Book review | Bones reveal many things about our lives, says a fascinating book by a bone researcher

Nonfiction book

Sue Black: Written in bone: Hidden stories in what we leave behind. Finnish Anna Kangasmaa. WSOY. 390 pp.

Police called. A hand had been found off the coast of Scotland.

Forensic anthropologist Sue Black and his associates were not startled. They assumed it was once again a seal fin. A rotting seal fin closely resembles a human hand.

It was still not a fin, but most obviously a chimpanzee’s hand. It didn’t belong to a person, because from the photos sent by the police, you could see that the thumb was too small compared to the other fingers.

It was never found out how the monkey’s hand ended up on the beach. Did it come from a zoo or a petting zoo? Or did the smugglers of animal parts throw the cargo into the sea?

The easily solved case is included in Sue Black’s fascinating, fast-reading and well-written book Written in bone. It is one of the lighter stories in the book. Other stories usually feature crimes and human tragedies.

Black’s field of study, forensic anthropology, according to his definition, examines the human body or human remains for forensic purposes. It is often about bones, because the skeleton remains for a long time after the internal organs and skin have already decomposed.

Black has previously translated a work All that remains (2018), which deals more generally with death and in which he talks, for example, about his work as a researcher of mass graves in Kosovo. This time the subject is specifically bones.

Bones contain more information than we think, both about a vegetarian diet and muscle training. The shape of the cheekbones sometimes gives clues about the ethnic background of the deceased. Gender and age of death are often seen on the hip bone. Many healed fractures of the bone can indicate domestic violence.

Bones are easily thought of as dry and dead, Black says, but they change with our life changes.

In addition, the bones tell about the manner of death, as the many examples in the book show. There are horrible crimes, both sexual crimes and murders, some of which Black has been investigating. If Written in bone had a social media account, it would be full of content warnings.

Book is divided into about ten chapters, and in them, from the bone point of view, the skull, chest, shoulder, hand and foot are reviewed, among other things. The chapters start with general information, after which we move on to crime stories.

At the beginning of the chapter on the shoulder, Black says that the shoulder includes both the least likely to break bone in the human body, the scapula, and the most easily broken bone, the clavicle.

After that, general information about clavicles is given: Cats’ clavicles are very small, which helps them pass through tight spaces. The clavicle is not necessary for humans, and it can be removed as long as the muscles are sewn together.

Back in the day, many galloping riders had their clavicles removed because the clavicle was easily broken when the rider fell off the horse.

A fracture of the clavicle can be life-threatening, as chips of the broken bone may pierce the clavicle artery or vein.

General introduction after that we move on to death and crimes. The age at which the fetus died can be estimated from the clavicle. Black tells about a case he carefully investigated, in which it was possible to deduce from the ancient remains of babies found in the apartment with the help of clavicles, how many weeks of pregnancy they had died.

The result of the method is a peculiar but often fascinating mix of science and crime stories.

Few of us know that foxes like to eat fresh corpses and later, after the stage of putrefaction, the bones of corpses. Between them, when the body is more liquid, the foxes are less interested in the offer.

In the future, it may be possible to reconstruct the face at least partially based on DNA. It remains to be seen what kind of impact it will have on criminal investigation or history writing.

Black stays always matter-of-fact and even. He doesn’t tease or underline. Sometimes there is dry humor. The chosen style makes even brutal topics easier to read.

I myself am a reader who avoids detailed descriptions of physical violence or its aftermath. Still, I noticed that I wasn’t much bothered by, for example, the overwrought description of various hanging techniques and their consequences.

This is a good example of the fact that violence in itself is not so much oppressive or blinding, but it is usually a matter of what kind of context and tone the violence is portrayed in.

Of course, the fact that the crimes described by Black have taken place elsewhere than in Finland also makes reading easier.

Skeleton, especially the skull, has traditionally symbolized death. However, the dead person is always a single person.

Black tells an anecdote about a workshop he held for students in which the teaching framework of the class was examined. It turned out that the skeleton had been a student-aged man, suffering from anemia and probably from India.

After finding this out, the students wanted to treat the teaching framework with more respect. Forensic anthropology, Black says, can restore identity to anonymous bodies and thereby awaken empathy and the desire to care.

Despite the macabre stories Written in bone is basically an empathetic and empathy-encouraging book.