At the core of most vanitas still-life paintings is a skull, a symbol of life’s impermanence. While the inevitability of death may pop to mind when viewing the aptly named CARCAS collection of animal remains, these bones also offer a strong reminder of life. Founded in 2021 by professor Sarah Kennedy, the Carleton Archaeological Research Collection of Animal Specimens is comprised of 27 skeletons and more than 100 incomplete specimens from species including dog, goat, sea lion, and deer, as well as a library of 3D scans and a dermestid beetle colony—used to remove tissue from, or skeletonize, carcasses.
A comparative osteological collection, it serves Kennedy’s colleagues in archaeology and the natural sciences but can also be utilized by locals who may wish to identify bones found in the woods. “But I’m more interested in using it to train students to identify these specimens in a zooarcheological context,” Kennedy says. Her discipline focuses on how humans long ago lived, but through a specific lens: their interactions with animals. And that means looking at what remains after hundreds or thousands of years: bones, those made into tools by humans or bearing evidence of how humans consumed them, used them for labor, or domesticated them.