Aug 10 – 14th 2009 INC

Aug 10 – 14th 2009 INC

All of us were at the INC for the second week of the research. The INC office is located a short distance off the Plaza de Armas (government square).
Our job this week was to wash and do inventory on burials from Patallacta & Ccotoccotuyo , Peru. We washed and inventoried over 60 burials!
Here’s a brief overview of how to wash bones. It’s pretty simple.

BONE WASHING:
Tools: basin, toothbrushes, dental tools (to pick out dirt), gloves, trays

Part one: WASHING
The burials were in individual bags. This did not mean that there was only one individual in the bag. We had burials from caves and tombs. The tumbas (tombs) & cuevas (caves) were co-mingled, so there would be more than one person per tomb, or cave. Obviously, the bones were covered in dirt, and the first step was to dry brush off as much of the loose dirt as possible. Then, using toothbrushes, we’d wet the toothbrush in the water, and scrub the bones. Then we’d lay them out on trays to dry. Pretty simple, eh? Well, yea, but monotonous. Imagine washing bones for 8hours. Yea, that’s what we did for 4 days.
Since there were 4 of us students, we generally washed in teams of 3. One person dry brushed, while the other 2 washed. This was the most efficient and speediest way to get the job done. We rotated daily. The 4th person did Bone Inventory on other burials with Valerie. This consisted of laying out each burial on trays and doing a basic one-over of all the bones. We’d log how many bones were present, how many crania were present and if there were any sub-adult bones. With the crania present, we looked to see if any exhibited trauma: fractures, cranial vault modification, or trepanations. We’d also determine the sex from the crania. In summation, we’d log the MNI: Minimum Number of Individuals present in each tomb from the long bones and the crania. The long bone MNI was determined by whatever bone had the most duplicates. So, if there were 8 Left femurs, and that was the bone that had the most duplicates, then, logically there’d be [at least] 8 individuals present in that tomb. Crania MNI was – obviously – determined by the number of complete crania/partial crania present.
All of the 60+ burials that we washed/inventoried will be looked at in depth next summer.