tonight, or should we reschedule?”
“You bet your sweet ass we’re still on,” Shawn snapped. “I don’t know what’s come over her sometimes. Whatever it is better stop.”
Sensibly, Jack refrained from further commenting but rather plucked a bone from the ossuary and tried to figure out what it was.
After returning from the gowning room Sana carried on for another five minutes with Alex, who was obviously charmed by her attention. But seeing that Jack and Shawn were having some trouble with determining where the bones belonged anatomically, she and Alex pitched in to help. Then, after several minutes, Alex took over completely since he had begun to comment on each bone as he took it from the ossuary and added it to the expanding skeleton. After a half-hour it was done.
For Sana the most interesting were the skull and lower jaw, because there were some teeth in their original sockets. On the other hand, Shawn was most interested in the bones of the pelvis. While handling each fragment, Alex had commented casually that the woman had had children, most likely multiple children.
“This is a remarkably intact skeleton,” Alex said, examining it in its totality and adjusting the position of a few of the individual bones. “Notice that even the tiny finger bones from both hands are all here. That is remarkable indeed. In all the ossuary cases I’ve had the pleasure of investigating, this has never happened. I’ve never seen all the finger bones together. Whoever did this was remarkably respectful of the deceased.”
“You said it’s a woman,” Shawn pointed out excitedly. “Are you certain this skeleton is that of a woman?”
“Absolutely! Look at the delicate brow ridges,” he said, pointing toward the skull, “and notice the delicate arm bones and long bones of the legs. And if I put the pubic bones together”—Alex lifted the bones and held them together as they would have been in life
—“look how wide the pubic arch is! It’s definitely female. No question!”
“Especially since you said she’d had multiple children,” Shawn said, with a self-satisfied giggle.
“That’s an issue I can’t be dogmatic about,” Alex said.
Shawn’s smile faded a degree. “Why not?”
“These are really prominent preauricular sulci,” Jack said, picking up an ilium and showing it to Alex. “I’ve never seen bigger.”
“What are sulci?” Shawn asked.
Jack pointed to grooved areas on the edge of the bone. “The sulci appear after childbirth.
These are some of the deepest I’ve ever seen. I’d say she had had close to ten children.” Alex raised a finger and shook it in disagreement. “The depth of the sulci on the ilia and the dots on the pubic bones at the pubic symphyses are not completely proportional to the number of children a woman has given birth to.”
“But they usually are,” Jack pointed out.
“All right,” Alex said. “They usually are, I’ll admit that.”
“So, this woman’s sulci and dots strongly suggest she had had multiple children. It doesn’t prove it, just strongly suggests it. Would you agree to that?”
“Yes, Jack, I would. But I’d also say it might be wrong. Do you people have any idea of the identity of this person and how many children she actually had? Is there a name or a date on the ossuary? What about the scrolls? Do they mention children?” For a second, no one moved. It was silent except for a refrigerator compressor in the background. Sensing a suddenly strained atmosphere, Alex added, “Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all,” Shawn said hastily. “We’re not sure of this skeleton’s identity, but there is a date on the ossuary’s cover. It’s AD 62, but we don’t know if that’s the date of her death or the date of her reburial. We’re hoping the scrolls may shed some light on her identity, but we have not yet unrolled them and obviously have not read them.”
“What about the woman’s age?” Sana asked. “Can you tell that?”
“Not with much precision,” Alex said. “Unfortunately, bones are not like tree branches, where you can count the rings. In fact, throughout the individual’s life the bone is being constantly replaced, which is why we can accurately carbon-date. You might want to think of going that route with these bones to check on the date on the ossuary. The necessary sample size is extremely small with the newer techniques.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Shawn said.
“If you had to guess her age, what would you say?” Sana asked.
“I’d say over fifty to be safe. If I wanted to go out on a limb, I’d say eighty. My sense is this is an old individual, based on the amount of arthritis in the finger bones and feet.
What would you say, Jack?”
“I think you are right on the money. The only other thing I note is some mild evidence of tuberculosis on a couple of vertebrae, but otherwise she was in very good shape.”
“Remarkably so,” Alex agreed.
“I’m psyched,” Sana said. “The water seal must have functioned perfectly. I wasn’t completely optimistic about finding DNA, but I am now. With those teeth still in their sockets, and as dry as these bones are, there has to be some intact mitochondrial DNA.”
“Don’t jinx yourself,” Shawn warned.
“Why do you want to find DNA?” Alex asked. “Do you have anything in particular in mind?”
Sana just shrugged. “I think it will be interesting and a challenge. It might be fun to see where she was from, genealogically speaking. The ossuary was found in Rome, but that doesn’t mean she was from Rome, or even Italy. In the first century AD, there was a lot of migration because of the Pax Romana. And it will be an interesting addition to the international mitochondrial database, having a first-century woman.”
“How are you going to do it?” Alex asked. “What procedure are you going to follow?”
“First I’ll try a tooth as a source,” Sana said. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll use bone marrow.
Either way, it’s not a complicated process. It will involve a thorough cleaning of the outside of the tooth to remove any DNA contamination. Then I’ll cut into the crown of the tooth, pull out the dried pulp material from the pulp cavity, suspend it with detergent to break open the cells, treat it with proteases to eliminate the proteins, then extract the DNA. Once I have the DNA in solution, I’ll amplify it with a PCR, then quantify it, then sequence it. It’s as simple as that.”
“What’s your time frame?” Alex asked. “I’d be interested in a follow-up, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Sana glanced at Shawn, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval. “It depends to a degree on that first rate-limiting step. Whether there is intact mitochondrial DNA available. If there is, I should have it in a few days or up to a week. Some of the steps function best when they are allowed to percolate overnight.”
“Well,” Alex said, getting up from his chair and giving Sana’s back a pat, “I want to thank you all for including me. It’s been a terrific morning.” His eyes happened to catch the three ancient scrolls as he started toward the gowning room to take off the protective gear. He stopped and looked back at Shawn. “I’ve been so engrossed with this skeleton, I forgot to ask about the scrolls. What’s the plan with them?”
“To read them,” Shawn said, with a touch of jealousy at the man’s apparent informality with his wife. “But first I have to unroll them, which is going to be a task. They are, excuse the pun, drier than a bone, and quite fragile.”
“Are they made of papyrus?” Alex asked. He bent over and looked at each closely. He didn’t dare touch them.
“They are papyrus, yes,” Shawn said.
“Will they be easy to unroll?”
“I wish,” Shawn said. “It is going to be a painstaking process that has to be done millimeter by millimeter. They could disintegrate into thousands of tiny pieces, and on top of that, we have to be careful.”
Everyone laughed, even Shawn.
“What a pleasant fellow,” Sana said after Alex left, then to herself she added, “in comparison to my husband.”
“Oh, you noticed,” Shawn said mockingly out loud, then to himself added, “I know exactly what you are doing, and I am going to ignore it—I’m not going to get jealous.
It’s not worth getting riled up, and I won’t give you the satisfaction.”
“All right, people!” Jack said suddenly, clapping his hands loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s get to work! Let’s crank out what has to be done so you two can get under way. I’m going nuts about whether you’re
