Inside the Museum of London

Hot off the Press….this month sees the publication of two brand new MOLA monographs invovling the work of the osteology team.

Excavations at New Bunhill Fields, Southwark in 2008 uncovered evidence of a heavily used private burial ground. Documentary sources suggest that from c 1821–53 up to 33,000 burials may have taken place in the commercial Nonconformist burial ground. Excavation of 827 wooden coffin burials allowed comparisons of the use of the burial ground, coffin furniture and burial finds with other contemporary cemeteries. Of particular interest were the good level of preservation of floral remains in a child’s coffin, ceramic plates in a woman’s coffin and good examples of burial clothing. The 514 skeletons selected for full osteological analysis, demonstrated a broad spectrum of pathological conditions including evidence of metabolic, infectious, congenital and neoplastic diseases. Evidence of trauma suggested high rates of interpersonal violence and eight skeletons showed signs of post-mortem examination. One adult male displayed a particularly striking case of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (cancer) with massive destruction of the central facial area of the skull. Another condition rarely encountered in the archaeological record was a case of osteogenesis imperfecta identified in an 18 month old child. This evidence will help provide information about life and death in this area of 19th-century London.

Next up is the much anticipated bioarchaeological study of the medieval burials from Spitalfields Market.

Major excavations in 1999-2002 on the site of the Augustinian priory and hospital of St Mary Spital uncovered the remains of over 10,500 human skeletons. Unprecedented accuracy of dating and phasing of the cemetery was achieved using a targeted programme of stratigraphic and radiocarbon dating techniques, resulting in four chronological periods of burials. Osteological analysis of a sample of 5387 skeletons has provided a unique insight into the lives of medieval Londoners from the 12th to the early 16th centuries. Many of the skeletons showed evidence of disease and injury including some of the earliest cases of syphilis in Europe. The results of this major project are integrated into a biocultural framework, which includes the recurrent famines and epidemics of the time, effects of urban living on child health, the role and influence of the hospital and the reasons behind the mass burial of almost 4000 people.

For more information and to order any Museum of London Archaeology publications go to:

http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/Publications/Ordering.htm

Since the beginning of 2012 the Osteology Department at MOLA has been involved in the Digitised Diseases project in collaboration with the University of Bradford the Royal College of Surgeons and funded by JISC. The ultimate aim of the project is to produce a web resource featuring high resolution 3D images of human bones with evidence of disease. Intended as a teaching tool, the website will allow detailed inspection of pathological lesions. Users will be able to move each image around in order to view it from every angle. They will also be able to zoom in to a high degree of magnification.

We hope that the value of the resource for medical students and professionals will be the ability to observe the various effects of different diseases on the bone and so understand how the pathological process affects the skeletal system.

It will expand on modern clinical experience by demonstrating changes that occur over long periods of time. In the pre-antibiotic age, chronic diseases were frequently incurable and could progress to their full degree. Advances in medicine have reduced modern doctors’ exposure to such cases. The website will provide a searchable database categorized by disease class, offering a diagnostic aid to help with cases of bone disease.

The creation of the resource requires a number of stages. For MOLA this started with the delivery of a FARO Quantum laser arm and a camera by the team from Bradford. Following training on the arm, and instruction on the method of photography and database entry, we were ready to go.

Specimens were selected with reference to those already scanned at Bradford in order to minimise repetition. By using the collections of three institutions it is hoped that the majority of skeletal diseases are covered. To date we have scanned nearly one hundred bones, including examples of infectious, metabolic, neoplastic and developmental disease.

Once a bone is chosen it is given a unique index number and entered into the database. Photographs are taken from every angle, concentrating on getting a focused shot of each part of the specimen. The bone is then placed on a solid heavy table and laser scanned. Usually this entails taking two ‘views’. Put simply, the bone is placed one way up to scan it, and then turned over to scan the other side. Each time the laser is moved over the bone is called a pass and it often takes a large number of passes to capture all surfaces and features of a pathological specimen. Each pass is recorded on the computer as a different colour.

