May week in the OVH

As usual, we have had our Human Remains Team Annual May Week trip to Sedgeford's Old Village Hall (OVH) to work on a range of bone-related projects.

The weather was mostly warm and sunny – we still had to wear our fleeces in the OVH, but could eat our lunch in the sun, including some delicious cakes courtesy of Bill.

Martin, Sophie (and Bethan, on a visit) and Ray enjoy their lunch

Ray was looking at some of the old Brothwell records – Brothwell excavated our Anglo-Saxon burial ground in the 1960s. Some of our local skeletons from his excavations are in the Leverhulme Collection, in Cambridge. We are hoping to revisit them soon, and gather as much information as we can to add to our understanding of the whole population.

Ray takes a well-earned rest, Open Day 2017

We have been finalising a few projects we have been working on over the last few years, including one looking at measurements of teeth to determine the sex of a skeleton, and one looking at the skeleton of a child with signs of a specific type of subacute osteomyelitis – a type of infection of the bone causing long-standing abscesses.

Sophie and Katie compare a bone to its CT (computerised tomography) image

Martin has been working on the records of skeletons back here in the OVH, data checking and quality assuring the analysis we have done, in preparation for writing our osteological monograph.

HR team at work in the OVH, season 22 2017

We have also all been looking forward to the season, preparing for our two week-long Human Remains Courses and our Open Day display. The first course looks at the basics of identifying, analysing and recording human remains, and the second goes into more detail about a number of the interesting things we can look at in these individuals, including how they were buried, what the bones of children can show, and how newer technologies can improve our analysis.