Book Review
Title: Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black
Genre: Non-Fiction, Science, Memoir
Rating: 4 Stars
I didn’t know anything about Written in Bone but the premise sounded interesting and the cover is so beautiful (plus I got approved for ARCs on both NetGalley and Edelweiss). Sue Black begins by introducing us to what the field of forensic anthropology is and what its purpose is in different circumstances. I really liked the fact that Black is going to be focusing on what the skeleton can tell us when all the other parts of the body are lost to time and just from the introduction I can tell this is going to be a very interesting book. She also begins by separating fact from fiction, so if you are like me and love shows like Bones then this is going to be a really fun book to read.
Black begins by starting with the cranial bones or the skull, she talks in some depth about the skull’s formation and how it develops over time. It was interesting to learn that they can accurately age children using just the skull as different parts of the skull develop and fuse over time which has been used in criminal cases. She also talks in some depth about how they can identify which part of the skull fragments of bone have come from because the skull unlike other bones in our body is made up of different types of bone limited to specific areas of the skull. While this does get fairly technical Black has written in a way that everyone can understand the terminology and linguistics used. She makes this information more interesting as she links them to forensic cases that she has worked on over the years including murders and how the skull played a major role in identifying the victim, working out how the victim was killed and many other factors that came into play during these cases. She also makes it clear that her role as a forensic anthropologist was limited and she has to work with pathologists when determined how the person died and if there was foul play involved as this was beyond her area of expertise and how she wasn’t involved in the case beyond that and had to follow them in the papers like everyone else.
We are staying with the skull here but moving specifically to the facial bones at the front of the skull that make up our face. The first point Black makes is that the facial structure is unique, not just between humans and other species but between individual humans as siblings and even twins can have minor variations in the way their faces are constructed. Humans also have the ability to recognise both familiar and unfamiliar faces, which has only be recorded in a few other species which was interesting. Black discusses a conference she attended in Saudi Arabia, where she observed that Saudi women could recognise each other easily even when only their eyes were visible. She decides to study this and see if there were specific areas the women were looking at in order to identify their friends and it was unconclusive at the time but there seemed to be some merit in it. On the back of this she discusses the prosopagnosia-super-recognizer spectrum, people who suffer with prosopagnosia are unable to identify faces and I took the test myself and found that I am can easily identify familiar and unfamiliar faces although not to the level of a super recognizer but good enough. Black’s story about not being able to identify her husband who she has known for 25 years because he grew a beard in the time she was away was rather funny, but it did highlight how little has to change about a person for our recognition skills to be rendered useless. Black also spends a great deal of time discussing how plastic surgery and cosmetic dental work have made facial recognition both easier and harder. It made it easier because they had more to work with been as things like dentures can easily be tracked to the manufacturer and the dentist who fitted them. However, from a surface perspective who lose the individual characteristics that many would be able to identify us by on the surface.
Moving below the skull, Black is now going to look at the postcranial axial bones, namely the spine. Moving below the skull, Black is now going to look at the postcranial axial bones, namely the spine. The spine was an interesting section for me namely because Black discusses some of the last hangings and beheadings to take place within the United Kingdom which was really intriguing. There is a book called the Hangman’s Bible if I remember correctly detailing all the hanging to take place in the UK that makes for some really interesting reading fi you want to check it out. Black talks in some depth about several different cases she worked on where only a part of the spine was the only thing recovered from the body or that the spine was the most critical part of the body in determining how the person died which is the case in two of the crimes she discusses. She also recounts in length about how the spine is one of the most essential parts of the human body and it plays a huge role in what separates us from a lot of other species in the fact we walk upright. She also talks a lot of different medical condition that affect the spine and how these present themselves and how she as a forensic anthropologist could easily spot these and relate them back to the specific illness that caused them. Black is different following a pattern when discussing different parts of the body, it seems to be equal parts science and medicine coupled with a few stories about cases she has worked on over the years and I have a feeling that this pattern is going to change for the rest of the novel.
The next section Black is going to discuss is the thorax or chest area. This section focuses mainly on the sternum or breastbone and the ribs. It was nice to see Black make the assessment that when trying to kill someone there are two weak points people usually go for, the head or the chest. While the head does contain the brain the skull is thick in places and can be difficult to break, in comparison the bones of the chest are much weaker and easier to break and in the case of the ribs there are convenient gaps between them for a knife or bullet to pass through. Black also makes it known that if you have only recovered ribs it can be very difficult to actually distinguish humans ribs from the ribs of a pig are they are virtually identical and she breaks down some of the ways in which they are similar which might just put me off spare ribs for the rest of my life. Black goes on to discuss the variety of ways the different bones in the chest can be used to identify causes of death and how in the case of the ribs they can literally record details of abuse for years because they don’t heal quickly. Black actually encountered this when working on the case of a little boy who had been killed by his father. They were able to separate the new injuries from the old and determine how long the abuse had been going on for before the boy’s death which was both heart-breaking and astounding. Black does talk about several other cases during this section but the young boy stuck with me the most as I’ve heard about horrendous abuse suffered by children like Baby P and knowing that their bodies hold a record of that abuse that can bring their abusers to justice holds a small comfort for me.
We then return higher up the body once more to the throat, looking specifically at the hyoid and larynx and immediately my phonetics lessons are coming back to haunt me. Compared to the other chapters we have seen so far this one is relatively short. Black discusses how the hyoid bone is typically referred to in crime novels as a break in this bone can be done by strangulation. However, she does counter this by saying that it is possible to break your hyoid bone while you are still alive and for it to heal and she gives us some examples of this she has seen during her career. It is nice how she referred not only men and women in her cases but transgender people as well as their bodies show signs of their transition which help identify that person after death. I don’t really have a lot of say on this section so I’ve kept it short.
