2nd December 2006, 12:33 AM
course I appreciate that you are just following the debate, I'm not taking it in any other way, but I still disagree that neonate bones degrade faster than older individuals. A lot of a neonate's body is still cartilage and doesn't survive but what is bone is bone and stays around as well as older individuals. I am very aware that archaeological cemetery populations are lacking in numbers of very young individuals, but I disagree that this is purely down to preservation. As I said before, very young individuals are likely to be totally removed by later activity, very young individuals are not seen, or recognised during excavation, particularly with commercial excavation time pressures, and they end up on the spoilheap rather than in the lab, young individuals may not have been accorded burial in the same place as older individuals...there are many reasons why there is a disparity between what is found and what should be there, and its a lot more complicated that the old get out clause of poor neonate preservation. Check the disarticulated bone from cemeteries for the very young, they usually turn up in there if nowhere else, and check the animal bone as well, it tends to be juvenile bones that are most commonly misidentified as non-human. I refer you to Scheuer and Black (2000)Developmental Juvenile Osteology (Academic Press), which says pretty much the same as I've said (I did write this before I went and checked in there, honest!) and states that juvenile preservation is just as good as that of adults
++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++
++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++