Once the views have been completed and aligned, they are overlain and joined together on the computer. All scanned points are then aligned to produce a file containing a 3D image blank, which is sent off to Bradford with the photographs. There the photographs are mapped onto the blanks by games industry professionals to produce the finished models.

So please, let us know what you think, and how you might use this resource.

Fur further information see:

Last night saw the opening of the new Bone exhibition at the Florence Nightingale Museum. A fascinating gallery of around 60 artefacts, specimens, books, images and objects, all of a bone related nature.

From Chinese bound foot shoes to amputation saws, artificial hip joints to ground bone fertiliser, a collection of historical, scientific and cultural items. A radiograph of Sigmund Freuds head graphically revealed how his maxilla (upper jaw) was surgically removed after suffering from cancer. Perhaps they were less concerned at the time as to the effects of powerful X-rays on his brain!

The exhibit features a range of human pathological bone specimens: a femur (thigh bone) heavily eroded by an osteosarcoma (bone tumour), a healed subtrochanteric fracture of a hip, the heavily bowed lower limb of an individual who had suffered rickets and a sailors foot slightly crushed by a 600Ib cannon ball.

Amongst the animal bone on display, a giraffe vertebrae, a cat skeleton and a tortoiseshell belonging to Jimmy, Florence Nightingale’s ward pet. Aslo featured were objects loaned by our own Museum of London Archaeology specialists  Jim Morris and Michael Marshall: Medieval bone ice skates, a Bronze Age antler pick and an assortment of sheep metatarsals reflecting increased length over time through selective breeding.

The exhibition runs over the summer until August

This month  PhD student Rebecca Watts from the university of Reading talks about her recent research at the lab using skeletons from our archaeological collections.

People are much easier to deal with when they are dead. This is a thought which has occurred to me many times during my time at the Museum of London – usually as I make my way home on the Circle Line during rush hour! But fear not, I do not harbour any homicidal impulses, I’ve simply been having a wonderful time looking at the remains of around 1,000 ancient Londoners at the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology.

These skeletons come from a wide selection of London’s medieval and post-medieval cemeteries and the information they have given me will form an integral part of my PhD, looking at how health in childhood might have determined how long people lived in the past.

This is a topic which has been studied in modern day populations, where researchers can keep a record of birth-weight, childhood illnesses and growth rates to see if there is a link between childhood health and the types of diseases that people develop in later life. Projects like these have discovered that people who develop conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are much more likely to have been ill as babies and children, and even may have developed too slowly in the womb. However, the levels of health in modern populations are generally very good and if children do become ill we have medicines and other medical treatments to make them better.  I am trying to find out how poor childhood health affected long-term health in the past when exposures to illnesses and infections happened much more frequently and children had little more than their own immune systems to help them recover.

Unfortunately we do not have medical records for people in archaeological populations, so instead we must look at their skeletons for signs that indicate how well they grew during childhood. Periods of ill health which disrupt the growth of children can leave marks on their bones and teeth which can still be detected once they reach adulthood. One of the marks I am looking for is linear enamel hypoplasia. Permanent, adult teeth begin to grow when a person is just a few days old and are fully formed by six years of age. Poor health and malnutrition can disrupt enamel formation and leave horizontal bands or grooves on the crowns of teeth which do not grow out and stay there permanently. If an adult skeleton has these marks on their teeth we know they experienced periods of ill health between birth and six years of age.

By looking for linear enamel hypoplasias and other marks like them in adult skeletons it is possible to see how well that person grew as a child and find out whether they grew up in a healthy, hygienic environment or if conditions were poor and led to many illnesses and diseases. We then look at how old that person was when they died to see if individuals who were unhealthy as children had a shorter adult lifespan.

