Gonçalves D, Vassalo A R, Mamede A P, Makhoul C, Piga G, Cunha E, Marques M P M, Batista de Carvalho L A E
Archaeosciences Laboratory, Directorate General for Cultural Heritage (LARC/CIBIO/InBIO), Rua da Bica do Marquês 2, Lisboa, 1300-087, Portugal.
Research Centre for Anthropology and Health (CIAS), Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra. Calçada Martim Freitas, Coimbra, 3000-456, Portugal.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2018 Jun;166(2):296-312. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.23430. Epub 2018 Feb 8.
Vibrational spectroscopy is a valuable tool for the study of burned skeletal remains. Nonetheless, most investigations have been focused on a limited number of samples as well as on faunal bones rather than human bones. Conclusions based on those investigations may lack representativeness, namely about the intrabone, intra- and interskeleton variability of several chemometric indices. We aimed to investigate this issue on a large sample of human bones.
Powder samples were collected from 168 bones from four human skeletons. The sampling targeted 47 long bones, 72 short bones, and 49 tarsal bones as well as different bone regions in a total of 638 powder samples. Bones were experimentally burned in an electric muffle furnace for two hours to maximum temperatures ranging from 400°C to 1000°C. Another 623 burned samples were then collected totaling 1261 samples subjected to FTIR-ATR analysis. The CI, BPI, C/C, and OH/P indices were calculated.
An important intrabone, intra- and interskeleton variation was observed, especially for the BPI. The CI, C/C, and OH/P indices revealed much less variation so site-specific sampling may not be as critical in these cases. Clear differences between our results and those from previous investigations were observed, namely on the temperature increment evolution of the CI and C/C indices.
The relatively large heterogeneity, especially at the intrabone level, is possibly the consequence of microstructural bone differences. The dissimilarities observed between our investigation and other published studies are probably due to the fact that the samples used here came from human rather than faunal bones. Also, our samples were buried previously to the experimental burning so this may also partly explain our contrasting results, since previous research was mostly performed on fresh bone. Future inferences based on vibrational spectroscopy analyses should take into account the possible effect of all these sources.
振动光谱学是研究烧焦骨骼遗骸的一种有价值的工具。尽管如此，大多数研究都集中在数量有限的样本以及动物骨骼而非人类骨骼上。基于这些研究得出的结论可能缺乏代表性，即在几个化学计量学指标的骨内、骨骼内和骨骼间变异性方面。我们旨在对大量人类骨骼样本进行此项研究。
从四具人类骨骼的168块骨头中采集粉末样本。采样针对47根长骨、72根短骨和49块跗骨，以及总共638个粉末样本中的不同骨骼区域。将骨头在马弗炉中进行实验性燃烧两小时，最高温度范围为400°C至1000°C。然后又收集了623个燃烧样本，总计1261个样本进行傅里叶变换红外衰减全反射（FTIR - ATR）分析。计算了CI、BPI、C/C和OH/P指数。
观察到了重要的骨内、骨骼内和骨骼间变异，尤其是BPI。CI、C/C和OH/P指数的变异要小得多，因此在这些情况下特定部位采样可能不那么关键。我们的结果与先前研究结果之间存在明显差异，即在CI和C/C指数的温度增量演变方面。
相对较大的异质性，尤其是在骨内水平，可能是骨骼微观结构差异的结果。我们的研究与其他已发表研究之间观察到的差异可能是由于这里使用的样本来自人类而非动物骨骼。此外，我们的样本在实验性燃烧之前是被掩埋的，所以这也可能部分解释了我们结果的差异，因为先前的研究大多是在新鲜骨骼上进行的。基于振动光谱分析的未来推断应考虑到所有这些因素可能产生的影响。
