David BIBBY | Benjamin HÖKE (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Baden-Württemberg im Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, Esslingen, Germany) Keywords: Necropolis, computer tomography, anthropology, GIS Abstract: One of the most well-known and largest early medieval necropoles in Western Europe lies near the small town of Lauchheim in Baden-Württemberg, South West Germany. Totaling round 1400 in-humations dating from 5th – 7th Century AD, it was completely excavated between 1986 – 1996. Due to the high frequency of finds and the fragility of some of the bone material, much use was made of block lifting. Some blocks remain unopened till today. The good state of preservation and the juxtaposition of the necropolis with a contemporary settlement, which was also extensively excavated, set the stage for an extensive social-historical analysis of a local early medieval community over two centuries. Analysis of the grave good and anthropological appraisal have been combined and structured in a specially designed Database containing over 30,000 individual entries. A GIS Map of the site, arduously piped from the original hand drawings via vectorization software and CAD into Open Source GIS, allows for perspicuous visualization of any combination of anthropological data and/or finds and contributes greatly to the understanding of the development of the necropolis. Since 2008 the Lauchheim Project has been supported by the German Research Council, allowing innovative conservation and documentation methods including complete anthropological examination, 3D computer tomography of the unopened blocks (with sometimes surprising results) and the extensive examination of organic material and textiles. This contribution will be the first English language progress report on the development archaeological and anthropological analysis of the Lauchheim findings and, especially their visualization in GIS. Relevance conference | Relevance session: Innovative project showing the progress from “low tech” conventional Excavation of 1980s-1990s to “high tech” analysis of the results in 21st century. Innovation: Use of laboratory conditions for opening the blocks to get maximum information, use of 3D tomography, innovative use of GIS for cememtary...

Daniela ISTRATE | Annamaria DIANA (“VasileParvan”Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest, Romania) Keywords: medieval and modern burials; urban archaeology; human osteoarchaeology; German colonists in East Europe Abstract: Between 2012 and 2013, extensive rescue excavations were conducted in the area overlying the old parish cemetery of Brașov, in Transylvania (Romania). Braşov was a flourishing urban centre founded in the 12th century by Central European colonists, under the protection of the Hungarian King. Over the following centuries, the settlement became a crossroad for travellers, merchants and diplomats from all over Europe and the Middle East, as witnessed by documentary sources. Braşov was in fact a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural city, where communities of German, Romanian, Hungarian and Jewish ancestry lived. The recent excavations unearthed a complex and challenging stratigraphy formed by centuries of uninterrupted human habitat, and an archaeological site of inestimable value for the reconstitution of the urban life in medieval and modern Eastern Europe. Dwellings dating back to the 12th century were overlapped by the structure of a Premonstratensian monastery and a Cistercian abbey. Around the year 1200 the area was occupied by the parish churchand its burial site, which would have been used as the urban community’s main cemetery until the 18th century. The investigation of the burial ground revealed over 1,400 tombs. Our paper will focus on the analysis of the cemetery by means of an interdisciplinary approach. The study and interpretation of burial practices, grave goods and funerary topography, cross-referenced with the demographic and pathological profile reconstructed from human skeletal remains, are shedding new light on this population’s history. The paper will pay particular attention to the interpretation of the burial context in a broader historical framework, emphasising the implications for understanding the process of urbanisation in this area. Relevance conference | Relevance session: The paper will discuss the main features of the burial ground in a broader historical, archaeological and anthropological context. Innovation: Archaeological and human osteoarchaeological investigations allow a unique insight into the living conditions of a medieval diaspora from East Europe. References: MARCUISTRATE D. (ed.) 2015: Redescoperiretrecutului medieval al Braşovului – Unearthing the medieval past of Braşov, Mega Publishing House, Cluj Napoca. MARCUISTRATE, D./ CONSTANTINESCU, M./...

Erik SCHMITZ (Amsterdam City Archives, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Keywords: burial history archeology sources Abstract: In 1991, the former Dutch Reformed Olof Chapel (Olofskapel) in Amsterdam was transformed into a congress centre. Building activities included digging a large basement, destroying all five still intact layers of burials, dating from 1619 onwards, and the underlying late medieval traces. In advance, the municipal Amsterdam archeologists were able to investigate the medieval phases of the chapel. As for the later periods, the former tombstone floor was documented and – due to lack of time and money – only a part of the deepest burials was properly excavated. Although these were expected to date from the early 17th century, they turned out to be from an much later date: the late 18th and 19th century. In retrospect, this can be corroborated by the grave books of the chapel, that show that burial was common until the 1860’s. The grave books also mention the removal of older burials, depositing the remaining bones in a deeper, sixth layer of ‘charnel’coffins. In 1991, this layer of bone deposits was a surprise as well. The Olof Chapel might serve as an example of two intertwined realities. On the one hand the historical data stored at the archives. The on-line index of burials (1553-1811) on the website of the Amsterdam City Archive contains 1,1 million records, mentioning the date of funeral and the name of the deceased, leading to the original historical sources that also mention family relations, the street where the deceased lived, and costs of the burial. These records are an important historical source in itself. But they can, as can the church archives, also help in predicting the archeological potential remaining under the old church floors. This paper seeks to highlight and map this aspect. Archeology, on the other hand, is depending on the state of the soil archive. But modern church restauarations, including constructing floor heating systems, have left their scars in the archeological data that still remain in the ground. This paper seeks to highlight and map this aspect too. Relevance conference | Relevance session: Reuse of archival data in understanding archeological data Innovation:...

