SEM of bloodstains on ethnographically documented biological raw materials

What is it about?

The aboriginal use of reed and bone as raw materials for knives and daggers, respectively, has been well-documented ethnographically in some geographical areas of Melanesia. Because of the significant role that these weapons played in inter- and intra-ethnic aggression, they can potentially have retained smears from the contact with human blood. To carry out a guiding low-vacuum scanning electron microscopy (SEM) study of specific interest to ethnography, the outsides of a fragment of stalk of giant cane (Arundo donax) and tibial diaphysis of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) were smeared with peripheral human blood. No biological specimen preparation was applied to the samples. After just over 1 month, bloodstain boundaries and their neighboring inner areas were examined via secondary electrons by a variable-pressure SEM (VP-SEM) working in low-vacuum mode. On both substrates, bloodstains exhibited micro-scales. No janocyte (erythrocyte negative replica) was observed in the examined areas. However, erythrocytes were seen crowded together as grain-shaped corpuscles in the smear on reed, and several hecatocytes (moonlike shaped erythrocytes) were evidenced in the smear on bone. The results of this study suggest that a VP-SEM working in low-vacuum mode can be used fruitfully to detect blood remains in medium- sized reed and bone antique aboriginal artifacts.

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Why is it important?

This procedure can prospectively help to ethnographic museum curators and aboriginal-art surveyors as an easy guiding test in the valuation of antique traditional weapons prior to acquisition, when the real use of a piece has been claimed by the supplier.