I met Christine Hymanyk when she and some of her classmates joined the search for the remains of a pig carcass in October 2021. She was an undergraduate student in Anthropology at the University of Alberta.
Christine had conducted a small experiment in her own time to discover if there were any differences in the trauma to bone induced by wild canids (coyotes, wolves) and domestics dogs. The experiment informed a paper she wrote for one of Pam Mayne Correia’s (Ep 4) classes on skeletal trauma. On the advice of Pam, Christine sent me her paper. Why? Because her experiment turned into a demonstration of how bones can be scattered.
In this podcast, you’ll hear about:
- Why she wanted to do this field experiment, instead of just reading the literature
- How her experiment went sideways and how she adapted
- What she learned – her results and about research design
- Why she wants to repeat this experiment and what she’d do in the future
I really wanted to have Christine as a guest on this podcast because hers was a great example of trying to do a naturalistic experiment and keeping things natural. I love that she learned and adapted as she progressed through the experiment.
If you were to do this experiment or something more like what we’re doing with Shari’s Trials, how would you do it? Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts.
Check out Christine’s guest post about this research project (with pictures!) on my blog, Reluctant Archaeologist.
Listen to Episode 4 in which I talk to Pam about being a forensic anthropologist in Alberta.
Listen to Episode 9 when we, including Christine, do a search for the remains of two pig carcasses.
Check out my blog series, “The Smell of Dead Pig in the Morning“, on how we set-up our scavenging experiments for Shari’s Trials.
Yvonne Kjorlien 
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