Original title: New data from old bones: using bioarchaeology and forensics to reassess legacy data from ancient Abydos, Egypt
A century ago, excavators found hundreds of people buried around early Egyptian kings and thought they had been sacrificed. They saw damage on the bones but believed it happened after death. Modern study of injuries and burial evidence suggests many people had wounds made around the time they died. The paper uses this case to argue that old collections should be examined again with current methods.
Imagine finding a cracked plate in a kitchen years after it broke. It is hard to tell whether someone cracked it while using it or whether it broke later while being moved. In this paper, the old bones are the plate, and updated ways of reading damage help distinguish injuries made around death from damage that happened afterward.
The way ancient people are buried can shape claims about their lives and deaths. Re-examining old human remains with updated methods can change what archaeologists conclude about Egyptian society and whether people were killed as part of royal burials.
The abstract presents Abydos as a case study and does not give the number of individuals with injuries, explain how each injury was assessed, or establish that every person in the subsidiary burials was sacrificed. It argues for reassessing legacy collections, but does not describe the results of such reassessments at other sites.
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New data from old bones: using bioarchaeology and forensics to reassess legacy data from ancient Abydos, Egypt — Roselyn A. Campbell — Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology — doi:10.3389/fearc.2026.1858940
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.