Dr Ange Boyle is currently washing the skeletons from last year’s (2021) excavations. This is a time consuming process. It can take as much as a day to wash a complete skeleton. The bones then have to be laid out on trays and allowed to dry. Ange is selecting petrous bones as she proceeds. The petrous bone is a very robust part of the skull with one each side, left and right. Where they are surviving, one from each skeleton will be sent to the Crick Institute for DNA analysis. The image below shows an adult male petrous bone.
Petrous Bone 2021
The results of the DNA analysis should provide information on the origins of individuals and familial relationships. It will also confirm the osteological sexing of adults and confirm the sex of children who are not normally sexed using osteological methods as the characteristic sexually dimorphic features have not developed. This will be very useful when Ange analyses the children in the assemblage.