East Kirk of St Nicholas dig March 2008
East Kirk of St Nicholas dig – March 2008
Paul Duffy, human remains specialist, writes…
Time has flown since the last time I wrote (December 2007) and March now roars in like the proverbial lion, and against a background of the snow and storms in Glasgow our lab analysis of the human remains from the East Kirk of St Nicholas is entering its final chapter.
Last time I detailed the work that assistant osteologist Maureen Kilpatrick had done in completing the analysis of the disarticulated material within our project timescale. Since then she has spent her time in front of the computer, documenting the range of pathologies that were identified, cross-checking her spreadsheet data with the photographs she has taken and performing various calculations on the data that has been recorded.
One of the most immediate calculations we are making about the disarticulated material is how many people are represented by the various skeletal elements recovered, to give us a clear idea of just how many individuals were buried in this part of the church over the course of time. In archaeological terms, we refer to this as a minimum number of individuals calculation and Maureen has been carefully working her way through the records for each deposit in order to achieve this task.
In theory the calculation is a relatively straightforward task. By looking at our data to understand how many times we can see each individual element of the human skeleton in any given deposit, we can quite quickly identify the single element that is present the most number of times. Given that we know that each person has, for example, one left leg and one right leg, we can calculate how many people are likely to be represented within that deposit. Thus if we have eight left femurs (upper leg) and six right femurs we can confidently say that there must be at least eight people represented within the deposit. As it is possible, however, that the left and right bones are not all pairs we cannot call this the exact number of people represented, hence the reason why the calculation is referred to as the minimum number of individuals.
In practice the calculation is much more complex, particularly on a large site like St Nicholas. We also have to take into account the most reliable bones to calculate the information from, the presence of non-adult bones in the various deposits, and also the archaeological information which can be used to relate one deposit to another. The highest minimum number of individuals we have had from any single deposit so far 59 individuals (41 adults and 18 non-adults), and when you consider that we have over 1000 separate contexts you can see that we may end up discovering a very large number of individuals were buried in the church!
Of course understanding how many individuals were buried from the articulated remains is a much simpler task, as it is usually a case of one person per grave. As I write we now have less than 100 skeletons left to look at from the total assemblage of over 900 that were recovered from the site, and we are certain to achieve our target of completing the analysis by the middle of April. I have been analysing much of this material but have been more than ably assisted by our other assistant osteologist Iraia Arabaolaza.
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You will probably already know Iraia from previous blogs (above). She was one of excavation team for the St Nicholas project and is also a qualified bone specialist and I was naturally delighted that, once the excavations had finished, I was able to ‘poach’ her to join our analysis team here in Glasgow. Her specialist work on the recovered human remains, coupled with her detailed knowledge of the excavations has made a significant contribution to the smooth running and successful undertaking of the lab work on the articulated burials.
Iraia has analysed many of the burials from St Nicholas and says there have been so many interesting examples of pathology, trauma and other aspects of the burials that it is difficult to pick out any single particular highlight. However, she feels that a recent skeleton of an older male was particularly interesting in the way that the evidence from the skeleton helps to build up a life story for the individual and provide an intimate connection with the people from the past that we are examining.
As one of the relatively few older individuals that we have identified he would certainly have been unusual in the medieval society in which he lived. He also suffered from osteoporosis in later life, a condition which results in a reduction of the mineral component of the bone and a resultant weakening of the bone structure. This generally makes people more susceptible to fractured bones as a result of slips, trips and falls, and is particular apparent in several aspects of his skeleton. The healed fracture of the man’s right clavicle, for example, is probably the result of such a fall.
Similarly, the right humerus also displays a healed fracture.
Whilst the picture below, of an unhealed rib fracture, indicates that not all of his injuries had healed at the time of death
Iraia has also been able to help us understand some of the other mysteries of St Nicholas. Most importantly, her familiarity with the handwriting of the people who worked during the excavation recently proved invaluable. Close investigation of a separate bag simply labelled St Nicholas, Aberdeen revealed that it contained a very unusual sample for a medieval church – a large fragment of Crawford’s Shortbread Sandwich! I’m not revealing the culprit who played the practical joke on us poor osteologists, but if you’re reading, we know who you are….!
That’s all from me for just now but next time I look forward to providing you preliminary details of how our analysis finished up.
For further details, please contact judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk.
East Kirk of St Nicholas January 2008
