Bonjour all and
sorry for the delay in posting part two of the Osteology blogs. It’s been over
a month since the last post I’ve actually completely forgotten how I was going
to continue this so I’ll have to mudge through it and hopefully come up with
some kind of coherent article.
FYI I have the
Blues Brothers soundtrack in the background as I write this for all you
talented musical viewers out there. Heck, I don’t even know if anyone gives a
hoot what I listen to but I’m gonna tell you anyways!
Anyhoo, I
digress… Actually I find myself writing that quite a bit so I think I might
coin that as my catchphrase for the blog. I guess that’s what happens when I
write off at a tangent. Hmmm, now where was I?
Hang on a minute… brb…
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Right, on with the show so to speak…
First off, the
mystery bone. You didn’t think it was going to be easy did you? I was
contemplating stringing this out until I get at least one comment or guess but
to be honest I’ll probably forget by the time I write the next post.
For those
newbies who may be jumping in at this post here’s a reminder:
So this
was the bone (left) that I asked people to see if they knew what animal this
was…oh and a bonus point if they knew the bone too!
The animal in
question is actually a Shrew; or common shrew to be precise. To be
ultra-precise here’s the latin name too: Sorex araneus. Unfortunately I don’t have a scale (should
have thought of that when I took the photo) but the entire length of the bone
is about the same size as your thumbnail. Pretty small, huh?
Incidentally the bone in question is the
mandible or jawbone. I know it’s probably obvious but for those who weren’t
sure there you go. If you’ve skipped the previous post so you could get the
answer; shame on you and don’t cheat next time!!
Moving on, as mentioned previously I’ll
write a little bit about my latest bone report to give you an idea of what’s
involved and what I look at; aside from a big box of bones!
Usually
the bones are separated out into their individual contexts; a context being a
distinct layer within a particular feature (i.e. post-hole, ditch etc). The
context can also be relating to a trench, like in this case.
Like the photo
to the right, each context has a number of animal bones associated with it.
However bear in mind that not all contexts have bones in them, which I usually
make a note of too. Noting what’s there is just as important as what’s not
there!
To start with
once I’ve emptied the bones out into a cleanable surface I tend to group them
according to species or at the very least a general group (e.g. small mammal or
bird bones). As you can see I’ve already begun to separate this context out,
with large mammals on the right hand side.
Now that we have
them roughly grouped as in the photo to the left, the next step is to identify
the individual elements (or bones) just for simplicity more than anything else.
There’s nothing
worse than starting to input the data and finding near the end that you have an
extra sheep metacarpal and you have to go back waste time editing a previous
entry! It probably doesn’t sound too bad but if you have to keep re-editing
entries it can get very tiresome!!
Often I’ll have
a little pile of unidentified bones too. These can be anything from long bone
fragments to tiny splinters and other things that you just can’t identify
because of the size and type of fragment.
Sure
you could sit there for hours wading through the reference material and
identifying every last bone fragment but it just isn’t practical within the
time limits. Depending on how badly fragmented the contexts are I’m happy if
the unidentified material ends up at about 10% of the total assemblage.
After that it’s
just a simple matter (hahaha! Simple indeed, I make it sound sooooo easy!!) of
inputting the various pieces of information into the database. Data such as
species, element and context are fairly obvious but also things like butchery
evidence and other environmental data are also considered.
Depending on
what the person who’s asked me to do the report wants I can be as detailed or
as basic as it needs to be. For example the basic information for the bone on
the right would be: sheep scapula (shoulder blade), along with context data and
no obvious signs of butchery. A more detailed analysis would include the side
of the body (left hand side), bone completeness (about three-quarters whole)
and probably environmental factors.
Once all the
data has been put into the database, which may take several days depending on
the size of the assemblage, I summarise the information and look for any
patterns or anything of interest. Patterns could be anything that stands out,
for example if a particular context contains lots of pig humerii or an unusual
species… say if there was a zebra bone in the sample or something. Not that I
actually know what a zebra looks like, not without a hell of a lot of research
anyway!
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| What's Up Doc? |
No the above
bone isn’t a zebra bone just in case you thought it was! It’s just a random
photo I threw in at the end. In fact it’s a……
Continuing the
musical note (boom, boom) the final song was Back in Black by AC/DC! Not Blues
Brothers I know but still a movie, guess which one!!
Until next time
