A quantitative histological comparison of ground human bone preparation techniques Stacey L. Lander ⁎, Desiré Brits, Margot Hosie School of Anatomical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa abstract article info Article history: Received 1 March 2015 Received in revised form 4 May 2015 Accepted 8 May 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Histomorphometry Bone grinding method Histological sections Tibia To assess bone histology, ground bone sections can be prepared mechanically (automated technique) or manually by grinding the bone by hand (manual method). Recently the manual grinding method proposed by Maat et al. (2001) has received increased interest compared to other grinding techniques commonly used to investigate histochemical staining to diagnose pathological changes and age-at-death. Although automated techniques are thought to be qualitatively equivalent to Maat et al.'s (2001) method, a quantitative comparison has not been done. The aim therefore was to quantitatively compare Maat et al.'s (2001) manual method to an automated grinding technique by measuring the maximum and minimum diameters, and calculating the area, of Haversian systems and Haversian canals from the anterior midshaft of five cadaveric tibiae. Statistical tests were used to assess the differences between the variables. Quantitatively there was no significant difference between the two techniques, illustrating that the quality of the sections produced by the manual method was equally suitable for qualitative and quantitative examination. Future researchers interested in doing quantitative research on ground sections are therefore not limited by a lack of access to specialized automated equipment because manual ground sections are sufficient for histological assessment. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Assessing the histology or microstructure of bone is a widely used technique in biological anthropology, especially in bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology and palaeopathology. It has been used in species determination (Harsanyi, 1993; Hillier and Bell, 2007), the assessment of diagenetic alteration (Turner-Walker and Jans, 2008; Hollund et al., 2012), the estimation of age-at-death (Robling and Stout, 2008; Keough et al., 2009), diagnosing disease (Schultz, 2001; Ortner, 2003) and assessing post-traumatic time intervals (de Boer et al., 2012a). When preparing histological bone sections, thin sections are acquired by slicing the bone using a microtome or grinding it to the desired thickness. Depending on the purpose of the study, fresh or cadaver bone intended for microtome use is either decalcified (softening of hard tissue) and embedded in wax or resin, or left intact (not decalcified) and subsequently embedded for cutting purposes (de Boer et al., 2013). Considering that archaeological bone is generally more poor- ly preserved compared to fresh or cadaver bone, an automated grinding technique is preferred by bioarchaeologists as the “decalcification and microtome cutting of archaeological bone is considered obsolete” (de Boer et al., 2013: 83). The automated grinding technique involves the embedding of intact bone in resin, followed by grinding on silicon carbide paper until the desired section thickness is reached. Although this is a common grinding technique used by researchers using various modifications (Schultz, 2001), it is often described as time consuming and expensive (Maat et al., 2001). With this in mind, Maat et al. (2001) revised the ‘rapid manual method’ initially introduced by Frost (1958) and recommended it as an alternative grinding technique to the auto- mated grinding of bone as it was inexpensive and very little time was needed to complete a section. The rapid manual method described by Maat et al. (2001) involves manually preparing thin undecalcified archaeological bone sections by grinding the bone by hand using very basic materials including a hack- saw, silicon carbide paper, kitchen detergent and water. Additional in- structions for fragile bone are also given using cyanoacrylate glue (“Super Glue”) as an embedding medium. Recently many researchers have compared Maat et al.'s (2001) manual grinding method to other grinding techniques (Beauchesne and Saunders, 2006; Martiniakova et al., 2006; Haas and Stora, 2014) and utilised the technique to investi- gate histochemical staining to diagnose pathological changes (de Boer et al., 2012b, 2013) and age-at-death (Maat et al., 2006; Kim et al., 2007; Keough et al., 2009) with reasonable success. Beauchesne and Saunders (2006) tested Maat et al.'s (2001) method by producing high quality bone sections quickly and affordably from archaeological bones of good preservation for histological research purposes. Qualitatively (histomorphoscopy) and quantitatively (histomorphometry) comparing the manual grinding method to an automated grinding technique is important in determining the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 3 (2015) 60–64 ⁎ Corresponding author at: University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Anatomical Sciences, 7 York Road, Parktown, Johannesburg 2193, South Africa. E-mail address: stacey.lander@vodamail.co.za (S.L. Lander). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.05.007 2352-409X/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/jasrep