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
Migration, diet and health and the first permanent settlers of Belgium: inter- and multi-disciplinary perspectives
A UGent BOF funded GOA project starting in January 2022
La Faucille
The excavation and analyses of the 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
A multi-partner project financed by Flanders Heritage Agency.
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.
A collaboration with Ruben Willaert and Liverpool John Moores University
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.
CarNHum
Carnivore activities affected the bone assemblages excavated in numerous archeological sites. By deciphering them, CarNHum project aims to better document the settlement dynamics of Northwestern Europe during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition, a crucial period, which witnessed the demise of the last Neanderthals and the emergence of the anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens)
While progress in comprehending archaic human presence in Eurasia has progressed in recent years, knowledge of the Lower Paleolithic in Belgium largely remains little-known. This PhD project by Tristan Dedrie, funded by FWO, reevaluates faunal remains from Middle Pleistocene Belgian sites, employing zooarchaeology, paleoclimatology and paleoecology to unravel Belgium's Lower Paleolithic human presence.
Dying at the Margins of Athens:
Burial Customs, Local Traditions, and Social Realities in the Attic deme of Thorikos (c. 900-300 BCE)
This research project focuses on the collection and evaluation of archaeological and bioanthropological data from
the cemeteries of Thorikos in an attempt to reconstruct social and ideological realities as well as individual and community identities in
this ancient Attic deme from the Early Iron Age (900 BCE) to the Late Classical period (300 BCE). The data is drawn from the archived records of from the excavations of the Belgian School at Athens, beginning in 1963, but the graves from Thorikos have not been published in their entirety. The nature of this research is multidisciplinary, through the combination of funerary archaeology, archaeothanatology, and bioanthropology and by working alongside experts in Greek pottery and human osteology.