Re-visiting Briarwoods: Determining reliability of assessing population health from fragmentary remains

The Briarwoods Site (8PA66) was first excavated by Jeffrey M. Mitchem and Dr. Stephen J. Gluckman, from the University of South Florida, in 1980. It was a burial mound with scattered human skeletal fragments on the surface. The salvage excavation had to be expedited due to the fact that a building development on the site was in progress. Iscan and Gomez (1982) suggested that there were skeletal elements recovered that provided evidence for the existence of Paget's disease (Osteitis deformans ) in the population. However, this study reanalyzes the elements and using new technology such as Computed Tomography scans shows that there was no conclusive evidence of Paget's disease. Instead, the skeletal morphology of the affected bones is comparable to the characteristics of treponemal disease which, unlike Paget's disease, is found in sites contemporaneous to Briarwoods.