Shannon A. Novak

Patterns of Injuries Accident or Abuse

This study uses two types of independent variables, age and the location of the physical wound, to develop a model of injury patterning that identifies violent behavior without direct observation of the assault. In this research, domestic violence injuries are compared to accidental injuries. The results indicate that there are specific and predictable injury patterns that separate abuse from other kinds of wounds. A logistic regression model was developed to identify the regions of the body most susceptible to injury from domestic assault. Using the age of the victim and the injury regions, probabilities were calculated to determine which wounds were caused by abuse.

MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN STARVING : ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DONNER FAMILY CAMP

In spring of 1846, the George and Jacob Donner families and some 80 traveling companions began their overland trek to California. When the party ascended the Sierra Nevada in late October, a snowstorm forced the group to bivouac. At this point, the train became separated into two contingents; the larger party camped near Donner Lake and the smaller group—including the Donner families—settled at Alder Creek. Though written accounts from the Lake site imply many resorted to cannibalism, no such records exist for Alder Creek. Here we present archaeological findings that support identification of the Alder Creek camp. We triangulate between historical context, archaeological traces of the camp, and osteological remains to examine the human condition amid the backdrops of starvation and cannibalism. A stepped analytical approach was developed to examine the site’s fragmentary bone assemblage (n = 16,204). Macroscopic and histological analyses indicate that the emigrants consumed domestic cattle and horse and procured wild game, including deer, rabbit, and rodent. Bladed tools were used to extensively process animal tissue. Moreover, bone was being reduced to small fragments; pot polish indicates these fragments were boiled to extract grease. It remains inconclusive, however, whether such processing, or the assemblage, includes human tissue.

To Feed a Tree in Zion: Osteological Analysis of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre

In September 1857, some 120 men, women, and children on a wagon train bound for California were massacred in southwestern Utah. Who was responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre is a question that still sparks considerable debate. According to traditional historical accounts, the adult males of the company were shot by local Mormon militiamen, while the women and children were killed by Paiutes or other Native Americans. An unexpected opportunity to assess the skeletal evidence in the case arose in summer 1999, when a mass grave containing 28 of the victims was accidentally unearthed. Bullet wounds were found to affect primarily young men, although one subadult and possibly a female also exhibited gunshot trauma. The crania of three children, two subadult males, and one adult female were fractured by blunt force trauma. No wounds were identified that would corroborate historical accounts of the victims being scalped, having their throats cut, or being shot by arrows.

Evaluation of HealosMP52 Osteoinductive Bone Graft for Instrumented Lumbar Intertransverse Process Fusion in Sheep

Study Design. HealosMP52 was evaluated in a sheep model of instrumented lumbar intertransverse process spine fusion and compared to autogenous bone graft. Objectives. To determine the long-term efficacy and safety of HealosMP52 as a bone graft substitute in posterolateral instrumented spinal fusion. Summary of Background Data. Although the standard intertransverse fusion method employs autogenous iliac crest bone, autograft has certain limitations. HealosMP52, an osteoinductive bone graft material, can facilitate noninstrumented posterolateral spine fusion in rabbits and nonhuman primates, but the long-term outcome of such fusions has not been evaluated. Methods. Eleven skeletally mature, female sheep were instrumented with pedicle screws and rods at L2–L3 and L5–L6. Each animal was treated with autograft bone at one fusion level and HealosMP52 at the other. At 6 and 12 months after surgery, bone formation was measured on contact microradiographs and by backscattered electron imaging. Bone core biopsies taken from 6-month and 12-month specimens were evaluated histologically for pathology indicative of osteosarcoma. Results. Grossly, all autograft- and HealosMP52-treated levels showed stable fusions at 6 and 12 months. HealosMP52 and autograft treatments resulted in equivalent mean percent bone volumes within fusion bodies; similar values were observed at 6 and 12 months. Fusion bodies contained cortical and trabecular bone with osteoid seams and fatty marrow, and fusion masses showed maturation from 6 to 12 months. HealosMP52 treatment was not associated with implant migration, ectopic bone formation, or pathologic abnormality. No histologic evidence of osteosarcoma was seen on bone core biopsies. Conclusions. This long-term assessment of the use of HealosMP52 in posterolateral instrumented spine fusion indicates that HealosMP52 possesses safe and efficacious bone grafting properties and can potentially serve as anosteoinductive alternative to autograft bone.

Perimortem processing of human remains among the Great Basin Fremont

The perimortem butchering of human remains has been proposed for many sites in the Anasazi Culture Area of the southwestern United States at around ad 1000. This paper presents evidence that similar practices occurred in an adjacent culture area to the north. A cluster of Fremont sites in south-central Utah show evidence of this same processing pattern including scalping, dismemberment, cooking, and fracturing of long bones. The material from one of these Fremont sites, Backhoe Village, is presented to illustrate the similarities with butchering patterns found among the Anasazi. These parallels raise questions of contact between the two populations as well as having implications for the motives involved in these butchering practices. Copyright

The Signature of Starvation: A Comparison of Bone Processing at a Chinese Encampment in Montana and the Donner Party Camp in California

Analysis of faunal remains from the historic China Gulch site in western Montana have shed light on behavioral strategies deployed by a marginalized population in a relatively undocumented historical context. China Gulch is a site where Chinese miners set up a temporary shelter after they were ostracized by white miners. Small bone fragments recovered at the site near a hearth suggest that the group underwent nutritional stress. The faunal remains were analyzed for evidence of butchering and processing following methods used to assess the bone recovered at the Donner Party Alder Creek campsite. The China Gulch findings were compared to the processing patterns identified at the Donner site to further support skeletal evidence for a qualitative signature of starvation.

Leave taking: Materialities of moving over land

Drawing on recent theories of materiality and non-human agency, this article examines the aftermath of a compelling episode in American history, the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857. In particular, I focus on certain ‘extensions’ of the massacre victims, as they encounter and become entangled with other material traces and embodied remembrances over the course of the twentieth century. An initial illustration of this process is drawn from the life history of an Arkansas native whose movements to and from his homeland have entangled him in the vast assemblage brought together by the events at Mountain Meadows. I then turn to the rupture in this assemblage that was triggered in 1999 by the exposure of human bones at the massacre site. Materiality theory highlights the ways in which some objects (or their parts) persist and remain inalienable, while others circulate with varying degrees of freedom. Patterns of persistence and circulation are analysed here by focusing on two kinds of objects with intimate ties to the massacre victims: the bodies of the 17 surviving children, and six buttons made of glass and metal.

Partible Persons or Persons Apart: Postmortem Interventions at the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, Manhattan

This chapter focuses on three individuals whose anatomized remains were recovered from burial vaults associated with an abolitionist church in Manhattan. Active between 1820 and 1850, the vaults contained the remains of some 200 individuals. Only three—an adult, an infant, and an adolescent—displayed evidence of postmortem intervention. The adult and infant were likely subjected to autopsies, relatively private procedures that only briefly interrupted the funerary process. The adolescent, by contrast, was probably dissected, and thus objectified in a public spectacle that dismembered the body and transformed the cranium into a teaching specimen. Yet remains of all three individuals were interred together, alongside other members of the congregation. These cases shed light on societal changes taking place during a period of rapid urbanization, when the makings of race and class, gender and life course, self and other were intertwined with the variable processing and positioning of human bodies.