The Lovely Bones
Sep. 10th, 2010 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endlessraritiesThe Kilwinning Dig's been going on for almost four weeks now (updates are on Facebook, if you're interested), and as you're well aware, my involvement has been minimal. Meanwhile, the office has been steadily filling up with all sorts of finds, which are taking over the lab and generally getting underfoot.
This morning it poured. So, while Cinderella never made it the ball, instead the ball came to Cinderella- at last! I was issued with four volunteers, and asked to make a start on the finds processing.
I started everyone off with a big bag of human bone. Now, this sounds silly and sentimental, but I don't like the idea of digging someone up then leaving them to moulder in a grotty plastic bag for months. We're supposed to treat the dead with respect and dignity. Okay, so they've come from the earth, and once science has talked to them sufficiently to learn a bit more about who they were, etcetera, they'll be consigned back into the earth once again. During this brief intermission with the living, I want them to be warm, clean, dry and comfortable!
I don't really have any qualms about dealing with human skeletal material. But interacting on such intimate terms with another individual is quite a poignant process. Who were they? How old were they? Was their passing swift and painless, or unpleasant?
It's quite clear that the bones that were sifted through today representing several individuals (including a sheep!) But there were a few bones there that were clearly those of a child or infant. The jaw was partly intact, revealing a great big hole in the jawbone that could only mean a dental abcess.
Poor little thing. I don't know if it was that particular ailment that killed them, though I suppose there's a good chance it did. But they can't have been particular comfortable towards the end of their short lives.
On a more pleasant note, we also encountered a nice piece of carved stone from a window or doorframe, and some sherds of 15th and 16th-17th green glazed pottery. And a small plastic horse....
An update, too, on the plaster-of-Paris items from the 19th century pottery. We know the pottery had three phases. The first - late 18th/early 19th century - produced Rockingham ware and black basalt and other stuff. The second produced porcelain and earthenware, while the third produced stoneware. Most of the sherds so far had been earthenware from Phase 2, but I'd always assumed that the plaster-of-Paris came from Phase 3. Today I was cleaning one of these items as I supervised the volunteers: what should I find adhering to the muck around it but the tiniest piece of unglazed porcelain! Which means the plaster-of-Paris Phase 2, not Phase 3, and it's the first evidence of porcelain manufacture I've seen so far.
This morning it poured. So, while Cinderella never made it the ball, instead the ball came to Cinderella- at last! I was issued with four volunteers, and asked to make a start on the finds processing.
I started everyone off with a big bag of human bone. Now, this sounds silly and sentimental, but I don't like the idea of digging someone up then leaving them to moulder in a grotty plastic bag for months. We're supposed to treat the dead with respect and dignity. Okay, so they've come from the earth, and once science has talked to them sufficiently to learn a bit more about who they were, etcetera, they'll be consigned back into the earth once again. During this brief intermission with the living, I want them to be warm, clean, dry and comfortable!
I don't really have any qualms about dealing with human skeletal material. But interacting on such intimate terms with another individual is quite a poignant process. Who were they? How old were they? Was their passing swift and painless, or unpleasant?
It's quite clear that the bones that were sifted through today representing several individuals (including a sheep!) But there were a few bones there that were clearly those of a child or infant. The jaw was partly intact, revealing a great big hole in the jawbone that could only mean a dental abcess.
Poor little thing. I don't know if it was that particular ailment that killed them, though I suppose there's a good chance it did. But they can't have been particular comfortable towards the end of their short lives.
On a more pleasant note, we also encountered a nice piece of carved stone from a window or doorframe, and some sherds of 15th and 16th-17th green glazed pottery. And a small plastic horse....
An update, too, on the plaster-of-Paris items from the 19th century pottery. We know the pottery had three phases. The first - late 18th/early 19th century - produced Rockingham ware and black basalt and other stuff. The second produced porcelain and earthenware, while the third produced stoneware. Most of the sherds so far had been earthenware from Phase 2, but I'd always assumed that the plaster-of-Paris came from Phase 3. Today I was cleaning one of these items as I supervised the volunteers: what should I find adhering to the muck around it but the tiniest piece of unglazed porcelain! Which means the plaster-of-Paris Phase 2, not Phase 3, and it's the first evidence of porcelain manufacture I've seen so far.
