Eric Anderson knows inspiration can strike at any moment.
Sometimes, illumination comes by way of a study abroad trip to London, the capital of a nation with a rich and complex history.
Other times, it happens at The Home Depot.
During one fateful trip this year to the home improvement store, the Mississippi State University graduate student spotted the ideal item: a Bosch laser level.
“Oh my god, this is perfect,” Anderson told himself. “This is exactly what I need.”
In his third year of grad school studying applied anthropology, Anderson is putting the new tool to use for his thesis: inventing, creating and testing a portable osteometric device, or POD.
Anderson hopes his creation will allow for more simplicity and precision in measuring the length of bones, a key tool to archaeological research — with plenty of benefits.
“What this does is it allows us to figure out stature, growth and development patterns, nutritional patterns in the past — but it can also be used in forensics,” Anderson said.
Osteometric boards already exist, but they’re 2 feet long and essentially act as “a ruler.” Anderson’s creation removes the board aspect of things. It uses laser sensors with “time-of-flight” technology, which measures the distance between an object and the sensor, to easily and accurately give the measurement.
The pocket-sized POD consists of two rectangular, gray blocks only a few inches in area. The side giving the readout — length, midpoint and the 25th and 75th percentiles — can clamp to a surface; the other can slide up to 2 meters.
“Having something I can put in my bag — and that doesn’t take up my bag — is amazing,” Anderson said.
Anderson said his invention is almost ready to be tested pending a few final software developments — but those won’t be his doing.
“I’m not a software engineer by any means,” Anderson said. “I tried to get as far as I could with it, and then I had to hire someone else.”
After all, the native of Loxley, Alabama, is busy enough. This fall, Anderson started his own football tailgate outside Davis Wade Stadium, hoping to raise money and give back to a department that he said has given him plenty.
He began Sept. 11 for the game against North Carolina State with $40 and a few plates, setting up shop in the Junction and hoping to entice any takers. Anderson gave away free food — pulled pork sandwiches with jalapeño and pineapple — and asked for donations to the graduate school.
“We’re a bunch of poor graduate students,” he said. “We really don’t have that much money to do research. A lot of people don’t give to help research for archaeology.”
Successive tailgates for contests against LSU and Alabama have helped Anderson bring in $190 in total, and he hopes for more. The sandwiches have even given way to something better: gourmet hot dogs that come in three flavors: chili-lime, jalapeño-pineapple and, simply, beer.
But Anderson said his precise recipe for the frankenfurters will remain under wraps.
“That’s a secret,” he said. “I can’t give away my secrets.”
Anderson has done his best to uncover secrets of another nature since an undergraduate class with Dr. Lesley Gregoricka at the University of South Alabama piqued his interest.
“I was like, ‘Wow, I’m not falling asleep in this class,’” Anderson said. “‘This is amazing. This is great. I want to keep doing this.’”
In 2016, as soon as he got back from his study abroad in London under Gregoricka’s guidance, he changed his major from criminal justice to anthropology.
“I was just like every other veteran, going into criminal justice because I wasn’t sure,” Anderson said.
That’s right — in addition to being an inventor and a purveyor of gourmet hot dogs, Anderson served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2010-2014. He did a tour of duty in Marjah, Afghanistan, and achieved the rank of lance corporal.
Anderson said his military service made him a more “well-rounded” person, helping him achieve the holistic viewpoint anthropologists strive to find.
“It gave me the motivation to keep pushing forward when everything gets tough,” he said of his time in the Marines. “It’s been the foundation of everything that I do right now — of who I am and my future self.”
In 2017, a year after his trip to London, Anderson got the chance to go to Poland as part of a field school. He spent a month in a small town called Giecz as part of a student group learning excavation and more at an archaeological site featuring human bones from the 11th century.
“Just going there and actually being there for the first time was just eye opening,” Anderson said. “It’s really enriching seeing the culture and finding these human remains and actually learning from the past to benefit our future.”
This summer, Anderson went back to the same dig site — as a staff member this time. He showed students how to properly excavate, handle and clean bones — with ethical concerns in mind.
“Think of these as your grandfather, your grandmother,” he said. “How would you want them to be treated? How would you treat them? Would you just palm a skull and look at it and start quoting Shakespeare? No.”
Anderson said being a staff member at the site was a “whole different experience” — far more challenging but also more interesting.
It will likely be a preview of his life after graduation, set for this coming spring. Anderson said he has loved his time at Mississippi State but hopes this will be his final year of school.
“I’m ready to move on and go on to bigger and better things,” he said.
Or, in the case of the device he soon hopes to perfect, smaller and better things.
“It will help out a lot for a lot of people,” Anderson said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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