(pops, bell dings)
(paper tearing)
(sunny pop music)
- Can skeletons speak?
A special group of
scientists called
forensic
anthropologists say that
yes, they can.
But how do we understand
the language of bones?
Forensic anthropologists
know how to investigate
human remains to provide
evidence for law enforcement.
They also examine human
skeletons and the objects found
with them to learn about
people, how they lived
in the past, and stories that
may otherwise remain untold.
We'll learn more
about this work today
when we meet with
Kari Bruwelheide,
a forensic anthropologist
from the Smithsonian's
National Museum of
Natural History.
(sunny pop music)
Hi, thanks for joining us.
I'm Maggy Benson, host
of Live from Q?rius,
Smithsonian Science How.
We have a really
interesting story
about forensic
anthropology for you today.
And before we dive in, I
want to ask you a question.
You can respond using the
poll window that appears
to the right of
your video screen.
So, if you found bones in the
ground, what would you do?
Would you dig them up
and study them yourself,
run the other way
and keep it a secret,
or call the police
and let them know?
Take a moment to think about it.
(sunny pop music)
It looks like a lot
of you are responding
that you would call the police.
That's really interesting.
So, let's go to
our special guest
to find out what
she may have done.
So today we have with us
forensic anthropologist
Kari Bruwelheide,
from the Smithsonian's
National Museum of
Natural History.
Hi, Kari.
- Hi.
- Thanks for joining us.
- Thank you for having me.
- So, to kick things
off, can you actually
just tell us what a
forensic anthropologist is?
- Sure, a forensic
anthropologist is
somebody who studies
human remains, usually
bones, and maybe even
retrieves them
when they're found,
to determine who
that person was,
how they lived, and also
possibly how they died.
And the techniques that
we use to study bones
are applied to bones of any age.
So even though forensic
anthropologist applies to people
who typically work
with law enforcement
to solve forensic cases
in the present day,
we go back and study bones
thousands of years old
to get the same
types of information.
And most people don't
know that the museum here
has over 30,000 sets
of human remains,
and those are used not only to
solve crimes in the present,
but also to learn
more about our past
and to train the next generation
of forensic scientists.
- So can I ask, when you
were in middle school
or high school, what
would you have done
if you had found
bones while digging,
or maybe in the woods one day?
- Right, well, when I
was in middle school,
the field of
forensic anthropology
was not as well
known as it is today.
So I have no idea
what I would do.
I probably would have
run the other way.
(laughter)
But today, you know, we
have so many TV shows,
we have so many news
programs about forensics
that really, it's a new
field, but it's one that's
very well-known today
and very popular.
- So you've brought
a lot of objects here
for us to look at today.
Can you tell us about
something that you've brought?
- Yes, I've brought some
very special objects
from our collections, and
this one in particular
is special to us, because
this is a real forensic case
that we documented and
actually presented the evidence
in court and convicted an
individual on this case.
We determined that this
person was a white female,
25 to 29 years old,
we were able to get
a positive identification on her
and determine that
her cause of death
was from being beaten
and then put into a well
while she was still alive.
And again, that was a
powerful piece of evidence
in a court of law that was used.
So we're able to get
a lot of information
from the skeleton.
- Wow, that's so interesting
that you were able
to learn so much and
ultimately get a conviction.
So, can you tell us how
you read these bones?
How do you know
that information?
- Yeah, there's lots of
clues hidden in bones.
You just have to
know where to look.
One of the basic
pieces of information
we first collect is age.
And for her, we went
first to the teeth,
that is absolutely
the best way to tell
the age of a person from
the time that they're born,
even in utero, up to
the time they're about
early 20s, because
their teeth are still
developing and growing.
If you look at her teeth,
she has eruption of
all of her teeth.
She even has a loss
of her third molar.
But when you look
at younger people,
their teeth are
still developing.
So this is a mandible,
the same bone,
of a young person,
and it still has teeth
that are unerupted.
So you can estimate age
within about a year.
If you have somebody
who has no teeth,
as this individual shows,
we call that edentulous.
That indicates, typically,
an older person.
But there are also
things in life
that can cause loss of
teeth at a younger age.
Another important
area to look at
for determining
age, that we used
on this person, was
looking at growth plates.
Now, just like teeth
developing growth
throughout somebody's lives,
you have areas of bone
that, as you grow, they
have not yet fused together.
