At the End of All Things... well, the semester anyway

Instead of looking around the blogging prompts or for something archaeologically related, I though, instead, that it might be nice to ruminate on the class. It's been a good term, and that deserves due note and credit. I think, first it would be best to thank Dr. Erin McGuire for being such a great professor, very helpful and willing to help all year.

With that said, this course often challanged me and my opinions. Often times being blunt in this challenge with tooth and nail, and for that I give thanks. It's hard to ignore things flat in our faces or heavy in our laps, and it tends to get us going. This course teaches and motivates, and that's a rare thing. Let alone learning things I'd never really considered or come across, such as the particular means to burial posture. I mean I understood that people are laid to rest differently based on circumstance or culture, but I never took deviants into the equation or compaired them with others.

I've also never really associated ethics with much of archaeology. Not on a conciously callous level, but simply because it never really crossed my mind that the issues wouldn't be in respecting the dead, but in the desires of the living, either in making sure the dead are seen too properly or in their issue with the dead being exhumed/shown.

I had some issues with time, other classes take precedent occasionally, and that I am not embarassed to admit, although slightly saddened by the fact. But the knowledge I gained is worth that and any bumps I may have faced along the way, the way being the important puzzle and, I think, where Erin meant to take us. Not to a test, or a paper, or a mark, but to an understanding, to draw some knowledge from this experience. Thanks again, now for a scotch to end the term.