Research
Current Research Projects
This project, led by post-doctoral researcher Dr Jessica Palmer, assesses the physical stress children in post-medieval Aalst faced, in relation to their socio-economic status and living conditions. NonSurvivors combines macroscopic and biomolecular methods to assess diet and disease, as well as pioneering cutting-edge proteomic analyses to detect infectious load.
The Neolithic people of Belgium: a bioanthropological perspective on mobility, health, and diet of Belgium's first farmers
Little is known about the life and lifeways of the first farmers of Belgium. The Ph.D. project for Miss IJk van Hattum looks at Middle to Final Neolithic human remains recovered from caves, dolmen, and flint mines in current Belgium and involves a combination of osteological and molecular analyses to shed light on the health, diet, and mobility of the Neolithic people of Belgium.
The diet in the bones: A comparative synthesis study into dietary habits and indicators of social stratification in the rural and urban populations of South-Eastern Flanders, through stable isotopic analysis of human remains
This research project is a collaboration with Solva Archeologie
La Faucille
The excavation and analyses of the Neolithic Neolithic ossuary of Grotte de La Faucille have the potential to significantly expand our understanding of the mortuary behaviours, or variation in behaviours, of the Belgian Neolithic and contribute further to the lively debate on the spread of the Neolithic.
This multidisciplinary project uses state-of-the-art archaeometric methods to determine the anthropological profile of seven individuals whose graves were found in 2003 in the choir of abbey church on Sint-Pietersplein, Ghent. Together with simultaneous historical and archaeological research, the determinations will shed new light on the profile, kinship and identity of these individuals, who presumably belonged to the first members of the burial family of Flanders.
MEMOR. A database and ethical framework for human skeletons from archaeological contexts in Flanders
This collaborative project between Universiteit Gent, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Vrije Universiteti Brussel, BAAC en Parcum has the aim to make an open access inventory, ethical and legal framework for the archaeological human remains collections in Flanders.
In this collaborative project with Ruben Willaert NV, CRINA and Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed Vlaanderen we are analysing the human bones from the bone wall discovered on the north side of the Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent.