Group 5 Lab Data: Ritual

Group 5 was in charge of burning the beef femur wrapped in fat. It’s worth noting that there was significant wind that day, which affected our ability to get accurate readings, so there is some error in our weight numbers. Our beef femur was 2614 grams, and our fat was 475 grams. Our femur was .12 meters around the center, .47 meters across the longest end, and .44 meters across. Upon putting the fat-wrapped bone on the fire, the fat immediately started to melt, which greatly increased the fire’s intensity. At 6:54, bone marrow started to flow out of the bone, and there was some movement with the logs at 10:50, but the structure remained stable. At 15:40, we put an extra log in for support and to keep the fire going. By 16:42, it was mostly black, and by 23:00, it broke and started turning white. We then attempted to roast the splanchna at 29:00, but achieved little success, as our skewer was short and so whoever was holding the skewer was very close to the fire, and we had to frequently alternate who was holding it. We poured the wine on the bone at 40:00. It caused some fractures and the bone to turn a blueish color. It also emitted a sour, burnt wine smell that the bones retained. The burnt bone weighed 900 grams. 

After the ritual, we experimented with different combinations of ash to figure out what the ash altar at Olympia may have been made out of by comparing the toughness of various combinations. For our group, the combination made out of 2 cups of bone ash and ⅔  a cup of wine (5) created the strongest. Once it started drying, it became crumbly. This meant that initial toughness was insufficient for determining which was the most durable. Thus, we decided our second combination was our best, which was 2 cups of outside ash, 1 cup of bone ash, ½ a cup of water, and some bone shards (3). Notably, we tried the same combination without the bone shards (2,8), and it was not as durable, so it’s possible the bone shards help increase the durability. The other combinations we tried were 1 cup bone ash, 1 cup outdoor, ½ cup of water (1), and 2 cups outside, ¼ cup bone ash, ½ cup water (4), and lastly 2 cups fireplace ash and 1 cup water (6). The other combinations (with the exception of 6) were all relatively similar, being squishy but still firm. Ultimately, we can’t say which is the most durable from this and will need to check back in some time to see which ones survived.