- So it grows from this end?
- Right, the growth occurs
from the ends of your bones.
This is a femur,
this is at your knee.
That's why kids often have
growing pains in their knee.
It's actually this
growth plate that's
creating more bones,
and at certain times,
these growth plates
will lock together,
and then you'll be done growing.
So we know what
stages that occurs,
and we can estimate
age from that.
Another important piece
of information is sex.
How do we tell if this
is a female or male?
And, again, you have to
know what bones to look for,
features of males or females.
The absolute best area to go to
to determine sex is the pelvis,
because women can do something
that men can never do,
and that is give birth.
And if you first
look at these two
pelvises, you can see that
they look pretty identical.
But close observation
of certain areas
on the bones, the
front, the side,
you begin to note differences.
And for the female, a
combination of those features
allow that baby to pass
through the pelvic inlet,
versus in males, that's
just not gonna be possible.
So when we look
for sex, we go to
the hip bones, and we
look for those areas
to determine male or
female characteristics.
- So these are the
same angles that are
different on the ones
you just showed us.
- Yeah.
But, again, you
don't always have
all the bones of a skeleton.
Sometimes you're
missing elements.
So in that case, you can
refer to other areas.
And, as I said,
this was a female,
so in looking at her
skull, we can also see
traits indicative
of being a female.
The front here, the brow ridges,
are very undeveloped,
they're very gracile.
They look petite,
versus this individual,
who is a male, and he has
very developed brow ridges.
These are where muscles attach.
So if you look at the
back of the head as well,
and you can even feel
where your neck muscles
join with your
skull, you will get
an area known as
the nuchal crest,
and in females, if you
can take a side shot,
this will be, move my
hands here, very smooth.
Back here, she does not
have a well-developed crest.
Versus this individual,
you can even see
a little protuberance, a hook.
So those muscles, this
piece of bone here,
behind your ear, in men
it's gonna to be very large.
Again, it's where
a muscle attaches.
In women, this is
gonna be small.
So age, sex, and then
different marks on bones
that tell us possibly
how a person died
or how they lived
are very important.
You want me to show you some?
- Yeah, I would love that.
- Okay.
When marks occur in bone
and you're still alive,
you survive the incident,
these are called
antemortem injuries.
And this is an
incredible fracture
that occurred in the
femur of an individual,
and the bones heal.
They remodel.
So we know that
this person survived
and lived for a longer period
of time after the injury.
- That looks incredibly painful.
That's not what a properly
healed bone looks like, is it?
- This person wouldn't
have gone to the doctor.
Now if we look at
this individual,
our forensic case, as I
said, she had injuries
that occurred at
the time of death.
Look at her break: There is no
healing that occurred to
join these bones together.
So this occurred at
the time of death.
This is a perimortem injury.
And you can see that is similar
to this individual, who
has marks on their bones
that have not
remodeled or healed.
These also occurred
at the time of death,
and you can tell
that, too, by color.
That's something I
didn't mention is,
the color of that
fractured surface
is similar to the
outside surface,
so we know that that bone injury
occurred at the time of death,
versus if you look
at this bone here,
that break is much
lighter in color.
So that occurred many
years after death.
That's a postmortem injury.
- Wow, so I can't believe
how much information
that you can get just
from the bones themselves.
Do you use any other
tools or technology?
- Yes, we use lots
of different tools,
because what we can
see with our eyes,
we call that gross
observation, is very limited.
So we use tools to get
deeper into the bones.
So one of those
tools is microscopy.
You see an image
on the screen here
of a scanning
electron microscope,
and that's a picture of a tooth,
but you actually can
pick out striations
on the enamel, it's so detailed.
Other tools that we
use would be X-rays,
and in that case we're not
looking at the surface,
but we're looking
internally into the bone.
So that gives you
information on maybe
dental development, what
teeth are developing
inside the bone.
It also gives you
information on bone density,
which might give clues to
a person's age or health.
We also use CT
analysis, CAT scanning.
I don't know if you've
ever heard that term.
But that allows
us to look inside
even an object
like you see here,
that individual was
in an iron coffin.
We didn't even have
to open the coffin.
We were able to penetrate
the burial container
and look at that
individual and get his age,
we could even see other
features of how he was dressed.
So there are lots
of tools, and also,
now, we're going even
deeper and looking at
the chemistry of bones,
to learn how people ate,
their diets, and also
getting their DNA.
