oxygen and water in the soil around the bones, and that in turn means that
living organisms that can destroy bone have easier access to the body.
Disturbance by farming, building, or even by later burials, is more likely. The
bones of children are less robust than those of adults and often decay more
quickly. Only rarely are ancient bodies found to survive in good condition.
These are usually in the form of preserved bodies such as Egyptian mummies,
naturally mummified remains like the sacrificial child victims found high in
the Andes of South America, bodies preserved by ice such as the Iron Age
people in Siberia, and bodies preserved in anaerobic conditions, like the‘bog
bodies’of Northern Europe.
Further evidence is now available to the archaeologist through the
development of DNA analysis. DNA is found in most animal body cells
including skin, hair roots, bones, teeth, saliva and other body fluids. DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid) analysis is based on the principle that every person
has a different genetic fingerprint, except for identical twins. The DNA
molecule contains the individual building blocks of this fingerprint for each
living entity. Two strands of smaller molecules are linked into an entwined
formation known as the double helix (Figure 4). It is made up of linked pairs
of bases in specific sequences, different for every individual. There are two
types of DNA–nuclear and mitochondrial; each cell in an organism has one
copy of nuclear DNA (nDNA) inherited from both parents and up to 10,000
copies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which comes only from the maternal
ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, CRIME AND PUNISHMENTFigure 4. The DNA double helix (Source: Forluvoft)