Jagmahender Singh SEHRAWAT | Rk. PATHAK (Anthropology Deptt., Panjab University, Chandigarh, Chandigarh, India) Keywords: human remains, Teeth, Stable Isotopes, lifestyles and living conditions Abstract: Abandoned wells have remained the best burial sites for clandestine (intentional or accidental) disposal of human cadavers since ancient times. Archaeological recovery of human remains from such settings have been reported from different corners of the world, however, no such recovery was reported from India previously. In one such historical incident (Cooper, 1958), some Indian-origin people were brutally killed in 1857 AD by that time rulers and their corpses were disposed of in a nearby abandoned well by sanitary workers and; a religious structure (worshipped by local community) was built over the periphery of this well having corpses buried down in it. In April 2014, thousands of teeth and bones were excavated out unscientifically from this ancient well located in a northern Indian state. Teeth and few jaw fragments were found in fairly sound condition to be suitable for reconstruction of life history and provenance. Researches in stable isotope analysis of human remains have achieved new milestones during last decade and have yielded valuable scientific insights. Stable isotopes of carbon (δ13C), hydrogen (δ2H), oxygen (δ18O), nitrogen (δ15N) and strontium (δ87Sr) have helped reconstruct the population structure and life histories of past people like their dietary status, health and disease conditions, milk and meat consumptions, vegetarianism or non- vegetarianism etc. As teeth are resilient to chemical and physical degradation and; only attrition, breakage and demineralisation can change the tooth crown morphology (White and Folkens, 2005), present study is based on morphological and chemical analysis of 1200 molar teeth (mandibular and maxillary) recovered from the well. Majority of teeth had fairly good anatomical features and were found free from dental caries (crown or cervical root). Low incidence of caries indicated use of coarse and fibrous contents in food products by the victims. Very few teeth showed signs of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH). Stable isotope analysis of enamel was conducted to verify or negate the morphological observations of the teeth. Present Oral presentation will highlight the consequences of unscientific excavation of human remains and their condition, morphological and...

Nicole NICKLISCH | Oliver PESCHEL | Axel MANTHEI | Frank RAMSTHALER | Kurt W. ALT | Susanne FRIEDERICH (The State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology – State Museum for Prehistory Saxony-Anhalt, Halle (Saale), Germany) Keywords: battlefield archaeology, ballistic analysis, forensic gunshot reconstruction Abstract: In 2011 a mass grave from the Thirty Years‘ War was discovered near the small town of Lützen in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The whole grave was recovered “en bloc” and analysed at the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle (Saale). The grave contained the skeletal remains of 47 men with an age at death range of 15-45 years. Due to the geographical location of the grave, along with material findings around and within the pit, the ensemble can be dated back to the 17th century: the skeletal remains belonged to soldiers, which died in the great Battle of Lützen in November 1632. According to the trauma analysis numerous individuals revealed gunshots wounds – mainly to the head. It was speculated that these soldiers might have been executed on the battlefield. But from the historical point of view and military reconstruction of the battle there is no need for such an explanation. In fact, the forensic examinations of the shape of the wounds as well as the ballistic properties of the retrieved ammunition indicated short- to mid-range gunshot discharges of firearms from light and heavy cavalry in close combats. To receive more information about the ongoing on the battlefield, gunshot experiments were performed with replica of three historical weapons (pistol, carbine, and musket). For this reason hollow spheres filled with ballistic gelatine as well as blocks of gelatine and ballistic soap were used to simulate the human skull and soft tissue. The experiments were conducted in order to reconstruct the situation in which the soldiers died by exemplifying questions of target distance, load or possible influences by environmental parameters (e.g. climatic conditions). At the conference we would like to present methods and results of the investigations and to discuss technical approaches. References: NICKLISCH, N. / KNIPPER, C. / HELD, P./ PICKARD, L. / RAMSTHALER, F. / FRIEDERICH, S. / ALT, K. (2015): Die 47 Soldaten aus dem...