Mortuary archaeology
This is a known sub-field of bioarchaeology, which is a field that focuses on gathering important information based on the skeleton of an individual.
[1] Mortuary archaeology, as well as the overarching field it resides in, aims to generate an understanding of disease, migration, health, nutrition, gender, status, and kinship among past populations.
Mortuary archaeologists draw upon the humanities, as well as social and hard sciences to have a full understanding of the individual.
Moreover, mortuary archaeologists are involved in conflict archaeology, and study mass burials from different historical events, like World War II and the Guatemalan genocide.
[1] Analyzing burials helps understand the social organization of populations and the meaning behind how individuals are buried.
One well known phrase, “the dead do not bury themselves,” means that the living places their ideas of the deceased as well as death on the burial practices.
The orientation of the body refers to the “direction in which the head lies in relation to a line between the skull and the center of the pelvis.”[6] The orientation of the body, grave, and container can be described using degrees, cardinal directions, various subdivisions, or in relation to a natural ground feature, like a river.
The researchers look at: The steps need to happen in chronological order because depending on the methods used, some rely on other aspects of the profile.
However, it is advised to look at methods that correlate directly to the time period and group or culture being analyzed.
The techniques for each of the different aspects of the biological profile can be found in Standards: For Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains, the manual for researchers edited by Jane Buikstra and Douglas Ubelaker.
Heather Edgar looks at the different dental characteristics that might be able to help researchers distinguish ancestry.
Some of these traits are shovel-shaped incisors indicative of Asians and Native Americans and Carabelli's cusps characteristic of European descent.
Younger individuals age is based on tooth eruption and fusion of bone at different rates.
The component method looks and scores each trait individually, assuming that degradation follows a set pattern.
This technique looks at the degree of closure for each cranial suture and then adds them together to get a composite score that will give an age range.
The main contributors used today are Acsadi and Nemeskeri as well as Judy Suchey and Sheilagh Brooks, both of whom created aging methods based on the pubic symphysis.
[20] Daniel Osborne, Tal Simmons, and Stephen Nawrocki in 2004 also revised the work that Lovejoy and colleagues made.
[22] M. Iscan, Susan Loth, and Ronald Wright in 1984, in hopes of creating a method that ages as well as the pubic symphysis.
Two complementary methods were created by Iscan and colleagues for studying white females and African Americans.
Charles Kunos, Scott Simpson, Katherine Russel, and Israel Hershkovits created an aging method using the first rib.
[27] Elizabeth DiGangi, Jonathan Bethard, Erin Kimmerle, and Lyle Konigsberg revised the method and looked at two features on the rib.
[33][34][35] Rebecca Wilson, Nicholas Hermann, and Lee Meadows Jantz revised the Trotter and Gleser methods creating new regression formulae due to secular change in heights over time.
[36] With the introduction of technology, researchers can use a statistical software called FORDISC created by Stephen Ousley and Richard Jantz to automatically calculate the stature of individuals, as well as give the best bone and bone combinations for estimating stature for that individual.
Keith Dobney and Kevin Rielly created a method looking at long bones divided into morphological zones.
Individual factors are “the intrinsic traits that the decedent brings to the decomposition process.”[40] These include weight, age, and sex.
The Osteological Paradox was introduced by James Wood in 1992 and says that there are three types of situations when it comes to pathological markers on bone.
[41] Pathology is not only due to diseases, it can be caused by nutritional deficiencies, which are formed in the growth and development phase of bones.
These form at a younger age and can also stunt the growth if the deficiency took place for a long period of time.
However, this process is unique because typically, no archaeological evidence can be gathered from the actual skeletal remains unless there are fragments of bone left behind and buried after the body is burned.
For example, trauma found through inspection of an individual's remaining bones may tell a unique story to an archaeologist that they could then build on.
