This project aims to study the evolution of practices and populations facing death in antiquity on an international scale (from the Metal Ages to the Greco-Roman contexts).
Projects
This multidisciplinary research program, directed by A. Schmitt (CNRS, UMR 5140 ASM), funded by the LabEx Archimede of the University of Montpellier, and with which E. Anstett, proposes to reference and order the practices that leave certain deceased persons without a funeral or burial (https://archeomort.hypotheses.org/). It is conceived as a prefigurative program for more extensive research, and will result in a collective publication to be published in 2023 by ArcheoPress and OpenAccess.
Funded by the AMU interdisciplinary mission, this program is co-piloted by the historian A. Carol (AMU, Telemme) and E. Anstett (CNRS, ADES). Backed by a research seminar organized around a series of thematic study days, this program proposes to engage in interdisciplinary reflection on the mortuary fact, by questioning more particularly its ordinary or extraordinary modalities, its most recent evolutions (notably in a context of crisis), and its various issues (https://necrolog.hypotheses.org/a-propos-du-seminaire-histoire-et-anthropologie-de-la-mort-amu).
While it will rely on the skills of established researchers in population genetics, biological anthropology and the history of epidemics, this axis also intends to open up to the skills of the "Corps, normes, santé" team in health law, ethics and odontology. Knowledge will gain in comprehensiveness through an exploration of the epidemic body in its multiple facets.
The horizon of understanding the epidemic phenomenon will also be broadened by taking into account data from soils understood as environmental reservoirs of pathogens and their vectors. The team wants to be a pioneer in this type of approach, which is still on the fringe of scientific approaches, whereas soils are undeniably important epidemic foci because of their preservation of bacterial traces for many years.