Assignment Details

Multi-Component Assignment (10%)

In this multi-component scaffolded assignment, you will learn to appreciate the methodological rigour in biological anthropology by focusing on peer-reviewed publications and develop several valuable skills.

(A & B) You will attend a computer-lab based session to learn to set up and become familiar with a reference manager (Mendeley or Zotero). This session is co-taught by the instructor and subject librarian and at the conclusion, you will submit a screenshot of your account set up proof and exploratory work on peer-reviewed sources. Setting up a reference manager will be fundamental to your success not only in this course but in your entire academic journey!

(C) Next you will complete an online learning module collaboratively created by Student Learning Services tailored for this course. It is a refresher on a citation format (APA) and guides you to learn and apply the skills of paraphrasing.

(D) You will apply your learning in the written portion of this assignment, which will build from the previous steps. You will search for peer-reviewed journal articles in biological anthropology by applying basic skills of locating a journal article (on skeletal materials / burials), (Di) citing and referencing it accurately using database tools and APA reference entry guidelines. (Dii) You will paraphrase the findings presented in the article using the skills you developed.

Using a Reference Manager (Mendeley)

Reference/citation management software allows you to save and organize items found via searching the library's databases. It also can be used to create reference lists and citations for papers. There are a number of software systems available. 

Two of the most popular reference managers are Mendeley by Elsevier and Zotero.

Reasons to choose Mendeley:

• Your research consists mainly of pdfs. Often this is the choice for researchers in the Sciences.

• Mendeley works well with Chrome and Safari and has a desktop version (known officially as Mendeley Reference Manager).

• Free 2 GB cloud storage.

• Mendeley has very well developed social collaboration tools. For example, you can find citations from similar users and search within its crowd-sourced research database.

• Desktop version is installed on all publicly accessible computers at MRU.

Reasons to choose Zotero:

• Zotero works best if your research is both HTML and PDFs. Often this is the choice for researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

• Zotero works well with Firefox. It also has a standalone desktop application.

• Zotero offers 300 MB of free cloud storage.

• Zotero allows easy citation additions from websites like Amazon and Flickr.

• Zotero has a well-liked interface for tagging and writing notes to accompany citations.

Find more information about how to use Mendeley and Zotero at this link: Citation Management Tools (Library FAQs)

Taking a Screenshot of Your Reference Manager

Mac

Method 1: Shift, Command, 3 (Whole Screen)

1. To take a screenshot, press and hold these three keys together: Shift, Command, and 3.

2. If you see a thumbnail in the corner of your screen, click it to edit the screenshot. Or wait for the screenshot to save to your desktop.

Method 2: Shift, Command, 4 (Portion of Screen)

1. Press and hold these three keys together: Shift, Command, and 4.

2. Drag the crosshair to select the area of the screen to capture. To move the selection, press and hold Space bar while dragging. To cancel taking the screenshot, press the Esc (Escape) key.

3. To take the screenshot, release your mouse or trackpad button.

4. If you see a thumbnail in the corner of your screen, click it to edit the screenshot. Or wait for the screenshot to save to your desktop.

Method 3: Shift, Command, 4, Space Bar (Whole Window)

1. Open the window or menu that you want to capture.

2. Press and hold these keys together: Shift, Command, 4, and Space bar. The pointer changes to a camera icon. To cancel taking the screenshot, press the Esc (Escape) key.

3. Click the window or menu to capture it. To exclude the window's shadow from the screenshot, press and hold the Option key while you click.

4. If you see a thumbnail in the corner of your screen, click it to edit the screenshot. Or wait for the screenshot to save to your desktop.

Windows

Method 1: Using the Print Screen Key

1. Locate the "Print Screen" key on your keyboard. It is usually abbreviated as "PrtSc" or "PrtScn".

2. Press the "Print Screen" key once to capture the entire screen.

3. If you want to capture a specific window, click on the window to make it active and then press the "Alt" key + "Print Screen" keys.

4. Open any image editor (e.g., Paint, Photoshop) and press "Ctrl" + "V" to paste the captured screenshot.

Method 2: Using the Snipping Tool

1. Type "Snipping Tool" in the search bar located in the bottom left corner of your screen.

2. Click on the "Snipping Tool" app from the search results.

3. Click on "New" and then select the area of the screen you want to capture.

4. Once you have captured the desired area, click on "Save As" to save the screenshot.

Method 3: Using the Windows Key + Print Screen Key

1. Press the Windows key + Print Screen key together.

2. The screen will briefly dim to indicate that the screenshot has been taken.

3. The captured screenshot will be saved in the "Screenshots" folder in your "Pictures" folder.

Which articles qualify for this assignment?

