Internet sales of human remains occur despite the existence of laws prohibiting such action in most jurisdictions. The most popular public platform for online sales, eBay, allows users to postskeletal material for sale, largely anonymously and without much fear of legal repercussions. This survey of skeletal sales was conducted 10 years after the first article published about online human remains sales. A review of current laws reveals that, while many states have laws that restrict any sale of human remains, those laws have questionable deterrent effect. Assessing the skeletal material posted for sale provides law enforcement agencies with a necessary starting point to curtail the sale of human remains through enforcement of existing laws. Ultimately, the goal is to stem the commodification of such items and to recover skeletal material, especially that which may be of archaeological or forensic significance, and provide the proper final disposition for such material.
“Structural violence” is a term used to describe inflicted systematic violence on a disenfranchised group by an established order, usually framed as a government or the social majority. The disenfranchised groups are marginalized and not provided with the same access to resources such as healthcare or food, the effects of which can be observed directly in their death. Bioarchaeologists often can detect the visible effects of this violence on skeletal remains, which provide a visual representation to and reinforcement of social prejudices inflicted in life and death. Discussed here is how the same concept of structural violence can be inflicted on the landscape through damage to or obliteration of cemeteries. We propose a definition of “landscape structural violence” exhibited through cemetery erasure as a reinforcement of preexisting social prejudices in death where the governments or the social majority, intentionally or passively, destroy, remove, or obscure a cemetery without consultation with the descendant community. This definition is applied to several examples of New Orleans cemeteries to determine the functionality of the definition and what activity is and what is not structural violence inflicted on the landscape.
Cranial dysraphism, a pathological condition resulting from a neural tube defect, is a rarely reported condition in archaeological and clinical literature. A defect at bregma was identified on human remains recovered from New Orleans, Louisiana, when exhumation of several commingled bodies occurred in a paupers' cemetery in 2015. Initial speculation regarding the cause of the condition consisted of trauma, pathological condition, a natural variant, or the result of a congenital defect. A differential diagnosis was utilised to approach the breadth of potential causative factors, incorporating clinical information on the bony response of soft tissue defects common in modern reports. However, during a review of the bioarchaeological literature, an alternative explanation for the feature, one that did not result from typically reported causes, revealed that this observed defect was likely an example of the rarely reported condition known as cranial dysraphism. Through review of both clinical and bioarchaeological data, the resulting diagnosis observed here is supported through the unique characteristics that several other authors have identified as associated with cranial dysraphism. Unique features of this bony defect include the smooth walls of the depression, a saucer‐like shape with an anterior rim built up of cortical bone, lack of diploë exposure, a perforation at the base of the saucer, and the retention of cranial sutures. Although the defect also closely resembles the bony response to a cyst, the perforation and anterior rim are supportive of its diagnosis as a cranial dysraphism. This case study of a single occurrence of cranial dysraphism is reported to assist practitioners in differentiating between this condition and other potential causes of anomalies of similar appearance.
The physiological toll of poverty—from inadequate nutrition, higher disease loads, dangerous and taxing occupations, to limited health care—constitutes a form of structural violence. This violence is often embodied on skeletal tissues as signs of systemic biological stress. Here, we explore the skeletal manifestations of systemic biological stress on the bodies of those interred at Charity Hospital, an indigent hospital, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Given Charity's mission to serve the poorest residents of New Orleans, we expected to see widespread evidence of systemic biological stress in the skeletal remains of deceased patients from the hospital. Two skeletal collections from Charity Hospital Cemetery #2 were assessed for paleodemography and paleopathology, specifically this latter analysis focuses on the presence and severity of periosteal reactive new bone growth, linear enamel hypoplasia and porotic hyperostosis/cribra orbitalia, all skeletal signs of systemic stress throughout one's lifetime. We find that the remains show some signs of systemic stress. While this contradicts the trend shown in the hospital's records, it should be noted that indicators of systemic stress cannot map perfectly onto the health of a past population. It is possible that the individuals who comprised these two samples died of diseases and maladies that did not leave any skeletal indicators; an expectation that is reinforced by the fact that this cemetery was conceived as a response to multiple yellow fever epidemics in the 1840's, a disease that does not leave any skeletal signs.
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