Biting Research

Writing an eight page research paper for English Comp. No worries. But a semester to write eight pages? What will I do? This is what I get for slacking (and transferring) and not taking my required courses in a timely manner. DM would laugh himself into a midden. Initial idea for a research topic is Dental Anthropology. Much too broad, but what the heck, I have a semester to whittle it down into eight pages. Slim(mer) Pickings

• Non-metric morphological variation
• Diet and dentition
• DNA and dentition
• Age estimation: morphology vs. chemistry (good JFS articles available)
• Dental degradation

Goodness knows there is enough readily available research on any of those topics. J. of Forensic Science alone has published at least 10 papers in the last year. I will probably go with non-metric morphological variation, if only because I am most familiar with the literature available. Likely focus would be on three or four morphological features, and the various ways they are used in Dental Anthropology.

Common Morphological Features

• Shoveling
• Carabelli trait
• Sinodonty
• Protostylids

Books Ordered through OhioLINK

• Hillson, S. (1996). Dental Anthropology.
• Scott, G.R. and Turner, C.G. (1997). Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth.

Should probably find my Bass field manual. It's always handy for the basics. This should be an interesting topic to research--I have read some interesting articles by researchers at UT and from some Japanese universities.

‘Better than other people.’ Sometimes he says: ‘That, at least, you are.’ But more often: ‘Why should you be? Either you are what you can be or you are not – like other people.’ Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings