In 604 B.C.E. Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed ancient Ashkelon, leaving the town in ruins. In 1992 archaeological excavations carried out by Lawrence E. Stager, director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, discovered grim evidence of this event.a On the floor of a shop burned and ruined during the destruction was a badly crushed human skeleton. It was sprawled on its back with limbs splayed, indicative of sudden death.
Who was this person abandoned in the debris? One of the invaders or one of the victims? What kind of life did this person lead, and what was the cause of death? The bones hold the answers to many of these questions.
Examination showed that these were the bones of a woman. Women tend to be smaller and less muscular than men. This means that their bones are more slender, with smaller protuberances for muscle attachments. The differences are most marked in the skull and pelvis. For example, the angle between the upper borders of the eye sockets and forehead of this skeleton were sharp, and the bone above them was smooth, lacking the ridges typical of men. The bony protuberances behind the ears (the mastoid processes) were also small and thin, in contrast to those of men. In addition, the pelvic bones were everted at their bases, pushing out the hips, a female adaptation that maximizes the space available for the birth canal.
Measurements show that she was around 5 feet tall, which is well within the average heights recorded for women in ancient Israel. The bones of her skull had not yet fused, indicating that she was relatively young. In addition, the surfaces of her joints were smooth, with no arthritic changes, while her teeth were only slightly worn. She was probably in her mid-30s.
We also examined the broken surfaces of her bones to determine if the fractures occurred when she was still alive or whether they were postmortem. The margins of the skull fractures were jagged rather than flat, indicating that the blows to her head, caused either by a blunt weapon or from falling debris, occurred when she was still alive or shortly after death.
For the biological anthropologist, the information obtained about this woman is the beginning of an odyssey into the past. Examination of human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts provides a direct link to our predecessors and enables us to reconstruct the rate and pattern of change and its contribution to the present diversity of humankind. Integrating our biological and cultural heritage enables us to understand better the way in which genes and culture have been interwoven over the past millennia to create the world we inhabit today.
Success in defining ancestral populations, however, is contingent on the availability of large, well-excavated skeletal samples. Despite the numerous archaeological excavations carried out in Israel, this goal is unlikely to be achieved in the near future given the current attitude toward biological anthropology.
While the natural sciences have come to play an increasingly important role in Israel in recreating the setting of past cultures, bio-anthropological research into the people themselves, as represented by their skeletal remains, has taken a large step backwards. This follows a controversial decision by the attorney general in 1995 that excluded human skeletons from the list of “biological remains” protected under Israeli antiquities law.
Today, especially at salvage excavations carried out in Israel, a nonacademic religious organization—Atra Kadisha—is routinely called in to excavate and remove human remains for reburial in a common grave without proper bio-anthropological documentation.b Although cursory examination of skeletal remains on site is sometimes permitted, this is totally 070unsatisfactory given the need to clean, reconstruct and analyze human remains in a specialized laboratory setting. In such facilities, we not only measure, photograph and take radiographs, we also analyze the skeletons using a vast array of modern tools. These include CT scans, scanning electron microscopes, as well as DNA and isotope analyses, all of which enable us to reconstruct in great detail the life history of past individuals and populations.
While cemeteries and isolated tombs are still occasionally excavated in Israel, we are largely unable to obtain scientific information about the human individuals for whom these tombs were constructed. Had the Ashkelon skeleton been excavated after 1995, it is unlikely that we would have been able to examine her in as much detail. This means that today, we are in the absurd situation of carrying out research into past societies exclusively through the study of their material culture without access to the most direct and conclusive data set, namely the evidence obtained from their skeletal remains.
This unhappy situation is further reflected in the fact that Israeli universities do not offer undergraduate degrees in biological anthropology, despite the fact that teaching and research in this field is expanding throughout the rest of the world. Sadly, if the current situation continues, archaeological research in Israel will focus on pots and not people, returning us to the days when archaeology was little more than tomb robbery.
In 04 B.C.E. Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed ancient Ashkelon, leaving the town in ruins. In 1992 archaeological excavations carried out by Lawrence E. Stager, director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, discovered grim evidence of this event.a On the floor of a shop burned and ruined during the destruction was a badly crushed human skeleton. It was sprawled on its back with limbs splayed, indicative of sudden death. Who was this person abandoned in the debris? One of the invaders or one of the victims? What kind of life did this person lead, and what was the cause of […]
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