East Kirk of St Nicholas dig February 2007
East Kirk of St Nicholas dig – February 2007
Paul Duffy, human remains specialist, writes…
The analysis of the human remains excavated from St Nicholas Church is now well and truly underway. As has been mentioned previously, the project is being undertaken by Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division at our dedicated human remains laboratory and storage facility in Glasgow. The picture below shows the lab during a quiet moment (lunchtime!).
The project is being organised and run by me, Paul Duffy, GUARD’s human remains specialist. I visited the excavation each month whilst it was on but am now firmly ensconced in my lab analysing the wealth of burials that have been recovered. I’m being assisted by Maurine Kilpatrick, who is analysing all of the disarticulated remains and completing our team is Angela Boyle who takes overall charge of all project management in GUARD. She is former head of Oxford Archaeology Heritage Burial Services and is therefore naturally paying particular managerial attention to this project! We will also shortly have another experienced human remains specialist joining us to continue the quick and efficient analysis of the remains.
The assemblage ranks amongst the largest ever excavated and analysed in Scotland and will provide us with a wealth of invaluable information about how people lived and died in Aberdeen in the past. In total over 900 individuals await analysis, as well as over 700 boxes of disarticulated material. Although the remains are being delivered in small batches to the human remains laboratory at Glasgow University the boxes quickly mount up, as the picture below clearly shows!
Currently, approximately 100 individual skeletons have been looked at as well as over 80 boxes of disarticulated material. Our task is to produce a record of each individual and to find out, where it is possible, their age, sex, height and health condition as well as any diseases or traumatic injuries they may have suffered during life. We also record measurements of all the bones, and any other traits that may help us, or researchers in the future, to understand better the past populations of Aberdeen.
Most of the individuals that have been looked at so far are either infants under 3 years old or adults over 35 years old with numbers of males and females fairly evenly represented. At the moment there appears to be a distinct lack of teenagers. This may indeed prove to be an accurate picture of who was being buried in St Nicholas, but may also represent the way in which the material has come out of the boxes so far.
Each articulated skeleton has its own individual story to tell about how that person lived, and in some cases died in the past. Many things such as activity, trauma, and disease alter our skeletons. Perhaps the most interesting case so far is that of a young male of around 17-20 years old, who shows bony changes most likely caused by syphilis.
The way in which the lesions on the skull have formed, and the overall form of the bony changes on the long bones, such as those shown below, leads us to conclude that the disease has been contracted, rather than inherited.
We also think the changes on another individual represent a condition known as ‘mulberry’ molars. This evidence is more inconclusive, but it may suggest that people were inheriting the disease in the womb. Often such children would die before birth, but this individual appears to have lived until adulthood.
Most of the changes we see are, however, more familiar. A condition I’m sure a lot of the excavation team would claim they have after a year of solid digging is shown below. Here the wrist bones of an old man have fused, probably as a result of age related arthritis. You can see clearly where eight usually separate bones have become a single sold mass, and the second and third fingers have also fused on. This was undoubtedly a continually painful condition.
A condition close to my own heart has also been identified. See if you can work out what it is from the picture below (the bones are foot bones).
The bones are the left and right big toe, and although not, complete, enough is present for us to tell the individual suffered from bunions (or hallax valgas to give it its Latin name). Possibly due to those tight medieval shoes, although I don’t have that excuse!
One surprising observation so far is the high instances of good dental health. Evidence of early childhood stresses have been found on some individuals, in the form of lines on the teeth, like these.
However, when we look for dental disease the picture emerging so far is that most of the individuals have teeth which show little sign of wear, dental caries, abscesses or gum disease. This is a bit unusual compared to what we would normally expect from individuals from this period, and may indicate something of the diet, or of the dental hygiene of the population. Further analysis will reveal whether this is indeed the case, or whether the individuals examined so far have just been a lucky few.
Back to the lab for me now, but we will continue to bring you news from the analysis as it progresses over the next few months. Maureen is off today, but fortunately I won’t be lonely. I’ve got over 200 people for company!
For further information and comment, please contact judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk: 01224 523658.
East Kirk of St Nicholas Jan 07
