Objectives

Principal Investigator
Ana Luísa Santos

The present unit focusses on the relevance of skeletal remains to the study of the human condition and human behavior in general. Human bone is the basis of the work here undertaken. Therefore, in this unit several analysis of past populations, from the Mesolithic to the Modern Era are being carried out with the aim of revealing life history at both the individual and the population levels. Since this analysis starts on the field, we are involved with several excavations of human bones from archaeological contexts. Their paleobiological study is done on  the Laboratory of Paleodemography and Paleopathology in the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the Coimbra University, which is collaborating both with the Service of Imagiology of the Hospitais da Universidade de Coimbra and with the National Institute of Forensic Medicine.

The items analysed varied from sex diagnoses, age at death, morphological aspects, paleopathology, such as infectious and reumatic diseases, stress indicators and dietary behavior. Many of this topics are being researched as masters and Phd thesis. For these researches the potential of the well documented, large and identified skeletal collections of Museu Antropológico of the University of Coimbra has been fundamental.