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I have spent the last several weeks cleaning the bones and reassembling the numerous fragments. In total there were four boxes of unidentified bones. As mentioned, these boxes contained many human and animal bones, as well as some cultural material, such as pottery fragments, a couple of beads (one made from glass and one from ostrich egg shell), and a piece of metal.
Over the last few days I have been putting together a couple of human skulls from the last box of bones. This can be a painstaking process which can require a good deal of patience (which my mother would say I have little of). The first photo accompanying this blog posting shows the more fragmented of the two skulls after I had assembled the pieces. There are more than 45 individual bone fragments (some of them numbered) included in the reconstruction, some quite large but others rather small.
It is also of interest to note how many individuals are represented by the human remains. This can be accomplished by counted the number of similar bones, for example the number of mandibles (or lower jaw bones). As can be seen in the second photo, there are mandibles (or partial mandibles) from 4 different individuals, just from the last box. The photo also illustrates several interesting features of two of the mandibles. For the partial mandible in the upper right of the photo, the black arrow points to the rounded bone in front of the single tooth. The bone is rounded, and does not have small holes for tooth roots, because this individual lost several teeth during his/her lifetime. In addition, the red arrow points to the black hole in the side of the tooth, which represents tooth decay (or a cavity). Therefore, this individual most likely was older and/or had poor dental heath. The partial mandible in the lower right of the photo is from a subadult, most likely younger than three years of age. The black arrow points to the permanent incisor which is still developing in the jaw and had not emerged into the mouth, which happens later during childhood.
4 comments:
Hi kids, the new photos are great and can see you are both immersed in your work and the culture. The bone identifiation work is really interesting and piecing together the history of someone would make me wonder about what they actually looked like, the life they led in their village, what their diet was like,all sorts of things..interesting work, for sure...keep the pix coming!
How are you gluing the bones? Looks like a lot of work, like doing a puzzle with missing pieces and potential mixed with another puzzle! Must be confusing.
Can you tell how old the remains may be?
Thanks for the comments. I have not, as of yet, used any scientific methods to determine age at death, but age may be determined from looking at the development of the dentition (particularly useful for young individuals). However, if there are no teeth present then age can be determined from looking at the sutures (where two bones meet) on the skull. In young individuals the sutures are quite distinct but as an individual gets older, the sutures start to disappear. So, in individuals over 60 years of age the skull may appear smooth with no suture lines. Unfortunately, this method is not very accurate, and thus can only provide wide range ranges, like 25-40, etc.
Dad's right...I love seeing those clay model mock-ups of what scientists/artists think these hominds look like. Maybe we can post a pic or two soon...
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