The chemistry of bone can tell researchers a great deal about an organism and the environment in which it lived. Recently, a graduate student from the University of Albany, Jessica Watson (who also took part in excavations last summer at Stock Cove) and Chris, with support and lab space provided by Dr. Robert Feranec of the State Museum of New York, began processing the bones of various species of seals recovered from the Dorset Paleoeskimo levels of Stock Cove to have their isotopes analyzed. Isotopes found in the organic parts of bone can tell us about the diet of the seals and, hopefully, give us some information about sea conditions during their lives, particularly whether or not they were colder or warmer waters relative to today. This can help us to reconstruct environmental conditions during the Dorset occupation of the region so that we may better understand the choices they made when they lived there.
In brief, the processing of bone for isotopic analysis is a complicated recipe that involves the crushing of a small amount of bone and exposing it to various cocktails of acids and bases to extract the organic material. These samples are also intermittently rinsed and separated using a combo of a centrifuge and sonic baths (pictured here) to remove any contaminants that would affect the resulting data. The final process involves very fine screening of the organic liquids from inorganic materials in the bone and freeze-drying it to turn it into a fine powder that can be sent to a lab to have the relative isotopes measured.
Cross your fingers. We hope to have some good results by February that we can use to better understand the environmental context of Dorset occupation of the island of Newfoundland.
Crushed seal bone samples are on the right of the sonic bath in the red-taped test tubes.
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