Jonathan Musgrave

University of Bristol | UB · Centre for Comparative & Clinical Anatomy

Aveline's Hole is both one of the best-known sites with early human skeletal material in Britain and one of the most problematic in its history. First discovered and explored at the close of the 18th century, it yielded an estimated burial count of at least fifty individuals. Twentieth century work suggested a Late Upper Palaeolithic date for the m...

A 40-year-old man was admitted to hospital with a scalp wound but died 22 days later after unsuccessful treatment. Initial assessment of the cranial fragments removed during surgery revealed fine fracture lines on the endocranial surface, and a dark arcuate line on the ectocranial surface. To investigate the extent of the fractures a μCT scan of th...

This article is the third in a series inspired by the rediscovery in 2003 of two skeletons excavated in 1877 in Shaft Grave VI in Circle A at Mycenae by Panayiotis Stamatakis. Having studied those two individuals and reconstructed their faces, and having conducted a study of strontium isotope analyses on all the individuals from Grave Circle A, we...

Building work at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens in 2003 led to the rediscovery of the two male skeletons from Shaft Grave VI at Mycenae, found by Panayiotis Stamatakis in 1877 as he completed the excavation of Grave Circle A begun by Schliemann. The find provided a triple opportunity. First came a re-assessment of Stamatakis's importa...

Degenerative joint disease (DJD) of the wrist (radiocarpal joint) is relatively uncommon in modern Western populations, usually occurring as a result of trauma. Clinically, scapholunate advanced collapse (SLAC) is the most common pattern of DJD seen in the wrist, involving a progressive destruction of the radioscaphoid and then the capitolunate joi...

The abrasiveness of food is a key determinant in the rate of physiological attrition (dental wear) in humans. With increasing food processing through time, the rate of physiological dental wear in human teeth has decreased markedly. Many consider such wear to be beneficial to oral health and that insufficient wear may result in impaction of the thi...

The faces of seven skulls from Grave Circle B were reconstructed by the Manchester team, as an exercise in using the technique of facial reconstruction to look for family relationships on the basis of facial resemblances among the three or four burial groups within the circle. Similarities were noted between Ζ59 and Γ51, from early and late phases...

In 1987 the Manchester team made casts of the skulls of the priest and priestess discovered at Anemospilia (Archanes) by J. A. and E. Sakellarakis, and after careful medical study—which showed that the priestess suffered from anaemia as well as halitosis—reconstructed their faces, according to the technique used on the skull from tomb II at Vergina...

The aim of this paper is to describe and assess the intramural burials from the Lefkandi Settlement (Xeropolis). In all 20 individuals were inhumed within the walls, comprising 3 adult males, 2 adult females, one possible adolescent female and 14 children. The last ranged in age from birth to 9 years. Routine matters such as child mortality, adult...

In this paper – the revised text of a public lecture given in Athens on 23 February 1989 – the author reviews both the historical and anatomical evidence for identifying the occupants of the royal tombs at Vergina as: Tomb I: not known; Tomb II: Philip II and either Cleopatra or Meda; Tomb III: Alexander IV. The case for Philip III Arrhidaios and E...

Death may be the great leveller, but some families can mark the event more spectacularly than others. In an attempt to set the royal burials at Vergina into some form of mortuary context, the cremated remains from three rich, non-royal 4th-century Macedonian tombs – Nea Mihaniona II and III and Derveni Beta – were studied with an eye on both biolog...

This shell applique in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was acquired by Evans in Crete in 1894. He was told that it came from the Mesara, but there is no evidence to link it with the Ayios Onoufrios deposit. The material is Aegean Spondylus gaederopus L., not Tridacna from the Red Sea. The plaque is probably Cretan work of the period of the Early Pal...

The purpose of this paper is to make available the full osteological record of the human bones found in a small room of a late Minoan Ib house at Knossos (Stratigraphical Museum site), of which about a third bear knife marks suggesting that flesh had been cut from them. It presents the physical situation, finds, and their contexts. Part I describes...

Because the techniques and the approach described in this paper are perhaps unfamiliar to readers of this Journal, we offer a short introduction on the background to the project. In 1979, after working on the Egyptian mummies in Manchester as part of the Manchester Museum Mummy Research Project, one of us (R. A. H. N.) felt it would be interesting...

In the summer of 1975 the owner of a small estate on the eastern slopes of Lower Gypsadhes decided to build a private road upslope to a belvedere overlooking the palace area. In the course of grading, several archaeological features were damaged before work was halted by the intervention of the Antiquities Guard. The Ephor of Antiquities at Herakle...

This paper describes an attempt that was made to confirm the suggestion that limb bone length may be a good indicator of perinatal age. Gestational (menstrual) age was regressed on: (i) the lengths of the ossified shafts of the femur, humerus and radius of 17 subjects of mixed sex aged between 27 and 46 weeks; and (ii) the femur, tibia, humerus, ra...

Stature was measured (in cm) in 166 (120 male; 46 female) predominantly white adults (age range: 17–87 years). A radiograph of one hand of each subject was taken (for routine diagnostic purposes) and the inter-articular length of all five metacarpal bones was measured with a sliding caliper. These metacarpal lengths were then adjusted to compensate...

Results of multivariate statistical analyses indicate that the bones of the hand of Neanderthal man were metrically and morphologically unique and that he may not have been as dextrous as living Homo sapiens.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Cambridge, 1970.