The Discovery Programme

Archaeology is the study of the human past mainly by dating and analysing the physical remains from that past, e.g. the ancient artifacts, monuments, sites, food-remains or palaeo-environmental samples that have survived either above or below ground.  However, it is obvious that we can get closest to the peoples of ancient times if we are lucky enough to find human skeletal remains (either complete or, as is more usual, incomplete, or cremated) from those times. Indeed much of archaeology in the past has been concerned with the investigation of burial sites and monuments. The forensic study of bones found in this way is known as osteoarchaeology and palaeopathology (study of ancient illnesses and injuries and the physical remains of ancient surgery).  Dr Eileen Murph, a specialist in this area, has written:

Osteoarchaeological and palaeopathological analyses of human skeletal remains can provide us with great insights concerning the physique, health, diet and lifestyles of our ancestors.  If a biocultural approach is employed – whereby the skeletal evidence is combined with information derived from a wide variety of sources, including artistic and documentary records, the environment and material culture – it is possible to gain an even more holistic understanding of past populations.   (Murphy and Whitehouse 2007, 48)

As well as the normal range of research issues the study of ancient skeletal remains raises a number of particular ethical concerns, as the objects of study were once living human beings. That matter has been addressed for Ireland in a study published by the Heritage Council in 2002: J. O’Sullivan, M. Hallissey and J. Roberts, Human remains in Irish Archaeology: Legal, Scientific, Planning and Ethical Implications.

Depending on the condition and extent of the find, studies of human remains found in archaeological contexts can often tell their date, their age at death, their sex, as well as the kind of details mentioned above about their physical condition and manner of living.

All of this information can be used to build up a picture of past populations (palaeodemography), as well as the way in which their societies were sustained e.g. their food and health culture.  More recently DNA studies are promising to tell us more about genealogy and the movements of people.  Scientific studies of human teeth can sometimes tell us about where an individual spent the significant growing years of their life – the particular tell-tale remains acquired through the localized water they drank when young. What specialists describe as ‘activity markers’ can also sometimes be detected giving us information about some of the habitual activities of the person in question e.g . clay-pipe tobacco smoking or even indications of work that the person did.