Franklin & Marshall College

You can tell a lot from looking at a person’s bones. You can determine age. You can get a good idea of the person’s general state of health. You can even find evidence to suggest ancestry.

As part of an ongoing archaeological investigation of the excavated 18th-century village of Otstonwakin, John M. Picard ’11 was able to apply the principles of osteology — the study of bones — to a human skeleton recovered from the site’s burial ground in 1936.

His Hackman research adviser, Associate Professor of Anthropology Mary Ann Levine, has been studying Otstonwakin for a number of years. The village was near modern-day Williamsport, Pa., and was started by a woman named Madame Montour, who was of Native American and French descent. The village served as a meeting place for members of the Iroquois nations and most likely French and English colonists. The village itself was inhabited mainly by French, Native Americans and people of mixed descent.

A neuroscience and anthropology double major, Picard headed to Williamsport in early July to conduct his non-invasive museum analysis, along with Barrett Brenton, an associate professor of anthropology at St. John’s University. Once there, Picard had to open a box of skeletal remains that had not been touched or analyzed in the 70 years since they were exhumed.

Picard determined the remains belonged to a woman around 20 years old. He was able to pinpoint the approximate age by looking at the extent of bone epiphyseal fusion. Using the principles of paleopathology, he determined her overall health was fairly good, since he found little evidence of anemia, deficiency in diet or any noticeable trauma.

Since Otstonwakin was a multinational community, determining the ancestry of the individual was an additional research goal. “There are a number of ways you can determine the ethnicity of an individual,” Picard says. In this case, using cranial metrics, Picard measured the distance between distinct features of the cranium and input them into a mathematical discriminate function.

Although the individual was buried with Native American grave goods, preliminary and additional forensic techniques undertaken at Mercyhurst University could not identify typical Native American physical traits. “There are so many questions that these results raised,” Picard says.

Levine saw Picard’s potential to be an excellent collaborator when she taught him in a first-year seminar titled “Great Mysteries of the Past.” She believed that his background in science and expert research skills could help her solve the complicated archaeological mysteries she is investigating.

“Eighteenth-century indigenous/colonial entanglements are incredibly complex, and John’s work brings us one step closer to appreciating and understanding that complexity,” Levine says.