For BU Undergrad, Meal Leftovers Aren’t Trash—They’re Glimpses into the Past
Student archaeologist Jessica Buckley pieces together human history by looking at old shellfish remains
For BU Undergrad, Meal Leftovers Aren’t Trash—They’re Glimpses into the Past
For BU Undergrad, Meal Leftovers Aren’t Trash—They’re Glimpses into the Past
Most people don’t think about what happens to bones, shells, and other leftovers when their meal is finished. But old food waste gives Boston University archaeology student Jessica Buckley insight into what humans were eating hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of years ago.
Funded by a grant from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, Buckley (CAS’25) spent her summer in BU’s Zooarchaeology Lab examining thousands of shellfish remains from two excavation sites on Chirikof Island in Alaska. Minimal research has been conducted on the small, treeless island, but Buckley is piecing together what kinds of shellfish might have been on the menu when humans made it their home. Chirikof Island was periodically occupied by humans, but now is home only to wild cattle.
Sorting, analyzing, and labeling the shells is very satisfying, says Buckley, who worked under the mentorship of Catherine West, a College of Arts & Sciences research associate professor of archaeology and anthropology. West is the principal investigator in the research and says Buckley is acting as a key collaborator.
“She’s not just a student working on the project, but she’s also really contributing to the story that we’re going to tell with this material, and she’ll be on the publication that we submit when we’re finished,” says West.
One of the main questions Buckley and West are trying to answer is how long people spent on the island. By looking at the remains, they can determine what seasons of the year humans lived on the site and consumed shellfish.
“It’s always coming back to the motivations of people and the ways that they’re leaving traces of life behind, intentionally or not,” says Buckley, who enjoys being able to look at the bones of an animal and find meaning in the remains, as well as uncover intimate glimpses into human history.
“I love what I’m doing here,” Buckley says. While it might not be the all-action archaeology of the Indiana Jones movies, “it’s kind of cool, because nobody, I think, throws away their food at the end of the night and says, ‘Somebody will look at this in 500 years and try and tell what I ate and tell where I got it from.’”
In the video above, Buckley talks about her passion for archaeology and how a childhood full of pets shaped her interests, and demonstrates how she identifies the shells before organizing and analyzing them in the lab.
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