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Chapter One
The Chemical and Microbial
Degradation of Bones
and Teeth
Gordon Turner-Walker
School of Cultural Heritage Conservation, National Yunlin
University of Science and Technology, 123 University Road
Sec. 3, Touliou, 640 Yunlin, Taiwan (ROC)
INTRODUCTION
The physical survival of bone is integral to any kind of palaeopathological study. Not
only must the skeleton survive in the burial environment or tomb, it must retain sufficient
strength to be excavated, lifted, archived and studied. When assessing skeletal remains
for pathological conditions, it is also important to distinguish successfully between bone
lesions that arose ante- or peri-mortem as a result of disease or trauma, and damage caused
by post-mortem processes taking place in the burial environment. A sound understanding
of post-mortem changes to mineralized tissues is, therefore, essential when attempting to
interpret pathological conditions in skeletons, particularly those (the majority) that have
been buried in soils for centuries or millennia. Unlike some gross post-mortem patterns
of destruction caused by root action, inse ... read full excerpt from Advances in Human Palaeopathology ebook
