Texas A&M University Anthropology Department...

Until recently I was a Ph. D. graduate student in the Anthropology Department at TAMU. I have decided that I have more important things to work on, mainly my family genealogy that is growing by leaps and bounds, and therefore I have ended my quest for completing my dissertation.

Having moved to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area made doing research next to impossible. Since my dissertation was to be on the nutritional analysis of the edible flora of Travis county, and I was living a long way away, I instead spent over a year documenting the flora of the Villages of Bear Creek Park.

My masters thesis was written on the structural sequence of pithouse architecture built by the Mogollon people of the Nan Ranch Ruin area in Grant County, New Mexico.

The choice of masters thesis was not mine, it was given to me by my committee chair. For my Ph. D. dissertation I was allowed to follow my desire to do Archeobotanical research. This combined two of my favorite things, Archaeology and Botany.

During the 2000 Spring semester I was driving back and forth from Austin to College Station to attend Dr. Vaughn Bryant's Paleoethnobotany class. Shortly after spring break we took a day for a field trip to visit the Gault (41BL323) site. An article in Science Daily Magazine tells the story of how Texas A&M Field School Discoveries May Rewrite History Of Early North American Man.

A view of the Gault sites main excavation with Bill Dickens and Dr. Michael Collins in the foreground (bottom left to right), Dawn Marshall taking pictures, and the areas for water screening and artifact classifiying and cataloging in the background.

Dr. Michael Waters smiling nicely for the camera.

Dr. Vaught Bryant collecting pollen samples from the column with the help of Dawn.

And my best friend, who just happens to be my husband, trying to look confused.

This is a picture of a Clovis surface excavated at the Gault site.

Anthropology fun stuff...

My husband (fiancee at the time) sent this to me...as a comment on my degrees in Anthropology.

Also from my husband...

And some fun for those studying linguistics...

Musings on the English Language

Let's face it -- English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted.
But if we explore it that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?
One goose, 2 geese.
So one moose, 2 meese?
One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preacher praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?
Have noses that run and feet that smell?
Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and wise guy are opposites?
How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?
How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another.

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent?
Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown?
Met a sung hero or experienced requited love?
Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all).
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.