- Wow, that's
really interesting.
So a lot of different
tools, and a lot of
gross observations.
- Yes.
- So we have a question,
actually, from Dyson,
from New York.
- Ready to take it?
- Yes.
- All right, Dyson
would like to know
how can you figure out what
the person looked like?
- Ah, well that deals with
forensic facial reconstruction.
And I actually brought a model
at the end of the table, there,
that shows a
half-reconstructed face
and an unreconstructed
model underneath.
And basically, we know
how deep our tissues are
on our faces.
And we vary that by
the age of the person,
their ancestry,
and also their sex.
Are they a man or a woman?
And we can use the tissue depths
to put markers and rebuild
the person's likeness.
And things that
you wouldn't think
you would be able to
tell from the bone,
things like the
size of the nose,
or the wideness of
the mouth, they're all
based on structures of
the skull underneath.
- [Maggy] Oh, that's
so interesting.
So with all of these
observations and the tools
and technology
that you're using,
you're really being
able to go from
something that you're
finding in the ground
to being able to really
put a face to those bones.
- [Kari] Yes, facial
reconstruction is
really powerful.
- Wow, so I really feel
like I have a grasp
on what a forensic
anthropologist is now.
Let's go to some of
your research here
at the Smithsonian.
I know that you've worked
in Jamestown a little bit.
- Yeah, for the past,
wow, two decades now,
we've been doing--
- [Maggy] Longer
than a little bit.
- Yeah, a lot of work on early
colonial sites in
the Chesapeake.
And they're important because,
for that first 100 years
of settlement, from
1607 at Jamestown
up until the 1700s, very
little was written down.
So what we have is the
archaeology, what we can find,
and then what we can interpret.
And one of the pieces of
evidence regarding that
is the human skeleton.
We have looked at the
burials of numerous
colonists, but also
Africans who were brought
to this region, and we're
able to piece together
their stories that were
never written down.
At Jamestown, it's
particularly exciting, because
that was a colony
that almost dissolved.
- [Maggy] How?
- Well, during one
period in time, there was
a lot of starvation,
particularly during one winter,
and there was also a lot
of violence and turmoil.
So 80% of the people who arrived
one winter did not survive.
And figuring out
why that occurred,
what these colonists
were dealing with,
is really something that only
can be answered in the bones.
- So I understand that
you've actually brought
a real case from
Jamestown here today
for us to analyze together
and with our viewers online.
- Yes, we're gonna talk
about a particular find,
or discovery, at
Jamestown that just was
brought to light
about a year ago.
These were bones that
were found in a trash pit.
They weren't actual, it wasn't
an actual grave or burial,
and not a whole
skeleton was found.
All that was found of
this individual was
partial crania, and you can
see that on your screen,
the bones were in
all separate pieces,
and then in the
corner of the screen
are the bones from
the top of a leg,
that were also recovered.
- [Maggy] Were they all
in the same trash pile?
- They were in a
trash pile with debris
that's dated to
this starving time,
winter at Jamestown, 1609, 1610.
- Interesting.
So what can we solve
here with you today,
having just that limited
amount of artifacts?
- Well, again, based on
what I talked about earlier,
the basic types of
information we collect,
one of the first questions
that we could answer is,
how old is this person, and
are they a male or a female?
- Great, so I understand
we're going to ask
a series of questions of
our audience right now,
and you can lead us
through the discovery.
So I guess we'll start with age?
- Yes, why don't
we start with age.
And because we have the skull,
one of the things that
we're gonna look at
is the teeth, the
dentition of this person,
to see if there are any
clues that can tell us
how old they were.
Here you have the upper
jaw and the lower jaw,
and you can see that the teeth
are mostly all there, with the
exception of the third molar.
I don't see that, but
if you look closely
at the bottom jaw, that's
on the right-hand side,
you can see the little
surface of the tooth.
So this person had an
unerupted third molar.
- Interesting.
So we have a poll up
there for you now,
and let us know if you think
this was of a young child,
a teenager, or maybe an adult.
So it looks like a lot
of you, 83% of you,
are responding that
it is a teenager.
What do you think
about that response?
- Well, I think that's
a great response,
'cause they're right.
This is a teenager, and
actually we can look
at the stage of formation
of that third molar
inside the bone by
looking at her X-ray,
or its X-ray, and we
can tell that it is
about, well, just
the root of the tooth
is starting to form, and
based on growth standards,
that's a 13- to
14-year-old person.
