麻豆社

It's amazing what you can learn about a person's life from their remains. In this week's Science Cafe, Adam Walton talks to the scientists who have been studying bones and trying to decipher their inherent code.

Blodwen is the name given to a Neolithic skeleton found in聽Llandudno's Little Orme Head in 1891.聽She was unearthed by a mining engineer, who took her聽back to his home town in Lancashire for display. Before being repatriated to North Wales last month,聽Blodwen聽was examined by a team at聽Manchester University. Prof Andrew Chamberlain, of the faculty of Life Sciences, talks to Adam about聽the process and what it revealed.

Moving forward through time, Adam hears about聽the reasearch being done at Swansea University in a bid to聽distinguish the bones of medieval archers from remains found aboard the sunken Tudor warship, the Mary Rose.聽Nick Owen, who specialises in sports biomechanics, explains why聽his team now hope to look inside the bones to discover聽how repeated activity might change our skeleton.

Our final guest is Dr Chris Rogers, a physical anthropologist who's work has included analysing the very large number of remains kept in museums and institutions in the UK.聽He explains how a skeleton might reveal signs of disease or violence.聽聽聽