When you ask a college student what they like to do in their free time, you don’t usually hear them announce that they wash bones – especially not with as much zeal as Samantha Kelley. Sam, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science’s archaeology & ancient history program, and soon to be a double major in archaeology & biological anthropology, is a volunteer in BU’s zooarchaeology lab.
What some may find creepy, Sam finds cool. She has been interested in bones and archaeology since she was “really, really little.” “I was always interested in sunken ships, and tangible history. I like the idea that you can touch the past,” she says. She also got inspiration from a childhood Egyptology book, complete with archaeological facts and an unwrappable mummy, and the TV show, Bones. However, she was able to pinpoint her particular area of interest in archaeology during her freshman year of college.
“I came [to BU], and in one of my lectures, a bioarcheologist came in, and I thought, “I want to be this person,” Sam gushes. Through the archeology club, she got a position as lab volunteer in the Stone Science Building late her first semester. “I could live in the lab!” she says.
Her duties in the bone lab vary depending on the lab’s workload. When the lab gets shipments of animal bones, she washes and inventories them. She sorts through the shipments and counts the bones (including “how many teeth, how many phalanges, carpals, metacarpals, etc.,” she lists off without missing a beat), and checks them off a list she is given. She also helps Dr. Catherine West, a zooarchaeology professor at BU, with her research regarding samples from Chirikof Island in Alaska. This includes sorting and screening dirt, shells, twigs, and bones.
Her favorite task, however, is washing the bones. “It’s meditative,” she explains, as she gets to listen to music while washing in the lab. “We just got a bunch of new skeletons in, so I’m going to be washing and labeling those too.”
Sam already has her future career goals planned out. “I want to go into a field that is forensic technology and science related where I can work with the criminal justice system, and…identify remains of victims [of] homicide, or work with federal investigations,” she says. She hopes to get a forensic anthropology internship at the University of Tennessee’s body farm, where she can gain experience handling real human bodies. Though she admits seeing a human body for the first time will be strange, she says it is important for her future career and is eager to gain this knowledge.
Fun fact: Sam can name all the major bones in the human body! “It’s a nice party trick,” she says. I challenge you to find a cooler one.