The second instalment of UNBC’s Anthropology in Our Backyard Series continues.
The analysis on the skeletal remains belonging to members of the Franklin Expedition will be the focus tonight at the Canfor Winter Garden starting at 7 PM.
Doctor Anne Keenleyside who is an Associate Professor for the Department of Anthropology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario will be one of the guest speakers.
She undertook an examination of the remains for evidence of disease.
“Pathological indicators that would tell us something about the health of these individuals and then I also took some bone and tooth samples for some types of chemical analysis which can tell us something about the geographic origins of these individuals.”
Some of the topics will include the health status of the crew including scurvy, the evidence cannibalism, their genetic profiles along with a few others.
“One of the things I’ll be looking at is the lead poisoning hypothesis as there has been a lot of discussion about the elevated lead levels that have been observed in some of these remains and the source of the lead and the timing and exposure.”
“I’ll also be looking at the role that scurvy played on the expedition, so I’ll be talking about the skeletal evidence for scurvy, what it looks like and some of the effects of it and whether or not we can say that scurvy played a role in the demise of the expedition,” added Keenleyside.
She is a trained bioarcheologist and conducts research on human skeletal remains recovered from archaeological contexts.