I visited
the Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto) in Helsinki last week to collect
some bones that I’ll be analysing as part of my thesis. Most of these are from Roman
Period (1/50–350/400 CE) burial sites which were excavated in the first decades
of the 20th century. After this the bones have been waiting for someone to
analyse them. Part of the reason why no one has touched them earlier is because
majority of the bones are from cremation graves and broken into thousands of
fragments. This presents an extra challenge for an osteologist and going
through them is slower than with uncremated remains.
I also
expected that there would be some uncremated or partially cremated bones
present and after cursory checking during the unboxing this was confirmed. These
bones will be heading for a DNA analysis and hopefully the results will bring
new insight to the population history of Finland. The cremated bones will face
osteological analysis so that the samples for stable isotope analyses can be
identified. Osteology will also help in identifying the age, sex and health of
the individuals heading for these analyses.
Dan Hill sang in the First Blood that "it's a long road", but this is also going to get very exciting.
Trunk full of research materials. |
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