before burial. A systematic or formal burial of individual bodies might have been impossible due to the state of the remains by the time of later burial. It is not clear who buried the victims of the massacre, whether it was the attackers, escaped villagers, or members of an affiliated village. The layer of clay covering the bodies was coated by a "thin and scattered layer of bones," of which the purpose is unknown. Researchers thought that scavengers might have dug up these remains as a food source. The remains of these villagers reveal their untimely deaths and events of the last attack. They also reveal other hardships of their lives: evidence of nutritional deficiencies and previous warfare, which suggest adaptations to the changes were more difficult. These were documented by paleopathologist John B. Gregg. Nutritional deficiencies The villagers' skeletal remains, as well as the fact that remains of canines (dogs) were buried with the villagers, provide evidence of extensive nutritional deficiencies of a chronic nature. According to Zimmerman's 1985 book, Peoples of Prehistoric South Dakota, the bones reveal several ailments related to chronic malnutrition. As stated in Zimmerman's book, "one of the most common characteristics was a pitting in the top of the eye sockets called cribra orbitalis. Associated with this on several skulls was porotic hyperostosis, a pitting on the back of the skull". Both of these conditions are caused by a deficiency of iron in the diet. In addition to these ailments, Harris lines (an indicator of insufficient amounts of protein and other essential minerals, as well as truncated episodes of growth) were discovered while specialists examined radiographs of several individuals. The Crow Creek villagers were measured as being shorter than their Arikara descendants, with the females being significantly shorter; this could have been another effect of nutritional deficiencies and illness. In a journal article entitled "The Crow Creek Massacre: Initial Coalescent Warfare and Speculations about the Genesis of Extended Coalescent", Zimmerman and Bradley propose that the severe conditions faced by the Crow Creek villagers were not short term. Based on the evidence of "active and organizing subperiostial hematomas along with the other bony alterations" found while examining remains, they concluded that the villagers had long suffered malnutrition, in repeated episodes thought due to the unstable climate and drought, which reduced the crop yields and food supplies. The presence of animal bones within the fortification ditch suggests