The Hamlet Project

Is it the skull that smells? Really? I feel like, if it’s a skull, most of the smelly stuff would have long ago decayed and disappeared, consumed by worms or maggots or any of the matter-devouring organisms that clean a corpse of flesh. Might it simply smell of dirt?
On the other hand, this skull has been dug up in a grave that included multiple skulls, many bones – there may be bodies buried there that are fresher in their decay.
Or perhaps there is a smell to old bones that I have no sense of due to most skeletons I have seen being cleared up for medical use or museum display.
It’s a perhaps morbid curiosity – but what exactly is Hamlet smelling? The smell of death? The smell of another’s death? Decay? Vegetable matter? Rotten tendons? What could still smell after 23 years in the earth?