Cape Town

I arrived in Cape Town on Tuesday, November 12th to work at the Iziko South African Museum and the University of Cape Town. Dan Proctor had suggested the Holyrood apartment across the street from the Iziko Museum and the Company Gardens, in the middle of the City Bowl with a great view of Devil's Peak. After studying the Fish Hoek cranium, the Klaises River Mouth fossils, and the Blombos Cave Ochre, I spent a little time touring Cape Town. I went up to Table Mountain to take in the view, and to the Castle of Good Hope, the V&A Waterfront and the Two Oceans Aquarium. During my stay the World Cup Draw was held on Long Street, just behind my apartment building. I enjoyed the festivities from my window and was glad that there were no incidences (apparently there were actually a few bomb threats but nothing happened).

East London

I arrived in East London, on the southeastern coast of South Africa, on Saturday November 9th. I had planned to spend the weekend relaxing on the beach before studying the Hofmeyr cranium on Monday the 11th . However, Kevin Cole, the principal scientist at the East London Museum, offered to pick me up at the airport, and after discovering that I had no plans for the weekend, offered to show me around the Eastern Cape. I had read a lot about the famous bird sanctuary located just outside of East London (all the Hotels reference their proximity to the sanctuary) and it turns out that Kevin was the guy who founded it. So Kevin takes me out to some of the most beautiful coastline imaginable to show me the sanctuary (it's not hard to see why it needed to be protected from developers). It just so happens that the 200,000 year old Nahoon footprints were discovered nearby and Kevin took me out to a new excavation site where they recently discovered some more prints. As the day wound down, Kevin invited me to go hiking with him and his wife Mary (a snail taxonomist). So early on Sunday, We headed out to the coast again to see some of the worlds oldest dolomite cliffs. We spend the day wandering the incredible coastline looking at Khoisan shell-middens and 2.5 billion year old stromatolites. On Monday, Kevin picked me up and took me to the East London Museum, which has to be one of the best kept secrets in the world. Not only does the museum house the Hofmeyr cranium, an incredibly important human fossil. The museum also curates the Nahoon footprints, the world's only known Dodo egg, and the original "rediscovered" specimen of the Coelacanth. In my opinion, East London is one of the world's hidden gems and I can't wait to go back one day.

Bloemfontein (Florisbad)

I arrived in Bloemfontein on Wednesday, November 25th to work with the Florisbad specimen and the Matjies River Cave sample. From the airport I immediately went to the National Museum in Bloemfontein and spent several hours studying the Florisbad cranium and enjoying the beauty of the museum grounds. After work, the curator, James Brink, took me over to the grocery store (located in a phenomenal South African mall) to get supplies for my stay at the Florisbad Research Station where where the Florisbad cranium was discovered and where I studied the Matjies River Cave sample. After a scenic 45 minute drive out to the Research Station, I got set up in my comfortable little hut, cracked open a Windhoek and watched an incredible sunset on the veld. As the only researcher in town that week I had the entire place all to myself. I spent Thursday working on the crania from the Matjies River Cave and then enjoyed my Thanksgiving dinner consisting of a turkey sandwich, boiled potatoes, and a pecan pie I managed to find at the grocery store.

Johannesburg

After a few days in Pretoria, I traveled south to Johannesburg to work at the University of Witswaters- rand. Luckily, I took the advise of fellow UI grad student Dan Proctor and stayed with Alison Groves and her family in the suburb of Melville. While Johannesburg is generally widely recognized as one of the less safe places in the world, Melville is really nice with tons of bars and restaurants to choose from, and I never once felt uncomfortable while there. While at Wits I split time working in the P.V. Tobias Fossil Lab and the Raymond Dart Collection. Wits curates some of the most famous fossils in the world, including the Taung child, which I was allowed to see (albeit under constant surveillance). The Dart collection is one of the most extensive collections of African skeletal remains in the world, and the new curator, Brandon Billings, is steadily turning the collection to a first-class research facility (he is also one of the coolest people I've ever met). Wits also turned out to be a great place to meet fellow anthropologists from around the world. While working with the Dart collection I met fellow researchers from Scotland and Croatia, and even had the opportunity to meet Dr. Liu Wu, with whom I had previously made all my arrangements to visit IVPP in Beijing, China (scheduled for December). Over the weekend Alison was nice enough to take me out to Sterkfontein so that I could see the caves, it was an absolutely unreal experience to be somewhere I had read so much about! I had a great time in Johannesburg, and hope I can return again in the future.

Pretoria

After an incredibly long 30 hour journey, including a 16.5 hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg (I watched 5 movies in a row) I arrived in South Africa on the night of November 15th. I began work at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria on the 16th, where I had the opportunity to work with the 1.5 million year old SK847 Homo erectus cranium. While I was there I also had the opportunity to study the famous Sts 5 (Mrs Ples) australopithicine dated to about 2.5 million years ago and Sk 48, one of the most complete specimens of Paranthropus robustus. A real perk to working at the Transvaal is the on-site dormitories the museum provides for a tiny fee, which allows researchers to work late even after the staff have gone home for the night. The museum's reverence for the illustrious Robert Broom is fairly obvious, especially when you work in a room full of Broom memorabilia and retrieve specimens from a large walk-in safe filled with fossils affectionately known as the "Broom Room." The displays in the museum were also lots of fun, I couldn't help but laugh at finally getting to see the display of the Australopithecine being drug away by a leopard, something that I will forever associate with Russ Ciochon. Everyone at the museum was incredibly nice, from the curator Stephany Potze to the lady in the cafeteria that served me lunch everyday (which was probably the best I've ever eaten for less than $5).

New York City

I arrived in New York in mid-October to begin work at the American Museum of Natural History where I studied the museum's cranial collection looking at European, Eskimo, and Australian skulls. The curator, Gisselle Garcia-Pack, was incredibly helpful and I had a lot of fun overhearing some of the ridiculous phone calls she had to deal with. My personal favorite was lady who wanted to know if Gisselle (a skeletal biologist) could tell her if the pot she just found was Native American over the phone (only slightly better than the guy who called saying he had figured out the "secret" behind racial skin color). My very humble Upper West Side lodgings on 94th and Broadway provided me with a really enjoyable walk everyday to the museum on 77th and Columbus, and the weather cooperated most of the time too. As with D.C., Tressa was able to spend a weekend visiting and we managed to see most of the major sites such as Central Park, Grand Central Station, Ground Zero, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Statue of Liberty.

Washington, D.C.

After only a couple of brief weeks back home in Iowa City (mostly spent frantically planning the rest of my trip), I headed to Washington, D.C. to work at the National Museum of Natural History again to study their collection of fossil casts and Eskimo, Mongolian, and Australian Aborigine skulls. Having spent time at the NMNH in 2007, it was great to go back and see everyone at the museum again. Even better, since Kurt and Tara Lewis had recently moved there, I got to stay with some great friends during my time in the nation's capital, making my 3 weeks away from Tressa easier to handle. Thankfully, Tressa was able to come out and spend a weekend in D.C. and so we got some sight-seeing in as well as spending some quality time with Kurt, Tara, Olaiya, and Naomi. Having been to D.C. several times now, Tressa and I were less concerned with hitting the major attractions and instead focused on some of our favorite stops. Tressa, of course, had to visit the Corcoran gallery, her favorite art museum. I really wanted to see the American History Museum again since it had been recently renovated. As before, it displayed possibly my favorite historical statue: the original Washington Monument, a statue of George Washington wearing a toga. Tressa, however, was really excited about one of the new exhibits: a full scale reconstruction of Julia Child's kitchen (Tressa watches her show on PBS every Saturday morning).