Applied Anthropologist Profile: Rachel Grant, Archaeologist Turned Fiction Writer

Rachel Grant (Source: www.rachel-grant.net)

Archaeology tends be a popular topic in various fictional arenas, from movies and television shows to novels and short stories.  With this in mind it should come to no surprise that as novelists draw upon archaeological subject matter archaeologists sometimes transition to writing fiction themselves.  That was very much the case for best selling author, Rachel Grant. 

 

Growing up Grant aspired not to become an archaeologist but a novelist.  She wrote her first novel in sixth grade, and she was an avid reader of various works of fiction, including books written by Elizabeth Peters (archaeologist turned fiction writer herself).  When she went to college she initially majored in English, but by her own admission she let the confidence of her youth overcome her as she felt like she could learn nothing further from her English instructors.  She switched her major to anthropology, focusing on archaeology.  She did this because she believed that she could make a great career out of archaeology, and her experiences would provide her plenty of resource material to draw upon if and when she returned to writing.

 

She was not wrong on either account!  She traveled the world in her ten years as a professional archaeologist, but shortly after the birth of her first child the appeal of archaeology began to dissolve.  Citing growing health concerns (as archaeological field work is quite hard on the body) she investigated her options, turning back to her first love: fiction writing.  With her husband’s emotional and financial support she dove head first into it and never regretted the transition.

 

Grant draws upon her extensive archaeological experience for much of the subject matter of her books.  She also employs her anthropological research skills to identify and better understand the cultural and historical elements she uses in her work.  She does this to provide authenticity to her work.  She feels that by adding these realistic elements to her work she provides educational material wrapped up in a good story to and for her readers, and her readers appreciate her efforts as they demand more and more of this.  Grants’ archaeological and fiction writing endeavors demonstrate how anthropology, and in this case, archaeology, can go hand in hand together, providing a fulfilling career that fulfills herself and provides wildly great entertainment for her fans.

 

References

Grant, R. (2017, March 27). An Interview with Rachel Grant – and a giveaway! (Caz, Interviewer)

Grant, R. (2019, October 23). Fly on the Wall: Peek into a Conversation Between Rachel Grant and Jayne Ann Krentz. (D. Soluri, Interviewer)

Rachel-Grant.net. (2022). Author Bio. Retrieved from Rachel Grant: Thrills. Romance. Archaeology.: https://rachel-grant.net/bio/

Endangered Languages Profile: Kalaallisut/Tunumiisut (Western & Eastern Greenlandic)

Figure 1: Map of Greenland with place names in Kalaallisut/Tunumiisut (Greenlandic) and Dutch

 

Today’s blog post will feature an endangered language but with a twist.  Typically, when endangered languages are discussed in this medium the tone is very somber and grave, but in the case of Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut (known in English as Western/Eastern Greenlandic) the situation is not as dire.  This blog post will explore what this language is, where it is spoken, and how it may be removed from the endangered list.

 

Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut are part of the same language subgroup of the larger language family of which it belongs, which is the Inuit language family.  Many linguistic scholars often refer to these as separate languages, but the Inuit prefer and have requested that all languages within the Inuit language family be considered dialects, which is how they will be referred to herein.  The reason for this request is related to the active misinformation and extermination of Inuit identity over the decades, and by recognizing these as dialects of one Inuit language (and identity) better efforts at preserving the language, its dialects, and Inuit identity can be realized.

 

Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut are spoken throughout Greenland (Figure 1), and they are considered the official language of the country.  These dialects are classified as a polysynthetic, noun-incorporating language.  Put simply, speakers add prefixes, suffixes, and even combine nouns to create multiple meanings in short phrases.  These very large nouns can be very difficult for adult learners to catch onto and learn because the morphology and grammar of the language is so widely different from Indo-European languages.  You can hear how the language is spoken and how daunting it may seem to pick up here.

 

Because Greenland was a Dutch colony until the 1950s and did not become independent until the 1970s Dutch is still widely spoken within Greenland, as well as serves as the primary language of government, commerce, and higher education.  This adds a barrier to learning Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut because they are not seen as important as Dutch or other languages of commerce and politics.  However, the government of Greenland has put forth efforts to encourage the learning of Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut.  They are making efforts to translate government documents into Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut, as well as renaming places throughout the country with Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut names (as seen in Figure 1).  There are also efforts to create words and phrases for science and industry to entice outsiders to learn Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut.  Lastly, there is an active Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut media that provides information and news via written and oral format, with there being newspapers, news channels, and radio programming dedicated to only being delivered in these dialects.  This means that there is hope to remove this language from the endangered languages list if these efforts continue and are fully successful.

