Week 3: Research Proposal

A cross-sectional study on bone loss of remains found in Amarna Egypt

My research project will be a cross-sectional study of skeletal remains found in Amarna Egypt. This study is significant because of the history of Amarna. It was a capital city of Egypt established by Akhetaten in 1348 BC and was later abandoned and demolished 28 years later. The city was built from the ground up by Akhetaten as a brand new city for his monotheistic god Aten. The history allows archaeologists to look at skeletal remains from a very tight generation. Instead of looking at remains that span hundreds or thousands of years this collection spans one to two generations of people. This is important because the data set will allow more precision and have a better explanation as to how these people lived and who they were. This study will provide a better understanding of human bone loss through time. Also it could be used to compare human bone loss and structure with people from modern times. There is much to be gained in the history of Egypt as well as modern medical research.

In this study, only statistical tests will be done. The data set that will be worked on has already been collected. The data collection was done on approximately 40 males subjects and 80 female subjects. Two areas of the body were looked at. X-rays of the humerus and the femur were taken at the medial and anterior angle for each bone. The subjects are then divided up into two specific groups one is sex and the other is age, both of which are categorical.  Sex will obviously be either male or female. Since the bones of the deceased had died over 2 millennia ago the exact age is unknown but an age range can be determined. The age categories will be divided up into four different age groups 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45+. One more variable that will be taken into account is the weight of the person. Using the femur head and some of the pelvis bones that have been found a ratio will be taken between the two to determine an accurate weight between the femur head and pelvis. With this ratio, a linear equation can be derived to find an accurate weight for all the subjects. With the X-rays, actual measurements of the thickness of the bone were made in Egypt using calipers. I will use this in ImageJ, a software used to measure scans and pictures, to calibrate it. With that, I will take measurements of the thickness of the bone from the medullary cavity and the compact/spongy bone. Taken from all subjects this will give a good representation of what bone loss looked like as people aged long ago.

This dataset is extremely large and because of that many questions can be answered but the overall question is to see how age and sex affect bone loss in this sample of people. Without a doubt, as individuals age, there will be bone loss but I believe that bone loss will be greater in the female sex as they age. I believe my results will prove my hypothesis. If I were to plot the points of thickness on a graph it would show that as age increased thickness in bone would decrease in both sexes but the female group would have a greater inverse relationship.

-- John Burns