Large sample sizes are crucial when looking at epidemiological processes like these and Jelena, Mike and Veronica have been wonderfully accommodating to bring 1,000 skeletons out from their shelves in the rotunda and into the office on a trolley which carries just 12 skeletons at a time. Mike in particular has heaved so many boxes around that he has probably developed muscles that would make Eugen Sandow jealous. So now I am returning to my office at Reading University after three months at the museum, having taken over 31,000 skeletal measurements, drunk around 400 cups of tea, and consumed so many biscuits I cannot bear to think about it. The CHB is an amazing resource for students like myself and other researchers who study human remains and the information we gain from these London skeletons will help to solve many of the mysteries which surround experiences of life and death in the past. For this, it is worth travelling on the Underground at rush hour.

I recently spent the day with Museum of London Archaeology photographer Andy Chopping.

On arriving at the photography studio I was greeted by a large white backdrop screen and an array of camera and lighting equipment adjusted to my height. I had brought with me one of the well preserved human skeletons from our archaeological collections and began to set out the bones onto a large, six foot long light box.

I laid out the skeleton in standard anatomical position as I would during full osteological analysis: the body extended on the back with the feet together and palms facing forwards. Starting with the skull, I worked my way down through the spinal column, arms, hands, legs, feet and finally the ribs.

This time, however, a large camera pointed directly at me, recording my every move.  A total of 600 images were captured at one frame per second with simultaneous flashes from the lighting creating a strobe effect.

The result was a stop motion video, an animation whereby hundreds of individual images were edited down to form a 40 second film replayed at 12 frames per second (click link below to play).

Skeleton stop motion video 

The final product was edited down into a Quick time movie using Final Cut Pro

This month Katie van Schaik talks about some of the things she encountered in the two weeks spent with us…

The ‘punched-out lesions’ were unmistakable, and their form matched what I’d seen only on X-rays:  multiple myeloma, leading to the consumption of bone in the skull, both humeri, and in the distal femora.  Yet this man whose skeleton showed evidence of this disease had lived long before X-ray machines, long before a diagnosis of ‘multiple myeloma’ could have been made to explain the pain and fatigue he likely felt.

The opportunity to see the remains of a human afflicted with multiple myeloma was part of a learning experience in osteology and palaeopathology graciously provided by Jelena Bekvalac and Mike Henderson of the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology at the Museum of London.  I’m a third year medical student at Harvard Medical School in the United States – and I’m also in the process of earning my PhD in Ancient History from the Harvard Department of Classics.  Palaeosteology, which requires knowledge of human anatomy, pathology, archaeology, and history, is important for my PhD dissertation, though I had little prior exposure to the field before meeting Mike and Jelena and studying from the museum collections of nearly 20,000 sets of human remains.  The resources of the Museum of London are unlike those anywhere else in the world, and the abundance of learning opportunities there is matched only by Mike and Jelena’s generosity in sharing and teaching.

I was able to study the remains of humans who had lived with tuberculosis, amputations, osteomyelitis, syphilis, fractured bones, congenital dysplasias, osteoarthritis, dental disease, physical trauma, cancer, and gout, all maladies which are still with us today.

As a future clinician who has obtained medical histories from (living) patients in the process of my medical training, and also as an ancient historian, I recognize the importance of history: of the world, and of the individuals who form that world.  Palaeosteology permits us to tell a history as intimate as it is relevant.  With palaeosteology and its associated disciplines, the man called “Roman, multiple myeloma”
gains a voice: his diagnosis becomes part of the story of a Roman male who likely died after age 45; who was buried with ceramics; who had excellent teeth without cavities (and therefore probably didn’t eat too much white sugar). 

What we learn from his skeleton, combined with the knowledge we are privileged to gain from other skeletons, places him in the context of broader epidemiological phenomena in his world, and in ours.  His story, and those of countless others carefully looked after at the Museum of London, become part of the history of human life, illness, wellness, and death – of our history.

