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Osteoarthritis of the right shoulder joint in an adult female.
Extremely short post this week. I have one week left to go here in Çatalhöyük before heading home on the 25th. Josh and I are mostly caught up with the cleaning and inventorying of the human remains excavated this season, although there are several crates of loose bone recovered from surface and other non-burial contexts to be dealt with first thing next year. The final task for this season will be to enter all the skeletal inventory sheets into the database and start writing up the archive report.
For those with an interest in paleopathology, here are a couple photographs I took of the right shoulder of a Late Roman adult female showing the tell-tale polishing (eburnation) and pitting of the joint surfaces associated with osteoarthritis. Notice also the new bone formation at the margins of the joint surface on the proximal humerus. These lesions were observed by Michelle Gamble from Newcastle University who joined us last week to look at the health of the Roman/Byzantine burials from the East Mound.
Right proximal humerus with eburnation and marginal lipping
A Bone to Pick 
Great photographs! I’ve seen so many crappy pictures of bones over the years, it’s always a joy to see photos done right.
Thanks! Photography has been a passion of mine for many years. These are all shot in the field using natural, indirect light and a MacGyver’ed reflector (clipboard covered with tinfoil) followed by some post-processing in Adobe Lightroom.