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Sore Feet
By Don Walker Restrictive, ill fitting and pointed shoes can result in a condition known as hallux valgus. This is where the proximal pedal phalanx (toe bone) of the great toe points laterally...
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Joint pain
Joint disease is one of the most frequently observed pathological disorders recorded in archaeological skeletal human remains. The joints represent the point at which two bones meet, allowing for...
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Osteological processing: the life and times of a bone washer.
By Sarah Matthews, BA, MSc. Senior Osteology Processor The stage between the archaeological excavation and analysis of a human skeleton is often overlooked. The washing and processing of the remains is...
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Osteology Day (Excavating Post-Medieval Cemeteries)
On Saturday 20th June, there is an exiting chance to discover what post-medieval cemeteries can tell us about life in the past. Meet the archaeologists and osteologists involved in the excavation and...
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Forensic bones and osteology
Every so often when the office phone rings, there is a police officer on the end of the line and we know that possible human bones have been discovered somewhere in the city. Living and working in a...
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Peacocks, tongue sandwiches and roast turkey; the ramblings of a museum...
By Dr James Morris As well as human remains, the osteology department deals with the animal bones recovered from archaeological sites, which are examined and reported upon by the two...
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Diseased Bone
Paget ’s disease A major difficulty when diagnosing pathological disease in archaeological skeletal remains is that many conditions may only affect the soft tissues of the body, such as the skin or...
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Visit to the dentists
Dental disease and other afflictions of the teeth were suffered by many in the nineteenth century. The analysis of skeletons from St Mary and St Michael, Whitechapel, London revealed over 80% of...
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The tail of a Monkey and a Tortoise and a trip to the Museum of Life
By Dr James Morris Recently I’ve been working on the animal bone from the Royal London Hospital (RLP05) excavated by MOLA in 2006. Some of this consists of waste from the hospital kitchens, and gives...
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Danger in the workplace –‘Phossy Jaw’
The growth of industry and advent of new manufacturing techniques brought with it associated occupational hazards for those going to work in the factories, building sites, dockyards and railways of...
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This month zoologist Alan Pipe talks about the resources for the identification of fish and wild bird bones from archaeological sites in London… Viewers of ‘Time Team’ and readers of archaeological...
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Blow to the head (sharp force trauma)
The medieval period saw much violence, with warfare, crime and civil unrest rife throughout (Powers 2005). Occasionally, evidence of such fighting is revealed in the bones of past populations, offering...
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The City Bunhill burial ground
This month osteologist Brian Connell talks about the human skeletons excavated at the City Bunhill burial ground, Golden Lane, London. Archaeological excavations by MOLAS in 2006 uncovered 239 human...
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Casualty 1800’s
This month human osteologist Don Walker talks about the analysis of nineteenth century trauma victims from the Royal London Hospital. The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London is a...
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LAARC VIP7: Skeletons
Although the bulk of our work during this Volunteer/Visitor Inclusion Project (VIP7) is focused on pottery, every Tuesday in the Archaeology in Action gallery, we have a table of Human Remains out on...
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Burnt Bones (The process and method of excavating cremation vessels)
S. Matthews, BA, MSc This month Sarah Matthews talks about the process of excavating human remains from cremation vessels. Click on the images to see further details of the excavation. Archaeological...
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Digital x-raying at St Bride’s crypt
Following a paper presented at the 2009 American Paleopathology (PPA) meeting in Chicago by Jelena Bekvalac, Curator, Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London, an opportunity arose to work on...
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Victorian Bones and Diseases
Bring the whole family to Museum of London Docklands on Friday 15th April 2011 to learn about Victorian death and disease and meet those involved in the analysis of the burial grounds and skeletal...
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Reorganising our curated osteology collection
During the course of building developments within the museum, some of the conservation boxes with skeletal material in the rotunda store had to be moved from their shelf locations and temporarily...
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Medical histories to ancient diseases
This month Katie van Schaik talks about some of the things she encountered in the two weeks spent with us… The ‘punched-out lesions’ were unmistakable, and their form matched what I’d seen only on...
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