Osteology Internship

Over the summer, I hosted an osteology intern in our department at the University of Central Lancashire (soon to be University of Lancashire). The intern, Ryver, was tasked with cataloguing part of the Village Farm Spofforth archaeological skeletal collection that we have on indefinite loan from the University of Sheffield, ECUS Ltd and York Museum Trust. This collection is available for research. Please email me if you are a researcher interested in applying for access. Ryver did an excellent job and seemed to enjoy the experience! I asked them to write a short summary of their experience as an intern. Here it is:

Over the summer of 2025 I have been doing an archaeology internship cataloguing the human skeletal remains from Spofforth Village Farm at the University of Central Lancashire, under the supervision of Professor Anna Williams. This Anglo-Saxon cemetery dates to roughly between the mid 7-9^th century, the period often associated with England’s conversion to Christianity. The site was excavated in 2001 and yielded approximately 250 individuals from 117 grave cuts. My job has included organising parts of the University’s human remains collection, filling out skeletal recording forms, photographing individual elements and complete skeletons where appropriate, and creating an inventory to record the bones and individuals in the collection.

From neonate babies to middle aged people, the skeletons I looked at encompassed a wide demographic of people. I observed a number of different standard pathologies like dental calculus and osteoarthritis; as well as several unique and potentially disabling skeletal changes such as sacralisation of the L-5 in one individual, fusion of three thoracic vertebrae in another, and a healed humerus fracture in a third. Many of the individuals I got the chance to catalogue also had congenital disorders such as dolichocephaly (an elongated skull length to width) and two had brachycephaly (a shortened skull length to width ratio), these disorders are often associated with developmental disabilities. These findings, alongside the number of healthy skeletons I observed, demonstrate that this cemetery was home to a wide variety of individuals with a range of different needs and roles within the community.

This experience has been very fulfilling and enjoyable for me as a recent graduate, as I have been able to build on the skills I have developed throughout my undergraduate degree and gain more practical, hands-on experience. The opportunity to work with human remains on a more long term and repeated basis has allowed me to enhance my basic knowledge of the different skeletal elements to now be able to identify specific identifying features, pathologies and traits across a myriad of different situations and scenarios. This has resulted in me being able to recognise bones from only small fragments and clearly detail what they are for the catalogue, which is a skill that would have been impossible to develop so quickly after finishing my final year as an undergraduate without this internship. Furthermore, I now have a much better understanding of the post excavation archaeological processes and lab work; building on my existing experience, which was previously limited to the teaching environment, where the amount of time we had to practice osteological methods was far less than what I have had during the course of this internship.

In addition to this, the opportunity to work independently outside of a prescribed teaching environment has allowed me to develop both my autonomy and my confidence, in both my work and my personal skillset. As a result of this internship, I now feel much more prepared to go on to my Masters in Osteoarchaeology, and further, my future career. I am thankful for this opportunity and all of the skills I have developed over the course of this 10-week internship and look forward to developing these skills further over the course of my postgraduate education.

Some of the boxes holding the Village Farm Spofforth Anglo-Saxon
skeletal collection, with Ryver's excellent labelling

New MSc courses: MSc Forensic Anthropology

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I have been very busy, as usual! One of the things I have been busy with is getting two new forensic Masters courses through the validation process at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan - soon to become the University of Lancashire). I am very proud to say that they are really exciting courses that take advantage of the expertise, resources and facilities at UCLan. They are MSc in Forensic Anthropology and an MSc in Forensic Biology and Investigation. 

The new MSc in Forensic Anthropology builds on UCLan's international reputation in forensic anthropology, and the very successful MSc course which ran for many years. Its content plays to the strengths of the staff, including me, Dr Will Goodwin, Peter Cross and Dr Noemi Procopio, and thus has a heavy emphasis on forensic taphonomy, anatomy and disaster victim identification. The course is one of the first that will be taught using the new 'block teaching' model that the university is adopting over the next few years. This means that each module will be taught over six consecutive weeks, with assessments happening in the seventh week. Teaching will be done on three days a week, and these will always be the same three days, to allow students (and staff) to plan their weeks. Students will only need to be on campus for those three days. The course will be very hands-on, practical and vocational, giving students the skills they need to enter and excel in the world of forensic anthropology. The modules will be:

Human and Comparative Anatomy - this will be quite an in-depth anatomy course, with students learning not just musculoskeletal anatomy (as other similar courses offer), but also the associated soft tissue anatomy, such as the cardio-vascular system, the respiratory system, and the digestive, reproductive, endocrine, and nervous systems as well. This gives students a much more rounded view, and a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of human physiology and anatomy, which is very useful when determining cause and manner of death, or the implications of trauma and pathology visible on the skeleton. It will also allow students to distinguish between animal and human bones, a very important skill for determining the forensic importance of a case. 

