��ɫ��Ƶ

Every October, skeletons come out of the closet for Halloween. They dangle from porches, lounge on front lawns, and rattle their way through “haunted” houses. While the rest of us are getting creeped out or amused, ��ɫ��Ƶ anthropologist Kimberly Foecke sees something entirely different. For her, skeletons are storytellers.

“Bones are the closest we can get to time travel,” said Foecke, an assistant professor in the who teaches biological anthropology.

A lifelong skeleton enthusiast, Foecke has a bone to pick with the idea that skeletons are inherently creepy. “Bones are incredibly important,” she said. “They hold so much information about the life of the person that you're studying--from childhood growth spurts to injuries, illnesses, and even diet.” 

According to Foecke, the relationship between humans and skeletons is extensive. “People have had a fascination with keeping skeletons around them for a very long time,” she said.

Throughout history, cultures around the world have maintained close relationships with their dead, wanting to keep their remains nearby. Some visited graves, rearranged bones, or even brought skeletal remains like skulls into ceremonies to maintain connections with ancestors.

But when did bones go from beloved relatives to things that go bump in the night? That's a little harder to pin down. Foecke points to ancient European burial traditions and their overlap with Celtic customs associated with Halloween as possible pieces of the puzzle.

Another possibility involves a fear of vampires. In some communities around the world, archaeologists have found people took extraordinary precautions to ensure their dearly departed stayed buried. Foecke gives examples of bodies being buried with their hands bound or even their heads removed—all in an effort to prevent the dead from rising again.

Hollywood has long understood the entertainment value of a well-placed skeleton—from the pirate crew in Pirates of the Caribbean to Norman Bates's mother in Psycho. But what Foecke finds reassuring is that they rarely appear without some reminder of who they were when they were alive.

“It’s funny to see Hollywood getting things right,” Foecke said. “So even when they're trying to make these skeletons scary, they're still kind of retaining their personhood in a way, which we [anthropologists] really appreciate.”

Bad to the bone? Not in this classroom.

When George Mason students are working in biological anthropology labs, they aren’t touching real bones but plastic casts made from 3D scans of human remains by a company called Bone Clones. 

“We have a whole series of ethical things going on in the field of biological anthropology right now,” said Foecke. “We’re reexamining the materials we use to teach and the levels of respect that are afforded to individuals who end up in teaching collections either by their own donation or [another way]. We don't hold any human remains in the teaching collections here.”

Yet, for students in Foecke's classes, even getting acquainted with the plastic replicas can be uncomfortable. Foecke said some students arrive with a lifelong fascination with skulls and fossils. Others are a little squeamish. But she hopes to replace that uneasiness with curiosity.

“We turn bones into this sort of fascinating archive of ways to ask questions about the past and to look back in time and see how people lived,” she said.

Students learn what skeletal remains reveal about human evolution and the ways people adapted to their environments. They also explore how different cultures have understood death and cared for their dead.

As ANTH 135 Introduction to Biological Anthropology fulfills a Mason Core natural science requirement, Foecke's classes attract students from across the university, including many who have never considered anthropology as a career.

She said some will discover an unexpected passion for the subject and occasionally a student will change their major. She especially enjoys giving students who have always been fascinated by bones and fossils a place where that curiosity is celebrated.

“I was that kid,” she said.

A lifelong bone collector

Growing up in the Washington, D.C., area, Foecke spent countless hours at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where the exhibits captured her imagination. As a high school student, she volunteered with the museum's Human Origins Program, where she discovered that studying human evolution could be a career.

Today, her work focuses on finding innovative methods to study archaeological materials and answer questions about the past. As human skeletal remains are irreplaceable records of individual lives and shared history, Foecke is particularly interested in developing ways to learn from these materials without damaging them. She also emphasizes the importance of respecting the deceased and descendant communities when conducting research. 

Foecke spends her days surrounded by plastic replicas of skulls and bones, both at home and in her Horizon Hall office. “I've had plumbers come to my house to fix something and my living room's covered in skulls, and it just starts a conversation,” she said.

But when it comes to horror movies, Foecke is decidedly less enthusiastic. “I am not a scary movie person.”

The irony isn't lost on her. For someone who spends so much time thinking about bones, death simply isn't particularly frightening. Instead, she sees it as an opportunity to understand what it means to be human, how we lived in the past, and how we're connected to the people who came before us.