The game is afoot

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.