Excavating Cancer in Sudan…

A 3,000-year-old skeleton recently found by archaeologists from Durham University in northern Sudan is shedding light on the history of cancer. While I was excavating skeletons like the one above this winter in Sudan, I looked for any clues I could find to determine each body’s cause of death. Clear imaging of lesions on bones, however, is done with radiography and a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Durham’s new discovery is significant because it the oldest complete example of metastatic cancer in the archaeological record.