During the course of building developments within the museum, some of the conservation boxes with skeletal material in the rotunda store had to be moved from their shelf locations and temporarily stored elsewhere.

Once the building work was complete the boxes could be returned to the store but in turn needed to be located back on to different shelves and the inventory updated.  With the return of the boxes and the gaining of some new space within the store there was an opportunity for a rationalising of the space and re grouping of the boxes from the sites currently curated by the museum. As there are over 17,000 individuals curated that equates to a very substantial number of boxes and a major task.

The moving of the boxes and rationalising of the space within the store needed to take place in July in order to be ready to accept more material from other sites.

The endeavour of moving several hundred boxes to new locations in the store was a task that our curators would need assistance with to be able to complete and achieve the target. Most opportunely help was at hand in the guise of three willing work experience volunteers: Liam, Amelia and Kate.

Jelena Bekvalac, Curator Human Osteology explains more…

We had the pleasure here at the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology during two weeks in July to have three lovely work experience students with us, Liam Bateson, Amelia Stephenson and Kate Marrion. They were all extremely helpful, interested and really ably assisted in our grand task of rationalising the boxed skeletal material in the rotunda, re-labelling boxes and up dating the inventory.

Amelia and Kate although here with us for a shorter time aided in moving material from the lab back to the rotunda, assisted in replacing boxes on to the correct shelves, labelling boxes and listing new locations of the boxes which, are integral to the up keep of the inventory so we know where all the boxes are correctly located.

Liam and Kate were also able to participate in a session about object handling and so saw another aspect and objects in the museum. With the assistance of our plastic cast skeleton Dr W we were able to go through the names of the bones in the skeleton and how they articulate with one another. They all proved to be keen learners and had very good osteological aptitude, young osteologists in the making!

Liam was at the forefront of box moving and relocation being involved for a longer time period. Additionally to moving all of the boxes a record of their new locations had to be listed for the inventory to be updated and new location labels on the boxes. Once again Liam, Amelia and Kate rose to the challenge and diligently labelled the boxes and listed the new locations.  The task took considerable effort, was physically demanding when moving the boxes around and often very dusty. The boxes have now all been relocated, space created and new inventory locations noted, a great accomplishment. This outstanding achievement in the store could not have been reached without the help and hard work of Liam, Amelia and Kate, they were superb.

We try to to accommodate work experience requests when certain suitable tasks such as this reorganisation arise, my best advice if you are interested in helping us is to keep checking the museums website here.

Liam also found the time to write up his thoughts on his work experience for our blog which he shares with you now:

When looking for work experience I did not go out searching for a job in the Museum of London’s Centre for Human bioarchaeology. My specification was simple; something at least vaguely interesting. I tried various jobs; one of these trains of thought was working in a lab. This is the train that lead me into this job.

I had no real presumptions of what exactly it would be like other than the names of the people I would be working with and that there would be skeletons involved. When I told people what I was doing for work experience they stared blankly back at me bewildered. No one I knew prior to the work experience had any idea exactly what was in store for me. Up until now I haven’t actually explained what the department does. It’s simple; it studies human remains from the London area. These are uncovered from archaeological sites mostly from construction sites. The department is host to over 17,000 individuals more than half from one site; Spitalfields (with roughly 10,500 individuals) and so it is a brilliant resource for budding osteologists.

First impressions were good, it was a friendly environment and I was not set menial tasks which could bore me to death (which I have been told happens with lots of work experience). What it has made apparent to me is one, how tiring work is and two, that it is slightly more relaxed than I had previously expected.

For the largest part of my work experience I have been helping rearrange the boxes in the rotunda to create space and a form of organisation. I have also done some work on the human skeleton so I can (slightly unreliably) name all of the bones in the body (saving individual carpals, tarsals, ribs and some bones in the skull). I can now correctly lay out a skeleton and find its gender. And possibly have a rather shaky guess at the age.

