DISCOVERY
continued from page 1
the original 81 party members, and
their final resort to cannibalism. To
date, no physical evidence of canni
balism has ever been found.
After viewing the episode last
week, Tasa said the Discovery Chan
nel's sensational focus on cannibal
ism clearly aimed to attract audience
members rather than educate them.
"In a lot of ways, you can't blame
them for that," he said. "The audi
ence probably wouldn't want to see
all the technical details."
Considering the first 45 minutes of
the episode were entirely on the drama
tization of the Donner Party experience;
Tasa said he was disappointed to see
such a small amount of time spent on
explaining the actual results of research
on the excavated bone fragments.
"They tried to fit too much into an
hourlong show," he said. "1 was left
wondering about a lot of things."
Squeezed into the last quarter of
the show was the filming of a five-day
archaeological dig in August that
took place at the Alder Street camp
site, one of many the Donner Party
visited. With the help of instruments
such as ground-penetrating radar,
which were unavailable to earlier re
searchers, the crew found verifiable
evidence of the party's campsite and
eventually uncovered burnt and
hacked bone fragments.
Oregon Department of Trans
portation archaeologist Julie Sch
ablitsky identified the largest bone
fragment found at the Alder Street
site as coming from a large mam
mal, but not necessarily a human.
After the bone fragment was found,
Tasa used the University's field emis
sion scanning electron microscope
to identify it as bone from either
deer, bears or humans.
Because the episode made little
time for analysis of the fragment, Sch
ablitsky said she and her colleagues
were left with more questions than
answers after viewing the crammed
information.
"(The special) was more entertain
ment than education," she said with
a frown.
She added that due to extremely
dramatic music and re-creations that
surrounded the portrayal of cannibal
ism, she and Tasa are considering
working with television stations that
are more educational.
Anthropology major Victoria Reed
— a student enrolled in Tasa's fall
term osteology lab that focuses on
the study and identification of bone
fragments — said she was entertained
by the episode but hardly impressed.
"It was interesting, but over-drama
tized, as most things on the Discov
ery Channel are," the senior said in
an e-mail.
Reed said she was happy to see
that her professor didn't "cave in" at
the end of the special by making in
accurate assumptions about the ex
cavated evidence.
"(Tasa) confirmed that the non-di
agnostic bone fragments were from a
large mammal but wouldn't say ab
solutely that the fragments were hu
man, " she recounted. "I think the (Dis
covery Channel) producers were
probably a little disappointed by that."
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