Cremation can be canied out on dry bone, green (or recently defleshed) bone, or bone in the flesh. Previous experimenters in cremation replication (Baby, 1954; Biitford, 1963) argued that dry bone cremation can be readily differ entiated from green bone and in-flesh cremations, but did not provide criteria for differentiating creamation of green bone from in-flesh cremation. This paper, based on the cremation of four green humeri and four fleshed upper extremities, suggests that the bone residue of green bone cremation can be differentiated from that of in-flesh cremation.
PREVIOUS STUDIESKrogman's observations on Adena and Hopewell cremations were among the earliest to seek to differentiate between cremation of defleshed and fleshcovered bone. According to Webb and Snow (1945: 188-189):Basically it appears that when bones in a dry condition are incinerated, besides being calcined, they show cracking or "checking" as he [Krogman] says "like the patina of an oil painting." However, if a body should be burned in the flesh, besides possibly showing an incomplete incineration of bone, it is often possible to see under a low power magnification the re mains of incompletely consumed endosteum. Dr. Krogman states that it is particularly difficult to distinguish between the burning of a body in the flesh and the burning of green bones, that is, bones from which the flesh has but recently been removed.
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Was that your first excavation? Yes. So I worked as a volunteer. I basically carried things and dug holes where people told me. But FIGURE 1. Lewis R. Binford at work. (Photo by Nancy M. Stone .
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