CT Scanning in Archaeology

Abstract

Computed Tomography -Special Applications 58Gray found that dental disease and attrition were very common, hardly surprising in view of the unavoidably sandy diet of the Egyptians.However, he found no evidence of bone cancer, tuberculosis, syphilis, leprosy or rickets.The dry atmosphere of Egypt would tend to inhibit the tuberculosis bacillus, which survives best in damp conditions.The abundance of sunlight, essential for the conversion of vitamin D from the inactive to active state, may have been a large contributing factor in the absence of rickets.Osteoarthritis is part of the ageing process, but can occur in the spine by middle age as a result of hard labour, which suggests a large fraction of the Egyptian population was engaged in hard labour -hardly surprising since prior the Industrial Revolution the majority of the populations of all societies worked in agriculture. Physical autopsiesAnother subject we should touch on before discussing the use of CT in archaeology is the use of autopsies.The word autopsy is usually applied to the technique of examining a dead body to determine the cause of death.In some cases autopsies have been used to determine the cause of the death of a mummified person several millennia after death.However, in archaeology the term "autopsy" is used in a wider sense and includes determining the type and quality of the mummification process and ascertaining the age of the body at death and wear and tear on the body that occurred during life.Various research groups around the world have carried out autopsies on mummies, most notably at Manchester University in the UK (David et al, 1979(David et al, , 1992) ) and Pennsylvania University in America (Cockburn et al, 1975).In most cases, autopsies involve the physical destruction of a mummy in the sense that the body is unwrapped and broken open.In view of this, the highest quality mummies tend not to be subjected to this form of examination.Autopsies are sometimes used to examine the contents of burial urns, also destructive in the sense that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reassemble the contents of the urn exactly as before the examination.CT scans make it possible to perform virtual autopsies on mummies and burial urns without disturbing internal structure.

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