- Wow, interesting.
So we know that it's
a young teenager.
What else can we--
- Well, we want to find out
if this is a boy or a girl.
So one of the things
that we look at,
of course we don't
have the hip bones,
which would have been the
best way to determine sex,
so we're gonna look at
features on the cranium
and on the mandible.
But if you look at this cranium,
and also remembering what
you saw on the screen,
look for those areas on the
skull that I pointed out
that had the muscles attached.
You can see the mastoid
here is very small,
it's undeveloped,
part of that is age
because this is
a young teenager,
but also the forehead has
very little development
of the brow ridges, and
the back of the skull
is very smooth.
There's no defined
crest where the
muscles attached in the back.
- [Maggy] So let us
know what you think.
Is this a boy or a girl?
So, again, I think we have some
pretty good answers out there.
88% think it is a girl.
- It is, and I might
have given that away,
because I did refer
to it as a her,
but it is a young,
it is a young woman,
about 13 to 14 years
of age, and again,
that corresponds
beautifully with the
piece of leg bone
that was found,
because that also has
an open growth plate.
We talked about
those growth plates.
And so this person was still
growing when they died.
- Interesting.
So what's next?
- Well, let's figure
out why these bones
were not in a
typical burial, what
got them to being thrown
away in a trash pit?
So we look for marks on the bone
that might help us
solve that mystery.
So one of the first
areas on the cranium
that we saw these marks
were the forehead.
So maybe your
students can look at
these marks here,
those roughly parallel
four marks on the
forehead, and that is
a good clue, or
a starting point,
to determine what
happened to this person.
- [Maggy] So you're
thinking right now at home,
what caused those
marks on those bones?
Was it from animal scavenging,
was it caused by some
kind of tool or weapon,
or maybe damage from
excavation when she was dug up?
So it looks like we
have 75% have said B,
impacts from tools or weapons.
What do you think about that?
- Well, that's a
great answer, because
that's what we thought, too.
If you look very
closely, you can see
the internal areas
of those marks
are dark in color, so
if they were lighter,
they would have been
made by a trowel
of the excavator,
but they're not.
They were made at the time,
or near the time, of death.
You can also actually
get the imprint
of the tool that made them
if you look close enough.
So we do think these
are made by tools.
- So why would there be
tool marks on her head?
That's--
- Well--
- A little disturbing.
- It is disturbing, and
you have to think of
the context of the
time, again, I said that
she was found in remains from
the starving time period.
It was called the starving time
because people had
very little to eat.
They were resorting
to drastic measures.
Now, you might think, well,
did these marks kill her?
Are they evidence of death?
Well, these marks
on the forehead here
actually would not
have killed her.
They do not penetrate the bone.
But if you look at other
areas of the skull,
you start to see a pattern.
So if you look at
the back of her head,
you see these
forceful chops made.
We know that these frontal marks
were made first, because
there would have been
no reason to chop
the back of the head
before you attempted
to do it at the front.
And we also can look at
how these are arranged.
So let me ask you a question,
do you think she was
alive when these
marks were made?
- I'm not sure, it looks like...
I wouldn't let somebody hit me
in the head that many times.
- You would be moving around,
you would be struggling,
and so there's no way
that somebody could have
chop, chop, chop
at the head without
that person already being dead.
So these marks were made first,
they turned her
over, they forcefully
chopped at the back of the head,
and then you start
to see more clues.
You start to look
at the mandible,
and you see there are
little striations,
little cuts, on the jaw.
You start to see that
there are punctures
underneath the jaw.
These were made on areas
that muscles attach to.
So basically, they were
trying to get the muscle,
the tissue, off of her
face, and they were trying
to get into the skull
to get the brain.
And you might ask,
oh, this is really
getting gross, what
could have caused this?
But again, this is at
a starving time period,
and people were resorting
to survival cannibalism.
And this is real proof
of that occurring.
We know that colonists
talked about it,
but historians today
were starting to dismiss
those tales, those rumors.
But actually now we can say
this happened in history,
and you can no longer deny it.
- Interesting.
So really the discovery
of this skeleton,
or the pieces of this skeleton,
have really helped
you better understand
the historical context
of what was happening
in that really harsh winter.
- Right, I mean, this
gives you a very different
sense of the
desperation that the
people who were surviving
had experienced.