Osteology aside, I have picked up some skills in logistics and some invaluable experience in the workplace.  However saying this it has not made much different to my future aims for work (my life plain is still completely indecisive after university).  

And lastly I want to say thank you to everyone who has helped me or let me help them in my work experience, it was a pleasure.

Bring the whole family to Museum of London Docklands on Friday 15th April 2011 to learn about Victorian death and disease and meet those involved in the analysis of the burial grounds and skeletal populations from this era.

The Victorian period was a time of great change.  In London, the expanding city saw massive population growth and the development of new industries that were to alter the shape of the city forever.

With this change came an increased pressure on resources, leading to poor sanitation, overcrowded living conditions, increased pollution, poor diet and working conditions. This was to have a significant affect upon human health and life expectancy, and such squalid conditions would have contributed to the rise of disease. 

Epidemics of smallpox, typhoid and cholera spread through the city and infectious diseases such as venereal syphilis and tuberculosis were rife. Rickets, scurvy, dental disease and many other conditions afflicted the population. The London Bills of Mortality record that approximately 40% of deaths occurred in children aged five or below. In the early nineteenth century, almost half the population would not live past their twentieth birthday.

The excavation and analysis of human skeletons from this period can help us to examine and better understand this changing and diverse population.  How the growing city affected the living and working lives of the rich and poor, and how the affects of poverty, deprivation and disease can be seen in the bones of those who lived during this time.

As part of a programme of events run over Easter, there will be an opportunity to discuss and observe the way diseases affected the bones of people from the Victorian era and learn how the study of a skeleton can provide information about age, sex, lifestyle, diet and illness.

Two sessions will be help at the Museum of London Docklands on Friday 15th April 2011: 11:30 – 12: 15 and 13:30 – 14:15

For more information see..

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/London-Wall/Whats-on/Events/eventDetails.htm?eventID=2896

Following a paper presented at the 2009 American Paleopathology (PPA) meeting in Chicago by Jelena Bekvalac, Curator, Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London, an opportunity arose to work on a digital x-ray project in the crypt of St Bride’s Church nearby the Museum.

Here, Jelena explains more:

“My paper presentation was based around the analysis of the 227 individuals retained in the crypt of St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London.

They are a particularly interesting and unique group of individuals as they have a substantial amount of biographical information associated with them provided by coffin plates and detailed parish records.

This provides a mine of information to assist with further research on the individuals allowing access to numerous documentary data such as birth and marriage certificates, all of which aids greatly in building up a more complete picture of individual lives and the times in which they lived.

I mentioned in my paper that during the analysis of the individuals many disease processes and trauma were discovered, further research of which, would be enhanced with radiographic investigation.

The nature and logistics of the skeletal material and the crypt itself did not make taking the elements off site to be x-rayed a feasible proposition and so the only real option available would be for a portable x-ray machine to be brought into the crypt.

Luckily, one of the people listening to my presentation was Jerry Conlogue from Quinnipiac University, USA, who has had many years experience with radiography and archaeological material, particularly mummified remains.

Jerry was fascinated by the crypt individuals and saw the opportunity for a challenge to be overcome in being able to implement an x-ray project at St Bride’s and he secured funding from the School of Health Sciences at his university to be able to come to London and establish a project with us.

The premise of the project was to ultimately create a digital x-ray archive of the individuals which would be available online from our Centre for Human Bioarchaeology website for research purposes.

So in the summer of 2010, Jerry was able to come to St Bride’s and with the assistance of Dr Mark Viner at Cranfield University and Xograph, hired a portable digital x-ray machine.

The Xograph x-ray system was set up in the crypt and Jerry, with the assistance of student Kelly Eggleton, was able to x-ray all the sub adults (those individuals less than 18 years old) and 70 of the skulls and mandibles. 

We quickly established the speed and efficency of having a digital x-ray machine available providing images of excellent clarity.

The following images are from x-rays taken of a young girl who died aged three years, seven months and nine days in 1840.

