Johann - diary of an osteology workshop
written by Vanessa Hava Schulmann, 2024
(estimated reading time: 5-8 minutes)
Studying biology at our institute does not make you literate in how to read from bones their estimated age, sex, stature and pathologies. However, some decades earlier that would have been possible, as there were anthropology and human biology professors teaching physical anthropology. While I told you much about the harm that was done by the hands of physical anthropology, it can actually be vital for serving justice as well. Forensic anthropologists can help uncover crimes of the past and present by determining how exactly what kind of weapon hit into somebody's skull. Within provenance research in Germany, people who are experts in analyzing human remains non-invasively are rare and highly sought-after additions to a case, adding crucial information to available or even missing historical records. Me, sole team member of my provenance project, do not have such expertise in physical anthropology through my biology studies. Hence, I routinely ask for expert opinions. Ironically, I once reached out to a physical anthropologist who studied at the very same university as me while studying anthropology was still possible. Through her, I had the opportunity to take part in an osteology workshop and educate myself. In such a context, real human remains are absolutely essential for the curriculum. Let me tell you who I met there.
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Day 1
Even before signing up for the course, we were informed that the human remains to be analyzed were archeological remains from Germany with a detailed biography. This is quite rare, and I was intrigued. As osteology courses themselves are rare in Germany, I wondered under which circumstances I would have declined to participate. Would I have signed up if no considerations had been made about the provenance of the remains to be studied?
In the first meeting, we were told that the skeletons came from an excavation near a church. A bus lane was to be built there, and during construction several graves were uncovered and removed. A local historian painstakingly reconstructed the biographies of those people, which is why their full biographies were available. However, we would only be enlightened about them after our own estimations about sex, age, stature and pathologies were complete. Otherwise, what would be the learning effect?
Upon entering the workspace, everyone assigned themselves to one of the tables with a beige carton next to it. The person that also gravitated towards the same table as me would become my new team partner for the next week. We nod at each other silently and start opening the carton without reading any of the labels. My partner takes out the first plastic bag among many. He opens it and takes out bones one by one. Femur, tibia, I know those! We lay them out on the table where we estimated the full skeleton’s legs to be. We decide whether to put them on the right or the left side. My partner takes out the next bag, filled with the small bones of the foot. We put them in a pile to figure out their exact layout later - as you know, I am not very talented in assembling the bones of the foot. There are many bags to go, so I start taking out bags in parallel. I notice a label, reading "chest right side". A bit embarrassed about not having paid enough attention while taking out the prior bags, I look through this bag's contents. It is filled with thin curved rib fragments, which I pick out of the brown powder accumulated at the bottom of the plastic bag. I start placing them onto the right side of the person's body, which from my perspective would be the left side. By now my fingers are covered in that brown powder. I question if it is merely soil or also pulverized bone from the delicate bone fragments. I try not to think about it, and not rub my nose under any circumstances. My partner takes out another bag - spine. I identify the two upper vertebrae as they have a very characteristic shape allowing for the mobility of our heads. While I puzzle together the spine downwards, my partner puzzles upwards. We meet in the middle. "Maybe this one belongs higher up, its size looks ridiculous here!". We switch the vertebrae to another position in the spinal column.
Two hours later, there lays an almost complete skeleton on the table before us. I check the carton again for any missing plastic bags and decide to read the label stuck to its side. It has information about the excavation on it, and a number given to the exact grave this skeleton was found in.
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Day 2
Flipping through a stack of checklists, anatomical illustrations, data tables, and formulas, my partner and I contemplate which skeletal part to begin analyzing.
We first estimate the morphological sex - overlaying hypothetical childbirth over narrow pelvic angles, and a fleshed out warm face over prominent eyebrow ridges. Our fingers slide across bony surfaces, probing, assessing and converting observations into metrics. "Likely a male" says the number we calculated on our sheet, crossed out and corrected twice. Next, we estimate the biological age - analyzing surfaces whose fusing, shifting and grinding has never been so laid open to me before. I imagine my hip joint wearing away while I rotate in my chair, standing up to hover over the examination table, sitting back down to take notes. Another round of metrics and tables, and we guesstimate an age between 30-60 years old. My team partner, a male 62 year-old dentist and triathlete, explains to me how important regular mobility exercises are. I stare at the skeleton's vertebrae and spot signs of degeneration.