• Find an article or report from a database (e.g. links to recommended avenues/journals etc. given below) 

• It must include original, primary research or findings related to a specific site where human remains have been recovered. Human remains must be the focus. A primary focus only on lithics, pottery, faunal and botanical remains etc. are not relevant for the purposes of this assignment in biological anthropology. 

• Articles that qualify will have one or more of the following subheadings/areas: 

  • Case Study, Site/s, Skelet* (skeleton/skeletal), Chronology, Materials, Methods, Evidence, Results, Discussion/Conclusion. 

  • Most site reports with skeletal remains will have maps and if it is a cemetery report, it may include the layout of the burials/urns (“site plans”), and “tables” of data, etc. Studies may be based on museum collections of skeletal remains.

• Some journals that would have the type of article you are looking for are:  

  • International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 

  • Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports, 

  • Antiquity, 

  • American Antiquity, 

  • International Journal of Paleopathology, 

  • Asian Perspectives, 

  • Journal/Bulletin of Indo-Pacific Prehistory, 

  • Latin American Antiquity, 

  • other regional archaeological journals with site reports that include human remains. 

Two major journals in Biological Anthropology - Journal of Physical Anthropology and the Journal of Human Evolution may also have articles that meet the criteria. However, syntheses and theoretical perspectives are more common in these journals’ articles. We want an article with actual data on human remains.

General Search Tips

Useful key terms include, but are not limited to:

• osteoarchaeology

• bioarchaeology

• cemetery/"cemetery studies"/"human burial"

• skeleton/skeletal

• "human remains"/"human bones"/"human teeth"/dentition

• a specific bone name: for example, "human mandible"

Consider ways to narrow the topic:

• include a region, continent, or country

• include a time frame (e.g., Bronze Age/Mesolithic/Neolithic/Holocene etc.) to be more specific

Conducting Academic Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

Besides providing links to resources in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save).  If you are logged into MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function. The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 

Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "human remains"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • "human burial" OR "human remains"

• Use wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • skelet* (in this example, the search skelet* will search for records that contain strings such as skeleton and skeletal)

Dedicated Databases to Search

Academic Search Complete

JSTOR

Figure 1

Peter Steiner's Famous 1993 New Yorker Cartoon Illustrating an Issue Central to Information Evaluation

Note. From "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" [Cartoon], by P. Steiner, 1993, Wikimedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg).

Evaluating Information

It is good to find lots of search results, but, in order to use information skilfully, you need to know how to evaluate that information to determine whether a specific resource is appropriate to use in a specific use case (i.e. for a specific assignment).

The phrase "evaluating information" actually stands in for a wide range of judgments that we make about information in many different contexts, whether those judgments are about relevance, timeliness, quality, etc.

Librarians have developed several different acronyms to help people remember useful criteria to use in information evaluation. One of my personal favourites is RADAR!

RADAR stands for

Relevance

Authority

Date

Accuracy

Reason for Creation

We can ask the following questions to help us assess each criterion:

Relevance:

• Does this source fit my topic?

• What is this source's intended audience?

  • Is that intended audience appropriate for my use case in this assignment?

Authority:

• Is/are the creator(s) of this source clearly identified or known to us?

• How important is it in this use case to trust the source's creator(s)?

  • If it is important, why should we trust the source's creator(s)?

  • Is the source's creator credentialed or an expert in their field?

Date:

• Is the creation or publication date of this source identified or known to us?

• Is this source too old?

Accuracy:

• Do this source's facts "check out"?

• Does the source have references of its own?

Reason for Creation (take your best guess at this question using judgments from earlier criteria):

• Why was this source made?

• Was this source made to sell a product or service, to inform/educate, to entertain, etc?

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.

Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," academic, or "refereed." They all mean essentially the same thing and refer to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published.

Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

7. Is it an actual article? (Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews. Make sure you are looking at an article.)

Citation Help

• Use the "cite" feature in most search tools to get you started with most resources (you will need to review and correct the citation).

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Referencing (2024-2025)

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Formatting a Paper (2024-2025)

• Academic Success Workshops: Academic Success Workshops are 75 minutes long and are offered both in-person and online. Registration is required.

• Appointments: Personalized online or in-person 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist at Student Learning Services located on the 2nd floor of the Riddell Library & Learning Centre.

• Use the Service Desk on the 1st floor of the RLLC for assistance as well as the library chat feature on the library website for quick citation questions.