Roadkill, Mexico, and Bones: One Undergrad’s Research Experience

George Mason U.

A year and a half ago, Leila Martinez-Bentley had an unusual request for her colleagues at the Starbucks in Virginia where she worked part time. If any of them came across a dead animal, could they let her know so she could come get it?

Ms. Martinez-Bentley was collecting roadkill and other remains as part of her undergraduate-research assistantship at George Mason University. After gathering raccoons, possums, toads, foxes, and a bunch of turkey bones left over from Thanksgiving meals, she cleaned and prepared them as part of her work with Nawa Sugiyama, an assistant professor of anthropology. Together they were assembling a comparative collection of animal bones.

The job was unusual, but the experience illustrates the learning opportunities that can happen in the best student-faculty partnerships.

This relationship began when Ms. Martinez-Bentley took one of Ms. Sugiyama’s classes on rituals and religions and expressed interest in anthropology and zooarchaeology. With help from the university’s Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research, she was hired to help the professor using federal work-study funds.

That work, which included helping with isotopic analysis of bones, led Ms. Sugiyama to invite the undergraduate to Mexico last summer to help analyze animal and human remains at a dig in Teotihuacan.

Because she had worked closely with Ms. Martinez-Bentley over more than a year, Ms. Sugiyama knew that she could trust her student abroad, and that she was prepared to do the work required at the site.

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Ms. Martinez-Bentley, with help from the professor, applied for funds from the university for the trip, and was awarded a grant that allowed her to concentrate on research instead of working a summer job.

“Two and a half years ago, I would have never imagined this was a possibility for me,” she says.

That experience helped her get accepted into George Mason’s graduate program for anthropology. Ms. Sugiyama continues to be her faculty mentor.

Ms. Martinez-Bentley wants to keep studying bones, which she says tell the story of a person or an animal and help tell the story of a wider culture.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life,” she says. “Bones were totally my calling.”