Ashley Mainville, “Examining Postmortem Trauma to Bone Inflicted by Standard Gardening Tools”
Mentor: Emily Middleton, Anthropology

Skeletonized human remains can be inadvertently discovered during the course of a home renovation or gardening project and television shows like Buried in the Backyard highlight the potential medicolegal significance of these discoveries. In such situations, assessment of skeletal trauma is crucial and any trauma sustained during discovery must be differentiated from perimortem trauma, therefore, this research sought out to evaluate trauma to buried bone caused by standard gardening tools. Twenty-four cow (Bos taurus) femora were buried in a frozen state, approximately 12 inches deep, in pairs of two, and wrapped in three different ways: 4 pairs unwrapped, 4 pairs wrapped in a garbage bag, and 4 pairs wrapped in a towel. A mock discovery/excavation was carried out 10 days after burial using four standard gardening tools: a shovel, spade, pickaxe, and rake. Following excavation, the femora simmered in a Borax solution for removal of remaining soft tissue. Trauma was evaluated macroscopically and measured using calipers and ImageJ. The findings of this research were that the pickaxe and spade caused the most substantial trauma (24 and 11 marks, respectively) whereas the rake and shovel only inflicted few trivial markings (2 and 4 marks, respectively). In total there were 41 tool inflicted traumas and surprisingly the wrapping did not seem to inhibit trauma inflicted as much as originally hypothesized as the towel wrapped femora sustained 17 marks, followed by the unwrapped sustaining 14 marks, and the garbage bag wrapped sustaining just 10 marks. Evaluating skeletal trauma caused by gardening tools is important for broadening the scope of skeletal tool mark analysis. Understanding potential trauma from a variety of tools is therefore of great importance in forensic anthropology and this preliminary research can provide beneficial insight into forensic anthropology research regarding post-mortem skeletal trauma.