The skeleton...

[system1988]

According to some info the sex, the age, and height of the Amphipolis skeleton will be published on january 20th.

Best wishes to all for a happy New Year.

Pauline

[agesilaos]

This source suggests the results of the latest tomography will be announced next week

http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/culture-arts/a ... ected-soon

[Zebedee]

Seeing a lot of normally reliable people saying that the results will be released today?

edit: ah, seems to have been Greek newspaper getting confused. Now saying tomorrow.

[Zebedee]

Link to MoC

A 60 year old woman, two men aged 35 to 45, an infant and what seems to be an adult cremation. Animal bones (horse tentatively suggested) also found.

(edited)

[gepd]

Results are out: 5 skeletons

1 woman, at least 60
2 men between 35-45
1 newborn, unknown gender
1 more person, adult that was cremated

http://www.yppo.gr/2/g22.jsp?obj_id=59732

I think photos will be available soon

[system1988]

According to professor Olga Palaghia the number of the bones suggests 10 more skeletons...

Of course the bones as always can be dated.

[sean_m]

Thank you very much. I cannot read modern Greek. The physical anthropologists who I have read or heard say that if someone died between the ages of say 15 and 60, it is very hard to estimate age at death from the skeleton. So when the finds are published I am sure there will be lively debate and lots of warnings.

One of my former colleagues in Calgary wrote her MA thesis on what went wrong with the excavations of the skeletons at Vergina (link). I hope that the excavators of Amphipolis can resist the same temptations and pressures.

[sikander]

Greetings,

I have hopes that the research on this tomb and the bones found within will follow a careful, thoughtful investigation and peer-review system to avoid flights of fancy and wishful thinking.
At this particular point, there is still much in the air..and remaining speculation as to who resides there
I am enjoying reading the reports and waiting for each new theory, discovery and result; I look forward to everyone sharing ideas.

Regards
Sikander

[Efstathios]

There were also remains of horses, so this could account to the rest of the bones. But there are some issues here. The announcement is not very revealing, as per usual. Carbon dating must have been already made but the results are not announced. And all the remains were incomplete, and that's a mystery. For example, only a few bones were found from the person that was cremated, so that they couldn't tell the gender or age, or at least at this point. This person is very possible to be the main occupant. But all these burials could as well have been from different periods, or even be unrelated to the tomb. And it is also possible that the main burial is not there but at another part of the monument.

[system1988]

Thank you very much. I cannot read modern Greek.

Try these links


http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/01 ... olis-tomb/

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/01 ... olis-tomb/

for a casual report.

[sean_m]

Thanks again system_1988. It is comforting to read archaeologists saying "these results are preliminary and we want to run more tests." I think that people will be wondering about this site for many years.

[agesilaos]

Sean, things are not so bleak with regard to narrowing age ranges there are a great number of bones which slowly fuse over time and allow for finer estimates than between 15 and 60. The state of preservation is naturally key to these observations, as is good training/experience. Thanks for the link to the thesis, I have yet to start it but will soon.

System1988, good links too, and it is a relief to see the press finally waking up to the unlikelihood of the woman being Olympias, even if her age has been massaged to bring her closer to the 60 of the skeleton's lower estimate, probably based on the Wikipedia entry, itself founded on the quaint idea that she married Philip when she was eighteen in an age when twelve was legal. Given two sucessful pregnancies in quick succession I would favour fourteen as a lower limit. She does seem to have been young, however, as there was a year between betrothal and marriage for what was an important alliance for both Epeiros and Macedon.

I would go for Phila being the 60 year old. She married Balakros c332, if Antonius Diogenes may be believed, and definitely died in 287; were she married at 15 and thus born in 347 she would have been 60 when she died, the cremated male could be her final husband Demetrios Poliorketes whose ashes we are told were given to Antigonas Gonatas by Seleukos Nikator (Plut. Demetrius). The neonate and the two males seem more likely to be later intrusions like the burials in the grave not far from Kastas; one would expect the males to have been cremated if they had died contemporaneously with the female and the neo-nate cannot have been 'Phila's' so must be an intrusion like the three now discovered from Tomb I at Verghina. Pure speculation, of course