The Midhurst Mystery Bone’s

The Midhurst Mystery Bones


I was recently taken to an area of the Sussex downs, near the town of Midhurst, by my girlfriend to go on a geocaching trip and see all the places she used to play when she was younger. The area was heavily wooded, with a few grassland clearances and streams. The area was perfect for deer and although we were not fortunate enough to see one, we did see multiple deer tracks along the bank of the river we were following. 

            In one of the larger pools of the river I spotted a bone. After fishing it out, I found that it was instantly recognisable as it was a bone I have encountered a number of times and have developed a way of always being able to recognise it!

Figure 1: The Bone in the River Bed

The river then led to a large ditch where I found two more bones, seemingly associated with each other, on the edge of the bank. I immediately knew what elements these bones were from, however to definitely attain a species identification I took them to compare against Bournemouth Universities reference collection.

            As mentioned, the first bone was instantly recognisable as it has a very distinctive feature only found on one particular species. I first encountered this bone whilst working at Fishbourne Roman Palace. A visitor to the site was carrying a large cylindrical tube, within it was the same bone as the one I found at Midhurst, however it was almost twice the size. The bone was a Metacarpal from a Deer. The bone is instantly recognisable due to deep groves along both the posterior and anterior shafts, which are only found on Deer metapodials. Personally I always thought that these grooves always made the bones look like sticks of celery, however the curator, Robert Symmons, said that his way of remembering it is that they look more like ice skates!

            The bone found in the river at Midhurst showed these two grooves as well, showing that it was also from a deer. This specimen was a Metatarsal rather than a Metacarpal as the distal end was shaped like a D rather than a neat C shape. The final piece of analysis to do was to look at what species of deer it was. To do this I compared the bone between the three species of Deer you would expect to find in the area, and the closest match was Fallow Deer, with the size falling in between the range of the Roe and Red Deer (See Figure 2). 

Figure 2: Roe Deer Metatarsal (Bottom), The Midhurst Metatarsal (Middle) and a Red Deer Metatarsal (Top)

The final two bones that were discovered was a distal tibia and a calcaneus. To discover what species these were from I worked on the assumption they were from the same animal. The calcaneus was like no calcaneus I had seen before, with both ends being concave, rather than one end concave and one convex. Because of this I knew that this was not going to be a species I was very familiar with, so I could rule out medium sized mammals such as dog and sheep.

The only species that I could think of being present in the area of this size was badger. When these were matched up, I found that the calcaneus of a badger had a concave end, and the distal tibia fitted as well showing it also badger and was probably from the same animal.

Figure 3: The Midhurst Calcaneus (Bottom) compared to a Badger Calcaneus (Top). 

Figure 4: The Midhurst Tibia (Bottom) compared to a Badger Tibia (Top). 

My exploring of the woods around Midhurst led me to learn more about a species that I did not know much about before, with a couple of badger bones being found. Like the deer metapodials which I also found on this walk, the uniqueness of the calcaneus of badger led me to its identification, and now whenever I found a concave calcaneus, I will know to check against badger first!

Entheseal Change Analysis and the Potential for Zooarchaeology

Entheseal Change Analysis and the Potential for Zooarchaeology

            I have recently been learning about entheseal analysis of human skeletal material. Entheses are locations on bone where tendons and ligaments attach, the surface of which can vary between individuals due to repetitive stress on the muscle being reflected on the muscle attachment on the bone. Entheses have been analysed in bioarchaeological contexts to look at reconstructing life histories of individuals, by looking at whether any changes are present at particular entheses sites, and attributing these changes to a certain physical activity.

An example of this is Yonemoto’s (2016) study of Japanese populations in the 15^th to 19^th centuries, where the effects that different occupations had on entheseal change was assessed. The analysis showed different levels of entheseal change for different occupations, due to different repetitive areas of stress on the body occurring depending on what their occupation involved e.g. Fishermen who were known to load and unload boats had high levels of entheseal change in ankle and foot joints. However as I am more interested in zooarchaeology rather than human osteology, although I found the case studies very interesting, I immediately began to think of how this could be applied to animals.

Figure 1: Yonemoto’s study of entheseal changes in Japan discovered individuals occupations such as Fisherman, which was backed up by other evidence such as paintings.

To check whether this has been done before I conducted a quick literature search and found a distinct lack of articles applying this technique to animals.  One study I did find by Ninimak and Salmi (2014), looked at entheseal changes in reindeer. The study looked a Reindeer that performed a range of different activities including free roaming reindeer, species kept in a zoo and draught animals and studied the entheses using the same methods you would apply to a human skeleton. The results showed differences between all uses of the species. Differences between zoo and free roaming reindeer were found in the upper arm bones, interpreted as different feeding techniques. An overall higher rate of entheseal change across all bones in the free roaming reindeer was also found, and was  interpreted as due to their large scale migration patterns causing repetitive strain on certain muscle attachments. Further patterns were shown in the draught reindeer with increased entheseal change in the hind limbs, which was interpreted as repetitive strain from pulling weights behind them e.g. a sleigh.

Figure 2: Analysis by Ninimal and Salmi showed evidence for Reindeers being used to pull weights behind them e.g. Sleighs. Photo: Wikipedia

                  I believe that if this technique is applied more frequently to other species of animal, zooarchaeologists could discover a lot more about past human-animal relationships. As shown in the Reindeer case study, analysis of entheses can show what activities the animal undertook, which is usually invisible archaeologically. Examples of this could be the analysis of cattle entheses which may show changes in upper limb bones due to ploughing, which is rarely seen archaeologically. Other possibilities may include the analysis of dog remains to identify whether they were used for hunting over long periods of time or traction e.g. sleigh pulling, or horses which may face entheseal change during horseback riding.

                  Although problems with the recording of entheseal changes exist, due to all existing methodologies only relating to human bone, the simple recording of the presence or absence of entheseal change may give information about the animal’s life history, and what it was used for in the past.

References/Further Reading

Ninimaki, S. and Salmi, A K., 2014. Entheseal Changes in Free-Ranging Versus Zoo Reindeer—Observing Activity Status of Reindeer. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 26 (2). 314 – 323.

Yonemoto, S., 2016. Differences in the Effects of Age on the Development of Entheseal Changes Among Historic Japanese Populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 159. 267 – 283.