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The Tooth Behind Stonehenge

Video clips from: Murder at Stonehenge


Watch these video clips with your students. The questions that accompany them can be discussed in class or printed out and answered individually by your students.

Video Clip 1 This clip introduces both Mike Pitts, an archaeologist who wants to shed light on how Stonehenge was used throughout history, and specimen 4.10.4, a skeleton of a man who may have some answers.

Play Video Clip 1

Questions:
  • Where and in what condition was the skeleton found?

  • What did archeologist Mike Pitts want to learn from 4.10.4?

  • What evidence did osteo-archaeologist Jacqueline McKinley use to determine how 4.10.4 died?
Video Clip 2 Mike Pitts has a theory that 4.10. 4 may have been involved in a confrontation between Romans and Saxons. Finding out where 4.10.4 spent most of his life would help Pitts further develop his ideas. See how a tooth can reveal such history.

Play Video Clip 2

Questions:
  • Why would people have different isotope concentrations in their tooth enamel based on where they had lived?

  • Explain why Mike Pitts needed a soil sample from 4.10.4's gravesite.

  • What did Pitts learn during the collecting of that sample?
Video Clip 3 Using maps indicating the particular geology of Great Britain, the analysis of 4.10.4's tooth enamel was used to pinpoint where he most likely spent most of his life.

Play Video Clip 3

Questions:
  • What do different levels of oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel reveal about a person?

  • What can be determined by the concentration of strontium isotopes found in tooth enamel? Why do they vary from one place to another?

  • Why is it necessary to use information from both oxygen and strontium isotopes to pinpoint a probable location of origin?

  • Think about where most people today get their food and water. Do you think that using tooth enamel isotopic analysis would reveal as much about where a modern person lived? Explain your answer.

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