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The Beaker Period 2500 - 1700 BC

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Beauforts, North Foreland Avenue

Link - The skeleton

Condition
Sex
Age
Stature
The skull
An abnormality
The spine
Leg bones
Beauforts, North Foreland Avenue

Link - The skeleton

The skeleton from the Beauforts Beaker burial
Scales in 0.5 metre divisions
The human remains were subjected to specialist analysis by the Late Trevor Anderson and J. Andrews. The information below has been summarised from their report (Anderson and Andrews 2005).
The Beauforts Beaker burial
Condition
The skeleton was largely complete, though the majority of the ribs and the feet bones had not survived.
Osseous pathology (evidence for disease gained from its effects on the bones) was confined to vertebral degeneration.
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Sex

Anderson and Andrews reported that the skeleton was that of a (rather tall) adult female.

The narrow greater sciatic notch suggested a possible male, but the frontal and occipital bone morphology (front and back areas of the skull), plus the size of the mastoid process (the jaw) and supported by observations on the long bones led to the conclusion that the remains were probably female.
The Beauforts Beaker burial
Age
She was at least forty years of age, based on dental attrition, tooth-loss and cranial suture closure.
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Stature
Stature was estimated from the left tibia (leg bone) and she was found to have been approximately 1.651m in height.


The Beauforts Beaker burial


The skull
Her oral health was poor and she had suffered from advanced periodontal disease, abscesses (evidence of four) and widespread ante-mortem (before-death) tooth-loss.
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The skull of the Beauforts Beaker burial
A particular abnormality on the skull
A small, smooth-edged aperture in the left parietal bone of the cranium represented an atypically located vascular foramen (a hole thought to transmit an additional blood vessel and not the result of surgical intervention).
Anderson notes that apart from the occurrence of two similar foramina noted on an Australian Aboriginal skull (Webb and Thorne 1985), no definite British examples of an anomalous parietal foramen have been published.
An Anglo-Saxon female from Kent had previously been found with a cranial aperture and an almost circular foramen which was anterior to the lambdoid suture (Anderson and Andrews 1997). Analysis suggested trephination (a surgical intervention) in that case, though other diagnoses were also considered.
The skeleton from the Beauforts Beaker burial
The spine

 Post-cranial osseous pathology was confined to vertebral degeneration. The true level of this was unclear, due to the fragmented and incomplete nature of the spine. Osteophytes and a Schmorl’s node were present however. Both of these are related to mechanical stress and the latter to severe compressional forces.
Leg bones

Both femora (leg bones) displayed marked medio-latteral flattening (platymeria), which could have been related to mineral or vitamin deficiencies or be a response to mechanical adaption and increased muscular stresses.
‘Allen’s fossa’ (Finnegan 1978) was noted on the left femoral neck, a trait linked to marked flexion of the hip.
Extreme extension of the hip has been related to running down steep hillsides (Angel 1964). Could this condition have come about due to activity on the western side of North Foreland Hill (the steepest in the area)? One may (perhaps somewhat romantically) envisage our Beaker lady developing this condition on the western slopes of the North Foreland promontory, only a short walk from where she was ultimately buried.
Natasha Ransom excavates
the Beaker burial
Natasha Ransom excavating at Beauforts




Bibliography

Anderson T. and Andrews J.1997. The human bones in Parfitt K. and Brugmann B. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery on Mill Hill, Deal, Kent. (Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series no.14). London. Appendix II, 230-232.

Anderson T. and Andrews J. 2005. The Human Skeleton in Hart P.C. ‘Beauforts’, North Foreland Avenue, Broadstairs, Kent. Trust for Thanet Archaeology report, Part 2.

Angel G.L.1964. The reaction area of the femoral neck. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research 32, 130-142.

Finnegan M. 1978. Non metric variations of the infra cranial skeleton. Journal of Anatomy 125, 23-37.

Webb S.G. and Thorne A.G. 1985. A congenital meningocele in prehistoric Australia. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 68, 525-533.


Acknowledgments
I should very much like to acknowledge the work of the Late Trevor Anderson for his analyses of not only this but many other human skeletons from Thanet (and further affield).


The text is the responsibility of the author; the photographs are by the author unless otherwise stated.


Paul Hart

Version 1 - Posted 16.12.06
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