BONES Recap: Ancient History

BONES 8.11 The Archaeologist in the Cocoon

Case of the Week:

A man goes skydiving against his wife’s wishes and ends up hung up in a tree. He calls his wife, assuring her that everything is great, until he looks over and sees a dead body in a huge cocoon up in the tree. He screams and his chute gives way and he falls to the ground.

When team Jeffersonian arrives, Hodgins is really excited because he thinks that they’ve found Moth Man. He squabbles with Brennan as she wants to cut a small hole in the cocoon. As she does so, a bunch of worm-like creatures fall onto her face (eww!) as Hodgins looks on with glee.

Near the tree is a wrecked jeep. Although the surfaces of the car are wiped clean, Cam and Booth find blood evidence (lots!) soaked into the foam of the passenger seat. The scene was clearly set up to look like an accident – the jeep was pushed off the road, hit a rock and potentially catapulted the body into the tree.

The license plate from the car is traced back to a famous archaeologist. They are able to ID the body as James Sutton, a well-known adventurer and archaeologist based on medical records. The victim wrote a bunch of cheap adventure novels and makes money selling fake artifacts that are featured in the books.

Sweets and Booth interview the victim’s wife. She’s Russian and pregnant and only moved to the US a month ago. She married Sutton in Chechnya and then they moved to the US together. Her brother, who lives in Cleveland, translates for her. She tells them that she and Sutton brought things back with them from Russia and her husband was very excited about them.

Booth and Brennan go to their storage unit – a rather fancy, climate-controlled place that the victim was using as a workshop. There are trays of *very* old human bones, among other things and Brennan recognizes that they are an amazing find. They transport the bones to the Jeffersonian and Cam calls in Edison as an anthropologist. He and Bones fight over the bones but he ends up taking them to his lab, much to her dismay.

Hodgins uses crows to eat the moths and cocoon off the body (creepy eww!). Angela and Hodgins go to help Edison, although Hodgins is leery of setting Brennan off. Edison finds out that there are both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens represented among the bones – two adult males, one female, and a toddler, all living together, using the same resources.

Edison is eager to share gloat about this ground-breaking discovery with Brennan, but before he can celebrate much, she notices an injury on one of the bones. One of the Homo sapiens was murdered, so the bones are actually hers to study because they are evidence in a crime. Bones and Edison fight and Cam ends up having to mediate. She lets Edison keep the bones but gives Brennan access as well.

Booth and Brennan go to meet with the victim’s publisher, who he met with right before his death. She tells them that he had contacted her about his findings in Chechnya and was excited that he would finally be able to write something of real scientific merit. She tells them that the victim made most of his money from selling the artifacts, not the books. She gives him the name of the man who bought most of them.

The buyer is a new earth Creationist, yet the artifacts he is buying are supposed to be older than 6,000 years, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to Booth or Sweets. Sweets interviews the guy, who spouts Bible verses and generally annoys Sweets. Sweets asks him about the artifacts and why none of them ended up in his museum. He bankrolled Sutton to go bring back the artifacts from Chechnya, likely to destroy them as they are proof of life older than 6,000 years. When Sutton found the bones, he refused to turn them over to the man. Sweets confronts him with this suspicion and he tells him that God told him to find a lawyer.

Angela and Edison look at drawings that she has made of the old bones. From looking at her pictures, he realizes that he identified the bones wrong – the child is actually have Neanderthal and half Homo sapien.

Hodgins finds a piece of leather in some wounds on the victim’s back. They determine that Sutton was flogged sometime before his death, with a whip known to be in use in Russia. They realize that he was likely flogged within an inch of his life. Sweets interviews Sutton’s wife again and she admits her father whipped him for getting her pregnant, even though he married her. They came to the US afterward to escape her family and start over with Sutton.

Brennan finds another wound on Sutton’s bones and realizes that it shows cause of death – the victim was cut with a sharp object while holding his arm in front of his face defensively. The object lacerated his axillary artery and he bleed out, explaining the huge amount of blood in the car’s upholstery.

Booth interviews the wife’s brother, who admits to having been in the army in Chechnya. Booth found a huge deposit in his account and accuses him of killing his brother-in-law at his father’s request. He denies it and Booth has to release him.

Hodgins finds fibers from a book-binding  in the wounds in the bone. Booth and Brennan go to interview the publisher. Brennan finds poorly cleaned blood stains on her floor and  notice a missing bookend on her bookshelf. She admits that she killed the victim because he wanted to publish in a scientific journal rather than write a book that they could sell.

Back at the Jeffersonian, the cast stages the story of what they think happen to the caveman (no!) family – they were a mixed species couple with a young daughter and another man approached and attacked the father. Both parents tried to protect themselves and their daughter and all four ended up dying – the attacker and the parents from their injuries and the girl from starvation after being all alone – the first known hate crime.

Character Development:  

Today’s theme was Brennan’s competitiveness – she’s upset that Christine isn’t the first baby in her class to understand the game Peek-a-Boo and she doesn’t trust Edison to handle the old bones, among other examples. At the end, she lets Edison take the appropriate credit.

Memorable Quotes:

I agree. It’s not hide’n’seek – Sweets

Adventure types get killed all the time. Usually it’s by jealous husbands…or cannibals in New Guinea. – Sweets

Why is it when I ask you about something, it’s never actually about what I’m asking you about? – Booth

Because of it’s porosity, human bone sticks to the tongue, unlike animal bones [demonstrating] – Brennan

Now drop the egos, and tell me what happened to this poor caveman – Cam

Who are you going to believe? God? Or a bunch of scientists?  – Creationist

Photos: Patrick McElhenney/FOX

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