Greetings everyone! My name is Brenden Patterson, and I will be managing the blog this year as the Public Archaeology Graduate Assistant. I am in my first year as a graduate student in the Applied Archaeology program here at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and I am looking forward to sharing everything we have going on in the program as the new Public Archaeology GA. I graduated from Iowa State University (in a far away land) with a B.S. in Anthropology and a minor in Biology. I attended field school at Lakeside Laboratory back in Iowa, where we excavated the area surrounding a late nineteenth century cabin tied to a major conflict with the Dakota in the Spirit Lake area. There, I was able to dip my toes into some historical research in combination with our field efforts. That being said, I am mainly interested in bones of all kinds, and I am generally interested in pre-contact archaeology. I spent the last year and a half working for Iowa’s Office of the State Archaeologist as an embedded consultant with the cultural resources team at the Department of Transportation. I did a variety of field work, interacted with the public, and contributed to the Section 106 consultation process. I hope I can use my background to come up with a variety of interesting topics to explore on the blog this year. We will be sharing some of the research our students are conducting at IUP, as well as other highlights like our graduate colloquiums. IUP students: If you have anything you’re excited about and would like to see featured on the blog, just let me know. Stay tuned for more!