Proteins and Our Past: An Exploration of Human Bone Protein from the Eighteenth-Century Fortress of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, and Its Potential Applications in Bioarchaeological Research

Abstract

Bioarchaeologists can further investigate human bone metabolism at the biomolecular level by incorporating biochemical methods into their research. Recently, there has been a focus on osteocalcin, an abundant non-collagenous bone protein, because of its clinically identified relationship with biological factors (i.e., age and sex), activity, and pathological conditions (i.e., disease). For this study, osteocalcin was extracted and quantified from the femora of 27 individuals from the Fortress of Louisbourg (1713–1758) skeletal collection to explore if the clinical relationship between osteocalcin and sex, age, activity, and pathological conditions can also be established in archaeological bone. However, no significant relationships between osteocalcin concentrations and biological factors (i.e., age and sex), activity, or pathological conditions were identified. This is the first study to quantify osteocalcin from archaeological human skeletal remains from a Canadian context and provides another example of how this method may be used to study stress in bioarchaeological populations.