Introduction
Anthropobiology is based on the determination of the biological features of past and present human individuals/populations in order to reconstruct their origin, history and evolution.
Aims
The aims of the anthropo-biological work that will take place during the 2010 campaign in Sagalassos will be to analyze the biological features of the human remains, especially those excavated during 2009 and 2010 campaign, in order to bring new data related to three level of populations analysis:
1. the world of the death (funeral practices, burial site organization based on either biological – sex, age, kinship – or cultural elements)
2. the world of the living (paleopathology, paleo-epidemiology, paleo-demography, in other words, the diet, the health and social status of the deceased)
3. population history (eg. population continuity or replacement, and origin of the individual/populations).
The interpretation of the biological data will take place within a large interpretative framework including the data provide by the other field of research in Sagalassos.
Methodology
The methodology used will be based on the macroscopic analyses of the human remains. For each individual will be determined: age, sex, morphometric (84 metric data from skull and long bones) and non-metric features (71 discrete traits observed on the cranial and post-cranial skeleton), pathology (100 loci for the degenerative articular pathology, the dental wear and the dental pathology – caries, abscess, calculus, and periodontal disease – and stress indicators such as dental hypoplasia).
These analysis will be undertaken in very close collaboration with researches involving human handling and sampling, especially the ancient DNA research.
For more, see www.sagalassos.be/en/webreports/2010.