It also gives us a real
connection with the people
who were there who were victims,
even unwilling victims,
of that struggle.
You know, this young girl is
part of the Jamestown story.
Usually you think of
Jamestown and you think of
John Smith and Pocahontas.
But they were real
desperate times,
and most of the people
who came and settled here
were teenagers like her, and
many of them did not survive.
And we have to tell
their stories, too.
- [Maggy] So, how do
you know, it sounds like
she was a colonist, but
how do you know that
she's a colonist and not
maybe native to that area?
- Right, well, that's
one of the questions
we needed to answer,
and there are a number
of different clues again.
One of them is the
shape of the skull,
but another important clue
is the bone chemistry.
European diet was very
different from diet
in the Americas
during the 1600s.
Europeans ate wheat; Americans
were mostly corn-based.
So by looking at
her bone chemistry,
we're actually able
to tell what she ate.
"You are what you eat" is not
just a term that we use today
lightly, it actually is true.
And her isotope signal, we
look at stable isotopes,
told us that she was a
strong European diet signal.
So she is definitely
a colonist who came.
- Interesting.
So that's another example
of how you're using these
tools, technologies,
multiple lines of evidence
to be able to really
pull this story together.
- Yeah, it's truly
a team effort.
We couldn't do this alone.
We go to lots of different labs
that help us get
this information.
So it really is piecing
all of this together,
including historical documents
that we do know exist,
to help us fill in these gaps.
- Wow, that's wonderful.
So I feel like
we've learned a lot
about what you do as a
forensic anthropologist,
that's a mouthful, and all
of the tools that you use
to be able to put
these stories together.
We do have some student
questions out there for you,
if you're willing to take them.
- Sure.
- All right, wonderful.
So this one is, how
can you tell how long
a person has been dead?
And this comes from Sam.
- Ah, well there
are different clues.
Now, if we're dealing
with a forensic case,
and how long that
person might have died,
we would look at certain clues
on the preservation of the bone.
A lot of the forensic
cases we find are
bodies that are
out in the woods,
and when you're exposed
to different elements
for different periods of time,
you have different
levels of bone decay.
And this is a great
example, we didn't really
talk about this, but these
are actually tooth marks
from an animal that scavenged
the bone for the calcium.
And if you're out in the woods,
and you get exposed
to different things
like sunlight, algae, animals,
that'll affect the bones, and
we can interpret these marks.
We even know that some
rodents who scavenge bones
will wait until all
of the tissue is off.
So that might tell
us, well, this body
has been there for
at least six months,
or for at least a year.
So there's lots of different
ways you can tell how old.
Now, if you're talking
about ancient remains,
thousands of years
old, we would use
radiocarbon dating.
- Interesting.
So we have another
question for you.
How do you become a
forensic anthropologist?
- Oh, well, that's a more
difficult question to answer.
Well, you would have to
go and get your degree,
undergraduate degree,
and then you would
have to go on to
graduate school.
And a lot of the
classes you might take,
of course, are
science-based classes,
but one of the things that
a lot of students don't know
is that you have to be
a good communicator.
Because even though you
could be a good scientist
and collect all of
this information,
you have to tell the
public what you're finding.
So for forensic cases,
of course, you'd have to
write very detailed reports
and present it in court.
For the historic remains, you
have to be a good storyteller.
You have to know how to
write and how to communicate.
So you have to take classes
like English classes.
You have to know how
to use computers.
You have to know some math
to do statistical analysis.
So there's lots of
different pathways
to get to where I am,
but basically just
start with getting a good
undergraduate degree.
- So we're actually
already out of time.
- Wow, that went fast.
- Really fast.
So thank you, students,
so much for all of
your really wonderful questions.
And thank you, Kari, for
being here today with us.
- Oh, well, thank
you for having me.
- If you would want to learn
more about some of Kari's work,
you can visit "Written in Bone"
on the Smithsonian's
website, and you can also
visit the Jamestown
Rediscovery Archaeology Project
at historicjamestowne.org.
If you missed part
of this webcast,
or you just want
to watch it again,
then it will be archived
later today at qrius.si.edu.
Thanks again for
joining us, and please
come again on March 13th,
when we are here with
Dan Babbitt, who will talk
about insect adaptations.
Thanks for joining us,
and see you next time
00:28:43.255,00:00:00.000
on Smithsonian Science How.