Forensic Anthropology - this will be a 'deep dive' into what information can be gleaned from the skeleton, and introduce students to the estimation of age at death from the skeleton, estimation of sex (not gender), and estimation of stature and ancestral affiliation. It will also cover trauma and fractures, and different types of skeletal pathology, as well as recent advances in forensic anthropology, and the application of imaging, proteomics, and isotope analysis to forensic anthropology problems. 

For the third module, the student chooses from three possible options (numbers permitting). They are:

(1) Forensic Taphonomy - this module covers decay and decomposition in a variety of conditions, and will involve fieldwork at TRACES, UCLan's 13-acre animal taphonomy facility. Students will get a chance to learn about the factors that influence, accelerate or decelerate decomposition rate, and estimation of post-mortem interval. 

Student undertaking research at TRACES

(2) Identification of the Living and Deceased - this module will cover identification techniques for living people, including biometric identification, and identification techniques for the deceased, in different situations, including disaster victim identification. 

(3) Forensic Genetics - this lab-based module will be a close look at collection, amplification and interpretation of DNA evidence, DNA polymorphisms, DNA databases, and the analysis of DNA profiles from different forensic cases.

The fourth module is Crime Scene to Court - this module will introduce crime scene investigation, collection, packaging and maintaining continuity of forensic evidence, then interpretation of that evidence in the lab, maintaining laboratory standards. In the final part of the module, students will learn how the UK judicial and court system works, and then present evidence as an expert witness in court. 

The final module is the Dissertation, a double-length module in which students undertake an original research project, using the wealth of state-of-the-art facilities at UCLan. They can undertake projects based on interpretation of evidence, taphonomy, DNA, identification, CSI, or any of topic of their choice (provided there is a willing supervisor). This is my favourite part of the MSc course, as it when students start to 'spread their wings' and get a chance to really investigate the topics that interest them most. I love to see them blossom as researchers and become budding forensic anthropologists.

If what I have mentioned here has whetted your appetite, please apply here. You need at least a 2:ii undergraduate degree in a relevant subject. If you have any questions, please email me at awilliams34@uclan.ac.uk. There are excellent discounts, bursaries and scholarships offered for international students. I look forward to receiving your application! (Or please forward this to someone you think would be interested in applying). 

 

Could you catch a traitor in your life?

I am a big fan of The Traitors TV show. My friend and collaborator Kelda Stagg actually competed in the Swedish version of the show recently! As an anthropologist and avid people-watcher, I love watching how difficult it is for the Traitors not to give themselves away, or how the Faithful turn on their own when searching for anything remotely suspicious. It also intrigues me how people can and do justify their behaviour to themselves - for the sake of the TV show, they can remind themselves "it's just a game", "we've got to play the game", but in real life, of course, such treachery can have very different outcomes. That got me thinking about treacherous forensic cases, and I found one that, I think, shows how victims often cannot see what is happening to them until it is too late. I made a little video about it here. Do you think you would recognise this if it was happening to you in real life? Could you catch a traitor in your life?

Premature Burial

Hi there! Sorry for the lack of posts recently! I can only say that I have been working hard. For Christmas, I received a beautiful, hard-bound copy of The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

One of his most famous horror stories, "The Premature Burial", eloquently described how this was a real fear for people in Victorian times, and reminded me of the elaborate contraptions that were invented at the time to prevent this horrific fate from occurring. I recorded a short video about the fear of 'vivesepulture' (being buried alive), which you can see here.

I am excited to be attending the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting next week in Baltimore, not only because of the exciting forensic science that I will be sharing and absorbing, but also because I will get to visit Edgar Allan Poe's grave, and learn more about this genius of the detective mystery genre.