Due to the success of the first phase of this project, further funding has been secured from the School of Health Sciences to complete, this year, the x-raying of the remaining  skulls and mandibles.

It is hoped that there will be a continuation of the x-ray project and that the next phase will concentrate on the diseases and trauma identified in the bones.

This will then provide a unique x-ray archive and an invaluable resource for research that will hopefully be readily accessible to researchers via our website.

An added bonus to the nature of this project is that it is non destructive and acts in tandem with the skeletal database as a means of conserving the remains without continual handling of them.”

S. Matthews, BA, MSc

This month Sarah Matthews talks about the process of excavating human remains from cremation vessels. Click on the images to see further details of the excavation.

Archaeological investigations in 2010 by the Museum of London Archaeology revealed a number of Roman cremation vessels from a site in Surrey. While many of the vessels had been badly damaged by ploughing, 10 remained intact enough for further study.

The purpose of excavating cremation vessels is to ascertain how efficient the cremation process was, determine the distribution of bone in the vessel, gather knowledge about the pyre, and information about the individual cremated (age, sex and any pathological bone changes) skeleton (McKinley, 2004).

The excavation is carried out by carefully removing the soil from the vessel in spits (2-3cm layers). To begin, a piece of string is placed horizontally across the bucket dividing the vessel into two halves. One half is then excavated carefully and delicately by removing the soil and leaving the bone in place. To do this a variety of small trowels, wooden skewers and small brushes are used. This takes a great deal of patience, even the slightest knock to the bone can cause it to fragment. A plan and section is then drawn before excavating the other half.

The first spit (Picture 2) often contains very little bone, the overall the density of bone increases at the bottom of the vessel. After removing both halves of the spit, any bone uncovered is left in situ, photographed and planned.

Picture 2 (Pot B): Top of Spit two 

Picture 3 (Pot B):  top of Spit Three

Picture 3 shows the bone excavated from spit two revealing a dense quantity of bone. The majority of this bone comprises fragments of long bones, these often fracture in crescent or ‘U shapes’ (McKinley, 2004) running along the shaft. To the lower left corner of the urn a large, flat piece of bone has just been uncovered but is so far unidentified. Due to the density and overlapping nature of cremations often several pieces of bone need to be removed before elements can be uncovered enough to be identified. 

Picture 4 (Pot B): Top of Spit Four

As the excavation continues, the anatomical features of the bone become apparent and the large fragment in the lower left can now be identified as part of a pelvis. Spits are not always easy to keep to an approximate depth and there maybe variations in the depth across the pot. In the centre (Picture 4) the depth could only able to be taken down by 1.5cms due to a large patch of trabecular bone lying just below the surface. It is sometimes necessary to leave soil in place rather than risking destroying the bone.

Picture 5 (Pot B): Top of spit five

Towards the bottom of the pot large pieces of identifiable bone are present. The right side of the pelvis can be seen in Picture 5 with the auricular surface facing towards the centre. Each element is measured, photographed and planned in case it disintegrates further during lifting. Any colour variation is recorded as this may suggest temperature deviations during the cremation. Large identifiable elements are bagged separately with the context and spit numbers marked on the bag. 

Picture 6 (Pot A): Large areas of skull.

Picture six shows the importance of correct planning and excavation. Burning of the bone and shrinkage due to dehydration produces microfractures, these can result in the bone fragmenting during excavation and recovery (McKinley, 2004). The two large areas of skull can be seen in situ and once planned it is possible to tell that a very large piece of skull remained after burning.
 
The most important aspect of excavating cremations is to gain as much information as possible about the bone, the colour and disposition and any finds discovered inside the vessel. Once the bone is washed and dried, further analysis can be carried out to gain further evidence about the individual inside. This helps our understanding of the ritual and processes regarding cremated remains from the past.

For further information see..
Brickley, M. and McKinley, J. 2004. Guidelines to the standard for recording human remains IFA/ BABAO.