Shawn Miller, the physical anthropology PhD student (and University of Utah anatomy instructor) who examines and records the data on the human remains from Nuvuk prior to their reburial, is here. He has been working on the multiple burial with an intact box that we excavated in early July. It is looking like there were two primary individuals, probably both men. The juvenile elements could all have come from the same individual, Shawn thinks, so there may have only been three people in this burial.
It is looking like one of the adults has signs of porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia. These have generally been considered as signs of iron-deficiency anemia and a diet lacking in animal food-sources, but recently it has been suggested that this may be incorrect (Walker et al. 2009). Certainly that would seem unlikely for someone living at Nuvuk, as there really was almost nothing available there but animal food. It will be interesting to get the dates for the individual, who was apparently more recent, since there was reportedly considerable starvation after Yankee whalers decimated the bowhead stocks.
I went to get the coffins that we had in stock. UIC RE Maintenance folks had made us a bunch, since it is easiest to cut a whole lot of standard size pieces at once. Unfortunately, things seem to have been moved around in the warehouse where they were stored, and we seem to be short a few boxes and quite a few lids. The ones I found were scattered in several locations. I was able to find enough for the individuals in the burial, and will see about getting some new lids made later this week.
Out of Ice and Time 