Author: Jacob Matthew Abbott

Week 5 update Monday Gillian sent me a…

Jacob Matthew Abbott / / Uncategorized

Week 5 update
Monday – Gillian sent me a 12 page skeleton evaluation form which detailed things like age, sex and height. I spent the day doing that.
Tuesday – The previous set of photographs looked too dark (though they looked ok though the camera’s screen) and so I had to do them again. This time I used the flash with both the diffuser on and set on low in order to get the photographs light enough without being washed out.
Wednesday – I went up to the analytical labs to ask how I would analyse the soil/clay I got out of the skull. Unfortunately the tests would take much longer then the remaining time left on the project, and so this will have to be done by the next person. I also measured the skull using the method in ‘Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains’.
Thursday – I re-measured the skull using a set of digital callipers to make sure they were right, I then planned my UROS report.
Friday – Friday was a short day, I used the measurements in a program called Foredisk 3.1 in order to determine the race of the skull. Using both the Forensic and Howell databases it was determined that the skull belonged to a white male, which is what I expected it to be.

Late post time week 4 Monday Another day…

Jacob Matthew Abbott / / Uncategorized

Late post time, week 4:
Monday – Another day of cleaning up the skull, making sure there wasn’t any dirt left in between the various bones.
Tuesday – A bit more cleaning. A school came to visit so I helped them age, sex and estimate the height of the skeletons we’d laid out in the previous weeks.
Wednesday – As it was the open day I spent most of my time giving people a run though of my project, I also had enough time to age and sex the skull (turns out it’s most likely male and was around 47 years old when he died).
Thursday – I re-aged the skull using the Meindl and Lovejoy method and calculated the age range to be around 35-45 (approx 40), I also took photographs of the skull in various anatomical positions using the forensic camera kits.
Friday – I spent the day doing a bit more research. I first tried to track down the man who found the skull (Erik Grigg) to ask him a few questions about it. An article I read mentioned he owned a music shop in the Mall, but when I went looking for it it seemed to have been shut down. I instead went to Jew’s House up the Steep Hill and asked them, luckily enough they had a magazine which had is handwritten account in it, meaning I don’t need to trawl the internet looking for a phone number.

Better late then never eh Week 2 Monday…

Jacob Matthew Abbott / / Uncategorized

Better late then never eh? Week 2:

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday – We learnt the proper techniques on how to clean bones and began work cleaning up boxes of bones we identified as dirty last week. All in all we cleaned 3/4 boxes worth. I also had a chat with Ron Dixon about the Fiskerton skull. He gave me loads of different ways to get the ball of clay inside the skull out.
Thursday and Friday – These two days were research days, I went to the uni library and checked out loads of books on the Iron Age.

Hello everyone I’m doing a Summer research project…

Jacob Matthew Abbott / / Uncategorized

Hello everyone,
I’m doing a Summer research project with Gillian based around the Iron Age skull found near Fiskerton (near Lincoln). I’ve been tasked with both cleaning it up and analysing it. I’ve been working with Dan and Sophie while we learn the skills and techniques we need in order to carry out our projects, here’s a basic list of what we did last week:
Day 1 – We met with Gillian and Clare to discuss the kind of things we need to do over the 6 weeks. Next we checked the inventory of 4 skeletons and filled out the appropriate sheets. We then spent the rest of the day constructing another skeleton in order to familiarise ourselves with the bones in the body.
Day 2 – First we analysed the skeletons in the lab, working out their height, age (using the teeth and pubic symphysis ) and gender (using various features of the skull). We also learnt and revised the bones in the hands and feet. Finally we went though the collection of bones, noting down which needed to be cleaned.
Day 3 – We carried on going though the collection (as there was over 100 boxes it took a long time). After this I made preliminary notes on the Fiskerton skull and made a basic plan of action on how to carry out the analysis.
Day 4 – We went to St. Katherine’s, a musem converted from a church. However, it had very little information about what we were doing.
Day 5 – We revised what we had learnt so far with Gillian.

I’ll most likely update this every week, there’ll be much more information once the project really starts going.