How to read a grave: fifty years of archaeothanatology
»The emergence of a discipline, concepts and applications, and future prospects«
Since the second half of the 20th century, under the particular influence of Leroi-Gourhan’s work, archaeology has undergone a major scientific transformation by prioritizing the analysis of human remains within their depositional context. This new approach serves as a nexus between fieldwork and laboratory analysis and has gradually led to profound conceptual and methodological reconsiderations of burials as an archaeological source. This has led to the emergence of a new discipline combining biological, social and cultural aspects of death, initiated in France between 1970 and 1980 by Henri Duday, initially known as »field anthropology« and now called »Archaeothanatology« or »The Archaeology of Death«. This interdisciplinary field seeks to reconstruct the funerary customs carried out around the body of the deceased, as well as the organisation and arrangement of funarary spaces, in order to draw social conclusions and interpret mortuary behaviours. One of the fundamental procedures for understanding taphonomic processes (such as anomalies in the position of bones, constraints and displacements) is to observe the sequence of disarticulation of joints in the body.
This workshop, in which Henri Duday will also participate as keynote speaker, aims to review the circumstances of the emergence and development of Archaeothanatology in recent decades in France and abroad. This event will examine the various methodological and conceptual aspects of Archaeothanatology, as well as the new perspectives opened up by the development of new methods such as 3D recording.