Originally posted on Saturday, July 19, 2014
As the second week draws to a close, we have completed the basic osteology refresher. Amazing new information, and new ways of thinking of old information, but the real meat and potatoes of the workshop was only just revealed to us. Individual burials needed to be inventoried, measured, recorded, photographed, peer reviewed, and then stored. This is the primary purpose for our being in this ancient land, not to simply get to play with bones and learn basic recognition which could be learned anywhere.I partnered with Jill. She is not the skeleton geek that myself or so many others are, but she has worked hard and proven capable enough to pick up new things with alacrity. We also get along quite well, which is vital for independant work of this nature. In front of us lay a plastic bag, filled with portions of bones. To a casual observer (I hate to say layman) the bags may not have even been filled with bones, much less anything human. However to those of us who see an Iliac crest in every mushroom, a distal head of a juvenile ulna in every tree branch, or perhaps cuspids in every bowl of popcorn, already the image was becoming clear. The skull was smashed quite handily, likely taphonomic, and there was a conspicuous absence of long bones. Within an hour we had the majority of the skeleton which was present laid out in an assemblage, and the picture became even more clear. While the pelvis and all beyond it was missing, the abdomen was remarkably intact, and desite the condition of the skull, its myriad bits formed together into a nearly complete cranium. We then measured what we could, compared what we could, referenced what we could.
Temperance Brennan is not a physical anthropologist. Nor is she a forensic anthropologist. She is in fact not even a scientist. The Temperance Brennan of TV is a charlatan. Age estimation requires checking and double checking, measuring and double measuring, comparing to a multitude of charts and graphs from a variety of books and sources, and even then the age range can be wildly variable. And after we did all of that, we still couldn’t be mroe accurate than 1.5-3 years old, making this first skeleton a toddler. Must not think of my own toddler, thousands of miles away. Must not humanize the remains, must not imagine the 16th century mother sobbing over her loss, must not imagine the stoic father putting dirt onto his toddler. But I cannot dehumanize either. I cannot look at them as just a pile of osseous material. They were, they are. They are not forgotten, and now they are teachers. So the jovial elements which naturally arise from working with so many like minded people are not inappropriate, they are an extension of the lives we spend our time studying. Jon asked me what I want to get out of skeletons. I told him I didn’t care so much about their death, although that certainly was information I sought. I instead wanted to know how they lived with these exact bones I now hold in my hand and gingerly apply digital calipers to. I wanted to gain insight into their pains, their toils, their joys, their loss. After all, we are nothing but ghosts driving meat covered skeletons made from stardust, what else is there to be afraid of? After two days, Jill and I completed our first burial. Which means my first true skeletal inventory of a never before analyzed skeleton occurred 17th-18th of July, 2014 in Transylvania, and that matters to me. That matters because I know no other place to which I belong than this field. My previous experiences, my previous fears and hopes, all have lead me inexorably to this location, and I am here to revel in it.
We spent the friday evening eating pancakes, drinking a variety of alcohols, and generally having fun in the way that anthropologists do (debating British vs. American archaeology, arguing about fluoridation of tap water, wishing we could travel back to the wild days before Meade, Malinowski, Boaz, et al.) We watched films, and lived our lives until 3:30 in the morning.
