AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FUNERARY TREATMENT AND BACTERIAL BIOEROSION IN EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUMAN BONE
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FUNERARY TREATMENT AND BACTERIAL BIOEROSION IN EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUMAN BONE
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DOI：
10.1111/arcm.12190
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发表时间：
2016-06-01
期刊：
影响因子：
1.6
通讯作者：
Booth, T. J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Booth, T. J.
丧葬考古学的一个核心问题是解释尸体在死后是如何被处理的。细菌对内部骨微结构的生物侵蚀程度已被提议作为推断尸体早期死后历史的一种手段，因为有人认为这种形式的骨成岩作用是由生物体的腐败肠道细菌产生的。在这种模型下，不同形式的丧葬处理预计会在考古骨骼中留下生物侵蚀的特征。在这里，我们通过对来自 25 个欧洲考古遗址的 301 个考古人类骨骼薄片进行组织学分析，测试了古代人类骨骼的细菌生物侵蚀在多大程度上反映了丧葬处理。我们发现，生物侵蚀受到骨骼是否源自新生儿个体或缺氧环境的显着影响。当这些遗骸被排除在外时，生物侵蚀是由考古阶段控制的，其方式与已知的早期尸检处理和尸体分解的法医模型一致。这些发现表明，骨骼的显微分析在丧葬过程的重建中具有有用的应用，并为可能控制有机生物分子持久性和化石化的因素提供了一些见解。
A central problem in funerary archaeology is interpreting how the corpse was manipulated in the immediate post mortem period. The extent of bacterial bioerosion to the internal bone microstructure has been proposed as a means to infer the early post mortem history of a corpse, as it has been suggested that this form of bone diagenesis is produced by an organism's putrefactive gut bacteria. Under this model, different forms of funerary treatment would be expected to leave characteristic signatures of bioerosion in archaeological bone. Here, we tested the extent to which bacterial bioerosion of ancient human bones reflected funerary treatment, through histological analysis of 301 archaeological human bone thin sections from 25 European archaeological sites. We found that bioerosion was significantly influenced by whether a bone originated from a neonatal individual or an anoxic context. When these remains were excluded, bioerosion was controlled by archaeological phase in a manner consistent with known early post mortem treatment and forensic models of bodily decomposition. These findings suggest that microscopic analyses of bone have useful applications in reconstructions of funerary processes and provide some insight into factors that may control the persistence of organic biomolecules and fossilization.