Preliminary results of an investigation on postmortem variations in human skeletal mass of buried bones
| Autor: | Calil Makhoul, Maria Teresa Ferreira, David Gonçalves, Eugénia Cunha, Ana Amarante, A. R. Vassalo |
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| Jazyk: | portugalština |
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
Hot Temperature
Minimum number of individuals Human bone Exhumation Biology 01 natural sciences Pathology and Forensic Medicine 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Mass variation Cortical Bone Humans 030216 legal & forensic medicine Weather Forensic Sciences 010401 analytical chemistry Water Forensic anthropology Humidity Anatomy Compact Bones Skeleton (computer programming) Body Remains 0104 chemical sciences Postmortem Changes Cancellous Bone |
| Zdroj: | Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP) instacron:RCAAP CIÊNCIAVITAE |
| Popis: | Extreme fragmentation can complicate the inventory of human skeletal remains. In such cases, skeletal mass can provide information regarding skeleton completeness and the minimum number of individuals. For that purpose, several references for skeletal mass can be used to establish comparisons and draw inferences regarding those parameters. However, little is known about the feasibility of establishing comparisons between inherently different materials, as is the case of curated reference skeletal collections and human remains recovered from forensic and archaeological settings. The objective of this paper was to investigate the effect of inhumation, weather and heat exposure on the skeletal mass of two different bone types. This was investigated on a sample of 30 human bone fragments (14 trabecular bones and 16 compact bones) that was experimentally buried for two years after being submitted to one of four different heat treatments (left unburned; 500 °C; 900 °C; 1000 °C). Bones were exhumed periodically to assess time-related mass variation. Skeletal mass varied substantially, decreasing and increasing in accordance to the interchanging dry and wet seasons. However, trends were not the same for the two bone types and the four temperature thresholds. The reason for this appears to be related to water absorption and to the differential heat-induced changes in bone microporosity, volume, and composition. Our results suggest that mass comparisons against published references should be performed only after the skeletal remains have been preemptively dried from exogenous water. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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