A lot of people think of osteoarchæologists as grave robbers. And there is some basis for this, especially given the growth of the obscene perversion of forensic archæology. If you detect an element of anger in this, I should reveal that I was offered coursework in forensic archæology, and refused it, on the same grounds that Franz Boas refused to allow anthropologists to be used as spies (and, more recently, as I wish psychological professionals had uniformly refused to be facilitators for torture)–because it’s morally wrong to use technical skills to injure people. And that this principle applies WHETHER OR NOT it’s actually possible to do what ‘forensic scientists’ claim to be able to do–which it’s not, as a matter of fact.
These recent perversions, however, are not really what osteoarchæology is about. Osteoarchæologists are concerned with things like what people died of, it’s true: but they’re also concerned with what people lived through–which can also leave its mark on the bones.
I once had the pleasure of watching the noted osteoarchæologist Dr Jane Buikstra demonstrate her ‘sex test’. “You take the person”, she said, approaching the volunteer, “and you put your first hand here…” (placing one hand on the volunteer’s back), “and your second hand there…”(placing a hand on the volunteer’s chest), “And if the second hand goes like THIS…” (⌋) “it’s a man, and if it goes like THAT…” (⊃) “it’s a woman…”.
This is, of course, not how osteoarchæologists really determine the sex of skeletons. Assuming they have a whole skeleton, or at least the pelvis, they generally determine sex by the fact that women, by and larger, have wider pelvises than men of the same stature.
It’s easy to see how inexact this is. Women as a whole may tend to have wider pelvises than men (as a whole)–but there’s a great deal of individual variation, of course.
Likewise, attempting to tell the age of a human at death is a fraught process. There are factors which are suggestive (whether the wisdom teeth have crowned, for example). But speaking as a person who seems to have had no wisdom teeth at all (not even buds), and as a lineal descendant of a man who grew a third set of teeth when he was 80 years old (he was quoted as saying “I can’t believe this! I’m 80 years old and I’m teething! What do I need a new set of teeth for?!”.), I can reliably contend that such factors also are not universal.
Then there are matters like arthritis–but not everybody even GETS arthritis–and the ages of onset vary widely.
There are other things one can learn about people by looking at their bones–and these can be more certainly determined than things like age and sex. It’s often possible to tell if a skeleton is that of a slave, for example, because slaves were often forced to lift things too heavy for them–which pulled muscles, tendons, etc away from the bone–which leaves a lesion on the bones.
Likewise, you can tell if people suffered from certain diseases by looking at their bones. Tuberculosis, for example, leaves characteristic lesions on bones, even if it doesn’t prove fatal. And certain types of dietary deficiencies leave marks–rickets, for example, not only causes bones to grow abnormally, but it also causes lesions on the bones. And childhood famine leaves characteristic marks, where growth stops, and then starts up again.
Apropos of these latter markings, it’s noteworthy that people not only suffer worse damage to teeth when they switch from gathering and hunting to agriculture; they also suffer more from famine. This is because people who live by foraging nearly always have some fallback ‘starvation food’ to eat when times are hard–whereas agriculture involves such damage to the native biota that the starvation foods are likely to fail at the same time the primary food sources fail, if not before.
One thing it is NOT possible to tell about people from their bones is their ‘race’. Thus, for example, there was for a long time a tendency to assume that present-day Pueblos were not direct descendants from the ‘Anasazi’ (this name, by the way, is incorrect. It’s a classic example of why you shouldn’t ask people’s enemies what their name is. But since I don’t know the correct term, I’ll have to use the wrong one), because the modern Pueblo generally have differently shaped skulls than the ancient indigenes. But the abovementioned anthropologist Franz Boas proved by measuring living people and their descendants that head shape changes even in members of the same CLANS when things like diet and living conditions change.
Thus, while osteoarchæology is taken by many people to be offensive to the descendants of many people to be dishonoring the ancient dead, it does still have a place in studies of human development. And it’s not just ancestors of non-Europeans, for that matter, that are dug up. Old European graveyards are often dug up as well. And also the necropoli of other Mediterranean peoples: for example, one archæologist was able to demonstrate that the old Roman slander about the Carthaginians sacrificing their children was, to say the least, implausible, by examining the sacrifice pillars and the necropolis. Not only was he able to demonstrate that there was no obvious violence against the infants buried in the sacrifice burials (a task made more complicated by the cremation of the bodies, and by the fact that, say, strangulation wouldn’t necessarily leave a mark on the bones), he was also able to demonstrate that the number of children buried under the sacrificial pillars was about the same percentage as normal infant mortality at the time. So either the Carthaginians has a MUCH lower number of children die in infancy than their neighbors–or, more likely, the infants buried as sacrifices were ALREADY DEAD when they were sacrificed.
One other warning: if you hear someone claim to have discovered evidence of cannibalism, check carefully to see whether the possibility of burial by excarnation has been examined and eliminated. Excarnation can look remarkably like cannibalism to the uninitiated–especially when part of the ritual involves butchering the dead and feeding the flesh to scavengers.
For today’s less obvious question, just a moment’s rant: A ‘light-year’ is a unit of DISTANCE. not time.
treraia 