of the mother and the second is of her infant.

After inputting the data from field forms so I can use R to get some statistics, I had a discussion with Dr. Baker about the direction my project could go in. First, I will be looking at the head orientation of the remains and looking at patterns between sites. After that, I will hopefully be looking at grave goods and also looking at patterns using R. I will probably not be looking at the health status and focus mainly on the cultural side of bioarchaeology since I do not have the osteological background and isotope analysis hasn't been done on a lot of the remains yet. Some sites don't have grave goods so Dr. Baker is hoping that hopefully with R analysis if we'll see whether the lack of grave goods as a pattern in some sites is proof of graves of an earlier time period or from people who migrated from different areas outside of Nubia. More exciting new is that we'll be getting carbon-dating results next week from the skeletal remains so we can finally tell the age of the remains! On the field records some remains are predicted as being between 24-55. 

As for this week's article discussion, we discussed the origin of bioarchaeology and how exactly bioarchaeology falls into the very broad category of anthropology. For years, skeletal biology and archaeology were two totally separate categories that were studies as two individual disciplines. Skeletal biology, however, was heavily influenced by culture history where skeletal biologists engaged in studies which implied a differential evolution of different races. This problem was eventually overcome and gradually archaeologists began to put together the importance of looking at biology and culture together. Bioarchaeology falls into the category of anthropology that incorporates physical/biological anthropology, forensic anthropology, and archaeology. Depending on who you're trained by, Annie says some bioarchaeologists, like her, focus more on the biological/forensic side of anthropology while other focus more on the archaeological part. Bioarchaeology is quite an oddball of a subject to study.



Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed learning more about the background of bioarchaeology and learning where it stands in Anthropology. Thank you for following my posts and I hope to see you all next week!