Cabinet 28: Bones

From the precincts of the "vanitas" to the black banner of the Jolly Roger to children's Day of the Dead sweets, the human skeleton is suffused with surprisingly diverse and nuanced cultural significances. Subject of science both legitimate and spurious, material of archaeological scholarship and political controversy, bones suggest the permanence of certain inviolable aspects of personal and social identity, even as they bluntly signify the transience of the individuals with whom such identities were associated. This issue, with its special section on "Bones," features Robert Harbison on ossuaries, an interview with D. Graham Burnett, author of "Trying Leviathan," the story of the most famous whale skeleton in American legal history, Colby Chamberlain on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Lab, David Serlin and Brian Selznick on Victorian dinosaur man Waterhouse Hawkins, an artist project by Michael Paulus, head-molding, fortune-telling, baculi and more. Also: Joe Milutis on labyrinths, Richard Sieburth on the wonders of Louis Agassiz's jellyfish, Christopher Turner on Day-Glo, Svetlana Boym on Tatlin and ruins, Shelly Jackson on the color mauve and the tale of how one of America's most celebrated chefs helped Werner Herzog cook his shoe for dinner. With a pull-out "Onions" supplement by London-based Implicasphere.