 

Works Cited

Endangered Languages Project. "Kalaallisut." n.d. Endangered Languages Project. Electronic. 6 May 2022.

Grenoble, Lenore. "Kalaallisut." n.d. Sorosoro. Electronic. 6 May 2022.

Yoder, Kate. "As ice melts and seas rise, can endangered languages survive?" 12 October 2016. Grist. Electronic. 5 May 2022.

 

World’s Oldest Mummification Practices Revealed

Figure 1: Mummification process Mesolithic people may have used prior to burying their dead (Source: Peyroteo-Stjerna et al., 2022) 

 

For several decades now researchers who have worked in southern Peru and northern Chile have had the privilege to say that the world’s oldest mummification practices began among the Chinchorro people.  Now they will have to modify that claim to note that the world’s oldest known anthropogenic (artificially made) mummification practices come from this region of the world.  It appears that the world’s oldest mummification practices as related to intentional mortuary treatment may have actual began in Europe, and this blog post will detail how this conclusion was reached and its implications.

 

In the 1960s and several decades later excavations in the Sado Valley took place.  The Mesolithic sites of Arapouco and Poças de S. Bento provided a wealth of information concerning mortuary traditions from over 8,000 years ago.  Researchers have been fortunate to have access to the human remains and been able to study them to learn more about these individuals and their lives.  Unfortunately, though, the initial 1960s excavation notes and records had gone missing, leaving out some very important information that could have been gleaned from them about Mesolithic mortuary practices. 

 

All was not lost, however.  An accidental discovery of undeveloped rolls of film led to an extraordinary discovery.  They contained images of the original burials in situ, allowing scholars to study the burials as they were initially discovered in the 1960s.  What they discovered surprised them, to say the least.  They realized that there was evidence of potential mummification of the at least two of the individuals prior to burial.  They reached this conclusion based on several factors, largely revolving around the position of the bodies and bones.  The bodies were buried in very tight, flexed positions that demonstrated no movement of bones, particularly the hands and feet, that regularly and easily move due to their small size and light weight.  The movement of these bones is related to the decomposition process of the body, which cause the body’s soft tissues to expand, contract, and literally rot away, taking with them the small, lightweight bones and moving them away from their original location within the body.  There was also a lack of sediment between the long bones, which should have been present as a result of the soft tissues decomposing and leaving space that dirt would have filled in.

 

The scholars opted to test their hypotheses and traveled to a forensic research facility in Texas.  There they used donated bodies to replicate the Mesolithic burials, first allowing them to naturally mummify prior to burying them.  They also buried unmummified bodies to compare to the mummified ones to see if and what differences may exist.  Remarkable, the mummified burials were more similar to the Mesolithic burials than the unmummified burials, supporting their hypothesis.  They ultimately concluded that the Mesolithic people would have intentionally mummified their dead by wrapping them up and leaving them out in natural climatic conditions that spontaneous mummified the dead (Figure 1).  Upon successful mummification the bodies would have been moved to their final resting place at Arapouco and Poças de S. Bento.  While it unknown why Mesolithic individuals proceeded with mummifying their dead prior to burial there are a few ideas that the scholars put forward, including a situation of having to move bodies to a designated resting place.  If the deceased died too far from the burial site and needed to be moved then mummifying them would have made traveling with a dead body much easier.  This idea cannot be tested at this time, but it makes plausible sense when one considers the weight and decomposition stages of a body.  At the present time, however, it is unclear if this was the motivation for mummification or not.  What is clear, however, is that natural mummification of Portugal predates that which is already known in Peru, Chile, and Egypt, and this discovery also opens up new avenues of research regarding Mesolithic mortuary traditions.

 

References

Peyroteo-Stjerna, R., Nilsson Stutz, L., Mickleburgh, H., & Cardoso, J. (2022). Mummification in the Mesolithic: New Approaches to Old Photo Documentation Reveal Previously Unknown Mortuary Practices in the Sado Valley, Portugal. European Journal of Archaeology, 1-22. doi:10.1017/eaa.2022.3