Burned Fleshed or Dry? The Potential of Bioerosion to Determine the Pre-Burning Condition of Human Remains
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Burned Fleshed or Dry? The Potential of Bioerosion to Determine the Pre-Burning Condition of Human Remains Simone A. M. Lemmers 1 & David Gonçalves 2,3,4 Ana R. Vassalo 3,4 & Jo Appleby 6
& Eugénia
Cunha 4,5
&
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The practice of cremation is often interpreted as an alternative to inhumation, taking place shortly after an individual’s death. However, cremation could be a final stage in complex mortuary practices, with previous steps that are obscured due to the heating process. This project reports on experimental scoping research on a set of experimentally heated femoral fragments from modern and archaeological collections of the University of Coimbra. Sixteen recent femur samples from eight individuals, as well as five femur samples from an archaeological skeleton from the medieval-modern cemetery found at the Hospital de Santo António (Porto), were included in this research. Samples presented five different conditions: unburnt, and burnt at maximum temperatures of 300 °C, 500 °C, 700 °C and 900 °C. Each sample was prepared to allow observation using binocular transmitted light microscopes with ×10, ×25 and ×40 magnifications. Results indicated that, if burial led to bioerosion, this will remain visible despite burning, as could be in cases where cremation was used as a funerary practice following inhumation. From this, we conclude that the observation of bioerosion lesions in histological thin sections of cremated bone can be used to interpret potential pre-cremation treatment of the body, with application possibilities for both archaeological and forensic contexts. However, the effect on bioerosion of substances such as bacterial- or enzymatic-based products often used to accelerate decomposition should be investigated. Keywords Cremation . Forensic science . Taphonomy . Histology . Osteolytic bacteria .
Experimental archaeology
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-02009446-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Jo Appleby [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Lemmers et al.
Introduction A central question in funerary archaeology is how human remains were treated and manipulated shortly after death (e.g. Roksandic 2002; Duday 2006; Knüsel and Robb 2016; Booth 2016). The practice of cremation is often interpreted as an alternative to inhumation, taking place shortly after an individual’s death. However, cremation could be a final stage in complex mortuary practices of bodily treatment, with previous steps that are obscured due to the heating process. Also, burning may have occurred on dry remains as a result of non-funerary practices such as accidental fires or skeletal reduction to free some space in funerary settings (Duday and Guillon 2006, Duday et al. 2009). Distinguishing such disparate practices is troublesome because of equifinality. The impact of heat exposure in skeletal remains is often quite similar regardless
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