By the time we enter part three, we have moved onto the limbs or the postcranial appendicular bones and the first set we are going to be looking at are the pectoral girdle or the shoulder blades. I liked that almost straight away Black points out the duality in this upper girdle as it contains the bone least likely to be fractured in the shoulder and the bone most commonly broken in the collarbone. When discussing the clavicle or collarbone Black states that it is the first bone to develop in the womb at around 5 weeks and develops as a steady pace of around 1mm per week, meaning by the time the baby is born the collarbone measures around 44mm in length. This allows people like Black to accurately age foetal remains and she talks about a few cases where foetal bones were recovered, the collarbone included and she was able to accurate age them. The collarbone is also one of the most resilient bones in the body and a fragment of a collarbone was used to convict a murderer as it withstood being broken and burned repeatedly when other bones didn’t. By the time she moves onto the shoulder, the tone changes slightly as it is so hard to damage naturally. One of the most common ways the shoulder is injured is through torture methods which she does discuss in some length but also being hit extremely hard could also damage the shoulder. She also goes on to talk about how certain repeated action can inadvertently damaged the shoulder, for example, archers suffer with shoulder damage on one side which takes the strain on the bow.
Black move on to the other girdle in the body which is the pelvic girdle and is made up of the pubic bones in the front and the sacrum in the back. This was another relatively short chapter, Black makes it clear that while it is very easy to distinguish someone’s sex solely with their pelvis 80-90% of the time, this isn’t the case with children as before the production of hormones during puberty both male and female pelvises look identical. However, after puberty it is easy as men’s become squarer and box like while women’s is more rounded and undergoes some structural changes in order to give birth. There is also markings left behind after birth so they can also determine if a woman has given birth once or multiple times from her pelvis alone. However, the two cases she discusses her are both men who died from gunshots wounds and in both cases the bullet was never recovered despite there being no exit wound. Upon examination both bullets were found lodged in the pelvis near the pubic bone which was an interesting coincidence for Black.
Black then moves onto the long bones both in the upper and lower limbs as these are directly comparable. There are six long bones in the body split evenly between the arms and the legs, these are the humerus, the femur, the radius, the ulna, the tibia and the fibula. Black makes the distinctions between how these bones can be used to age a child and there are specific growth patterns in these bones when we are young, however, after they fuse between 15-16 in girls and 18-19 boys these bones can only be used for determined height and not age. Black spends quite a lot of time digging through the different ways in which these bones can be damaged and how a forensic anthropologist determined whether these where made accidentally in the case of sports injuries or whether there were a result of foul play or defensive injuries. For example, if we are attacked we would typically raise our arms to protect our head often resulting in defensive injuries to the forearms which is extremely common however, in the legs the main injuries seen there can be associated with sports such as tackling in football or rugby. Black also breaks down basic anatomy explaining how the arms and legs are mirrors of each other with a mirror difference between the hips and shoulder. She also discusses several cases where the long bones were found before the rest of the body and how they could still make a determination of gender, height, age and how the body was dismembered extremely accurately because these bones are unique in humans. I liked how throughout this book Black has injected small personal stories to explain or further explain points that are important. During this section she also discusses how features like tattoos, freckles, mole and birthmarks can be used to identify people which has been done in murders, missing persons and case of assault.
Following on from the long bones, Black’s next area to look at is the hands. The hands are probably one of the most important parts of the body when it comes to identifying someone as we all have fingerprints and in some cases the hands can be the only part of the body that is missing. This was one of my favourite chapters in the entire book as we know our hands are unique. Not just in the sense of the difference in species as humans and primates are some of the only species with posable thumbs but we use our hands very differently to primate. Our hands are also unique in the sense of our fingerprints but there can be further unique things that happen with our hands such as having more or less digits, fused digits and much more. Black actually references Hannibal Lecter who has a duplicate middle finger on his left hand which is a very rare thing in the real world and it made him so interesting to me as a character as Hannibal values his hands more than anything as he is both a surgeon and artist where the hands are extremely valuable to those particular professions. Black also goes on to explain how the hands are used in a variety of ways to identify the dead and references a few different cases. However, I did find it very interesting to learn that some animals like seals have very similar anatomy to use, when completely skeletal a seal’s flipper and a human hand are extremely similar and seal flippers can often be mistaken for human hands washing up on beaches. Black obviously also discussing fingerprints and how we thought they were unique to every individual including twins, however, it has been proven since that this might not be the case as there are cases were fingerprints at crime scenes have been matched to individuals that have nothing to do with the case although this might just be the prints are extremely similar.
The next part of the body Black goes on to discuss is obviously the feet and this might be the last chapter in the book. Black makes the point that the feet are almost as unique as the hands and yet are often overlooked during forensic investigations. She discusses how the feet are composed much like the hands and how you can use toe prints the same way you use fingerprints, however, she mentions gait analysis or the way we walk, the hand version of which would be the way we write and how this has been used to identify criminals are the way we look is unique to the individual as it depends on the length of the stride, the weight distribution and much more making it almost impossible to hide or copy. The cases Black references here are the most exciting but the final one about Buck Ruxton was amazing and it was one I had no prior knowledge of. Overall, Written in Bone has been a deeply fascinating and informative look at the human body and how small parts right down to the tiny finger and toe bones can be used to partially or fully identify a person and if you are interesting in forensics at all then I’d definitely recommend picking this book up.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
I received this review copy from NetGalley & Edelweiss
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