Experts solve mystery of human bones in garden

● Research finds old remains probably buried by medical students

Human remains found under an Aberdeen home are likely to have been buried by medical students who were trying not to fall foul of the law, experts have established.

Bones were found in a garden by workers renovating a house on Canal Street in Old Aberdeen last November.

After police ruled out foul play, archaeology experts from Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen University tried to solve the mystery.

By close examination of the bones, and deciphering records from the last 200 years the team pieced together the puzzle.

Aberdeenshire Council’s archaeologist, Bruce Mann, said: “The discovery of these bones reveals a little piece of the city’s lost history.”

After the find, human bone specialist Alison

Cameron, of Cameron Archaeology, spent several days excavating the garden to collect all the bones.

“I could see immediately that one of the skulls had been cut or sawn in an interesting way,” she said.

“It looked as if it had been cut in order to take the brain out, probably for experimentation or training purposes.

“A hole had been bored in the skull, and that, combined with the dates, led me to the conclusion that the bones were buried by a medical student.

“Anatomisation was technically illegal, but this was a time when so much about the human body was unknown, even the circulation system.

“People felt they had to use bodies in this way in order to find out what happened inside us.”

The bones were also given to Aberdeen University archaeology lecturer Rebecca Crozier.

In all, there were 115 bone fragments, and her tests showed they belonged to between five and seven people, two aged between two and seven.

Carbon dating at a laboratory in East Kilbride, found a 95.4% likelihood the bones dated from between 1650 and 1750.

Investigators determined that at least two of the people’s bones – one adult and one child – were used for medical training.

Records showed that medical students lived at the house in around 1832.

Photograph by Kath Flannery ANALYSIS: Aberdeen University archaeology lecturer Dr Rebecca Crozier examines some of the bones in her lab at the Marischal Museum.

Archaeologist Alison Cameron looks for more bones

Excavating the garden of the Canal Street house, where medical students once lived