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Day 3
"So what have you found out?" inquires the instructor playfully and comes over to our table. Fellow students assemble around our table to hear our assessment. Approvingly, she nods her head and proceeds to read out the skeleton’s original data sheet with her own professional estimations, and the historian’s reconstructed biographical information. The skeleton’s name - Johann, middle name, surname. A 41 year-old male, born almost 400 years ago. A wealthy man and tax collector, going about his business by horse carriage. While he did not have to labor physically, his life was peppered with stresses and illness, hence his skeleton appearing biologically older than he chronologically was. From his bones alone, one would estimate a regular weight for his 1,70m build. He must have gained weight quickly and late in his life, leaving no traces on his bones - his casket was a custom-made oversize. He was buried near the church as he could afford to pay for the burial plot. This exact location, making way for an apparently more valuable bus lane, was the reason he was dug up almost 400 years later, examined, and used as teaching material.
"I think we are done with this one. Are there questions before we move on to the next?" asks the instructor. I ask for his full name again and hold my pencil ready this time.
We go through the other cases, each team presenting their assessments before being revealed the identity of their training skeleton. A 70 year-old woman, mother of three daughters. A 19 year-old young man of humble status, died following a long illness not knowable from the bones alone. A 38 year-old woman, wealthy with a twisted gait. At the end of every case discussion the same question - could you tell me their full name again please?
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Day 4
I enter the workspace, waiting for my team partner. A strong breeze pulls through the workshop, and I move Johann's taped-together skull fragments a bit further away from the table‘s edge.
Our next study unit will be on childrens' skeletons, so we carefully pack Johann back into the respective bags we met him in. This time, I diligently read each plastic bag's label to make sure the bones of this right chest go back into the right bag. I look at the layed-out left foot bones and make sure all the toes' bones are in the right order before they get mixed again in the plastic bag - maybe for someone else to assemble back together another time. I put the lid into the beige carton, stroke over its surface, and exchange it for a much smaller carton rattling with the bones of another person I am about to meet. I start assembling.
Yet again, an almost complete skeleton lays in front of me. While I theoretically knew that a child's skeleton has more separate bones as they only fuse gradually throughout life, I never got a feeling for it until I actually had to assemble them. The only time I had ever seen a child's remains was the foetal skeleton I told you about earlier - the one glued together so it can stand upright on its feet. But here I am, again, with that familiar brown powder covering my fingertips, trying to lay out the child's individual fingers. A strange melancholy overcomes me - somehow any child's death seems to be a premature and unjust one. What was its crime?
After working through a stack of worksheets and assessments, we convene again to hear each skeleton's biography. Interestingly, the child's name is also Johann, but with a different family name. He was a bit older than one year when he died. His bones show signs of rickets, a disease caused by lack of vitamin D. From his biography we learn that his "crime" was to be born into privilege, as going outside was considered too dangerous for the elite - what if the child caught a cold? From the bones of Johann's siblings, laid out on other tables, we learn that they were malnourished despite their wealth. People simply did not know how to feed children appropriately. I stare at Johann's small teeth, some of them not even erupted through the jaw yet. I wonder what they fed him.
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Day 5
Now a team of four, we sit around the table eager for our last lesson. But what I initially thought was a joke turned out to be my reality for the last hours of this course. On the table sits a bag of "Leichenbrand" - what is left of a body after being burned. It was our task to assemble it. You may assume that it would be ashes, as following modern-day cremations people receive their loved ones finely-ground to be put in an urn. In reality, the bones fragment and change color, depending on the heat of the fire. I inspect the contents of the bag. None of the fragments is much larger than a euro coin. We get to work, carefully spilling the fragments over a kitchen towel. Although I deemed it impossible at first, I was able to identify certain familiar structures. The slightly curved skull fragments, with blood vessels imprinted on them like small rivers. We ran our fingers through the fragments, and whenever something caught our attention, we lifted it into the field of vision of the team for a consult:
"maybe fingers?"
"does this look like femur to you?"
"I think this is a pebble"
I swore to myself that the next time I meet somebody that says they love puzzles I will ask them to reconsider. An hour later, several neat piles of fragments sorted by body region have formed across the kitchen towel. One piece was laying separately though - a perfectly triangular shape, sharply pointed and slightly translucent. Turns out it was a carved arrow tip, which was a very exciting find. Especially, as these fragmented remains only got excavated the week before, and we were the first to take a look through them. I wonder. Whoever this person was, knowing they would be ritually cremated - would they have ever imagined that somebody would try to piece them back together hundreds of years later?