Putting skulls back together again

Seems like a slow week in the archaeology world of Southeast Asia, so here’s some pictures of the archaeological material I’m working on at the centre: skeletal remains from a site in Sarawak.

Skeletons from Niah


Skeletal remains don’t last very long in the archaeological environment; these are only about 1,000 years old but they’re already quite brittle. Each bone has to be carefully dusted using a stiff-haired paintbrush before being laid out on the table. After that comes the fun part: reassembly.

Niah skeletal remains

Which is a lot harder than it sounds, considering I never had a background in biology! Lucky for me, one of the other MA students also works at the local hospital as a forensic scientist. He taught me the tricks of putting a skull together, first by identifying pieces with similar thickness, and also through the lines found in the inner skull. Very much like a jigsaw puzzle in 3D - with a lot of the pieces missing. On my first try, it took me half an hour to get my first match. After that it’s a matter of cleaning the edges with a chemical solvent and then gluing them together. The pieces are set on a small sandbox overnight and then, voila! You’ve got one less piece to worry about.

Needless to say, it’s all painstaking work! All the remains (we’ve got a few skeletons) are fragmentary so it we use the skeleton model to cross-check where each piece might go. After an afternoon of searching, I only managed to pieces four pairs of skull fragments together before I got fuzzy-eyed.

Related Books:
- Early History (The Encyclopedia of Malaysia) by Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman (Ed)
- Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton
- Human Osteology, Second Edition
- Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation, Analysis, Interpretation
- Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains (Bioarchaeology) (Bioarchaeology)

Like this post? Share it on:
  • e-mail
  • Facebook
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Google
  • StumbleUpon
You might also be interested in:
The pre-colonial Bisayan practice of skull moulding
Last call for the World Rock Art course in KL
Latea Cave, burial site of Pamona ancestors
Repair work needed for Preah Vihear
Special: Six new Neolithic burials from Sarawak revealed

Tags: ,


You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

4 Responses to “Putting skulls back together again”

  1. Wow……….. sounds fascinating but tedious.

  2. it is!!! I just finished another round of bone dusting and i’ve got a cramp in my thumb. =_=

  3. wow that’s so cool! im a biologist by background and what you’re doing is really some serious work :)

    are you based in KL? i might be going there soon maybe we can meet up hahaha!

  4. Hi Carlos,

    unfortunately, I’m not in KL but in Penang. But i will be in KL in late september to early october. send me an email? seaarch [at] gmail.

Leave a Reply



Powered by WebRing.