1st December 2006, 06:05 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by sniper
I would argue against the graves containing babies that have disappeared. Troll's question was based on a conversation he had with me about this particular site, and i've been doing the bodies for it. There were 2 foetal/neonate individuals with fantastic preservation in little graves, and I disagree on principle with the suggestion that juvenile bone preservation is likley to be worse than that of adults, just not true on any of the many collections I've worked on. Juvenile bones don't just disappear
Of course, none of the other posters has any knowledge of this specific site and if you have preserved neonates and proportionally-sized graves, then I think we can discount my hypothesis in this instance.
However, I re-iterate that neonates degrade far faster than older skeletons.
I was very careful to refer to [u]babies</u> not juveniles. Even very young juveniles have considerably more calcium in their bones than neonates. I wouldn't call myself a bone specialist, but I have this on the authority of several osteologists and paediatricians of my acquaintance. Perhaps I am repeating an old orthodoxy that has been discredited; if so, I'd love a reference. Might I alternatively suggest, Sniper, that perhaps you have based your general point on the assemblages that survive to reach you (absence of evidence and all that)? Consider this: what are the levels of infant mortality in well-documented populations, like the Victorians? What proportion of the burial population from those periods are neonates? Are they the same? I don't think so. Where have all the babies gone?
I hope you'll appreciate that I am only following the debate, not making personal attacks.
Tom
'Have a good plan, execute it violently, do it today'.
General MacArthur