Malvern U3A Evening

Anthropology and the Human Skeleton.

DARFIELD: 1630 Clintons Rd

Being the last meeting of Malvern U3A for the year, members enjoyed a Christmas morning tea before being thoroughly engrossed by guest speaker, Dr Rachel Scott. Rachel was brought up in Malvern and from an early age was interested in Archaeology. Her first dig was on the family property at Coalgate before she even studied Archaeology. She said, “We called this site the Pig Pen. I didn’t really know what I was doing. It wasn’t very successful, but it did not put me off.” Rachel trained at both Otago and Auckland Universities as a Bioarchaeologist gaining a masters degree at Otago and a doctorate from Auckland University. She currently works to recover and repatriate United States Marines killed in action in World War 2, and also works on contract around New Zealand. As a Biological Anthropologist, Rachel looks at the human skeleton to try to learn about a person or community’s way of life. This can include determining the age and sex of the person, their stature or sometimes if they had been ill before they died, or less often how they died. Rachel outlined the fundamentals of excavation, recovery and analysis of human skeletal remains and the techniques applied to archaeological and forensic remains. Using real world examples from her sixteen years of experience in the field, including Ancient Egyptians, Chilean Mummies and the return of New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) servicemen from overseas commonwealth war graves, she graphically illustrated her work. “Te Auraki - The Return,” Rachel commented, “Was something quite close to my heart. It was the repatriation commenced in 2018 of the NZDF servicemen who died overseas between 1955 and 1971. In 1971, the repatriation policy was changed so that these personnel could be brought home if the families so wished.” Te Auraki involved the recovery of thirty six men from six countries and nine cemeteries. The largest recovery was from Terendak Camp Military Cemetery in Malaysia, sixteen men were repatriated. Blessings and Waiata were observed before each individual was exhumed. The forensic team included an archaeologist to oversee the burial above the actual coffin, Defence Force odontologists who compared dental records and four forensic archaeologists, of which Rachel was one, worked in pairs and were responsible for excavating the remains from the grave and analysis in the mortuary. The operation was overseen by an NZDF doctor and officer. At every location, NZDF men and women were present to hold vigil for the deceased. “This whole project in general, was the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my career. There was one special moment, one of the men I recovered was a good friend of my uncle. They were together when he died. The most rewarding thing for me was my uncle crying and saying thank you when he gave me a big hug,” Rachel concluded. It was an amazing presentation about a topic we knew very little about. We begin 2023 in February, with Alan Blackburn speaking about the Ming Dynasty with a lens on today. An emphasis on porcelain. Quality Entertainers Paradise

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Ph Min Cookson 027 249 5417 or Dan van der Salm 021 918 233

Ruth Warren, Malvern U3A.