Evidence for End‐stage Cannibalism on Sir John Franklin's Last Expedition to the Arctic, 1845

Abstract

The 1845 British naval expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin to map the Northwest Passage ended in disaster, with none returning alive from the Canadian Arctic. The 19th century Inuit testimony described cannibalism among Franklin's men in the final throes of the expedition. Such claims were controversial at the time, but were supported in the 1980s and 1990s when knife marks were identified on human remains recovered from expedition sites on King William Island. Survival cannibalism generally follows a sequence in which meat is initially cut from an intact corpse, but if further calories are required, successively greater effort is put into corpse processing. End-stage cannibalism is characterised by breakage and boiling of bones to extract marrow fat from medullary cavities and cancellous bone. The current work involves re-examination, using macroscopic and microscopic study, of human remains (representing a minimum of 35 bones) from the Franklin expedition. It describes evidence for breakage and polishing of broken edges of parts of some long bones. These alterations are tentatively interpreted as breakage and heating of bones in water, to facilitate marrow extraction. If this is correct, then it constitutes the first osteological evidence of end-stage cannibalism among members of the expedition. Comparison of these osteological findings with 19th century Inuit reports provides further evidence supporting the veracity of Inuit descriptions of cannibalistic practices by expedition members.

Aggressive or funerary cannibalism? Skull‐cup and human bone manipulation in Cueva de El Toro (Early Neolithic, southern Iberia)

“…121–122). It has been reported in several cannibalism assemblages such as in the Late Neolithic site at El Mirador (Cáceres et al, ), in American Southwest sites (Hurlburt, ; Turner & Turner, , ; White, ), and in survival cannibalism from the 19th century (Dixon et al, ; Mays & Beattie, ). This feature has also been considered as an effective means of recognizing boiling and cannibalism in archeological material (Hurlbut, ; White, ).…”

DNA analysis of human skeletal remains from the 1845 Franklin expedition

“…Evidence of periosteal lesions attributable to scurvy was found on five of the long bones. Recent analysis of two long bones fragments from NgLj-1 was suggestive of latestage cannibalism (Mays and Beattie, 2016), an activity first reported by 19th century Inuit (Rae, 1855).…”

Finding the dead: bodies, bones and burials from the 1845 Franklin northwest passage Expedition

“…In 1879, Schwatka relocated the boat site found in 1859 by McClintock and collected and buried 76 human bones he found scattered on the ground, which he believed were from four individuals (Schwatka, 1965, p. 88;Stenton et al, 2015, p. 40). Archaeological investigations conducted at Erebus Bay between 1982 and 2016 have identified five sites (NhLi-1, NgLj-1, NgLj-2, NgLj-3, NgLj-39) collectively containing more than 500 human bones representing a minimum of 21 members of the Franklin expedition (Beattie, 1982(Beattie, , 1983bBertulli, 1995a;Keenleyside et al, 1997;Mays & Beattie, 2016;Ranford, 1994;Stenton et al, 2015.…”

“…Three cut marks found on a right femur were consistent with anthropogenic modification related to cannibalism, the first physical evidence of it to have been identified (Beattie & Savelle, 1983, pp. 102-103;Mays & Beattie, 2016). New investigations were conducted at NcLa-1 in 2016 (Stenton, 2017).…”