| Entry: | First diary entry of the season, which feels a little odd having come from the West Mound tradition of daily diary entries. Different mentality being in the lab this year. Better in many respects, doing things I love, but still suffering the occasional lab fever and craving the digging.
The main aim of the human remains lab this year is to compile an inventory of every skeleton excavated since 1999 to enter into a shiny new database which will form a base level upon which further information and interpretation can be based. Significant work was done beforehand by several members of the team in preperation of such a mammoth project, but it is becoming apparent that there are issues, the scale of which we were not prepared for.
During the long history of the East Mound excavation, several burials have been excavated which contained multiple, heavily disturbed individuals. The prime offenders so far are space 87 from the 2002 Bach Season, and F. 1202 from the surface excavations of 4040. Here, a number of skeletons have been assigned, but often the quantity of disarticulated bone outweighs the more complete skeletons.
It was initially decided that 'individual sheets' would be the templates for the new database, however, what defines an individual? If a burial pit is excavated, with an articulated right leg, and a disarticulated little finger and three ear bones, then how many 'individuals are recorded here? The articulated leg is individual number one, obviousy, but how can we be sure that the ear bones and finger bones don’t belong to another individual, seperately buried in a feature which has since been heavily disturbed? Since starting, we have taken the common sense route. In the above case, if all the bones are adult, then we will assume that their proximity and similarity in size would suggest one individual. However, the situartion with F.1202 in particular where we have around 16 skeletons and literally hundreds of 'loose disarticulated' bone in the fill, how do we match up the bones with their owner?
It is only in carrying out this work that I have become aware of the sheer scale of stuff that we have here in the labs, and the potential consequences of our terminology of 'individuals' and how on earth we can ever hope to get close to a Mean Number of Individuals of Catal in coming years.
In other news,,, feel like I should comment on the arrival of the West Mound on site'; which has provoked a number of feelings on my behalf, and my role on the project. I genuinely feel the righ decision has been made. I suffered frustrations over the last few years, down largely to the archaeology of the west mound and my own excavator inadequacies. I wish the West Mound all the luck in their quest for the Chalcolithic. |
