The team "Bio-Anthropology of the Bone: Nature, Evolution, Societies (BONES)" is a multidisciplinary team whose common starting point is "the bone", and which develops research on all its biological and social aspects in ancient and current societies.
Directed by Prof. Pascal Adalian, it brings together doctoral students, research engineers, researchers, teacher-researchers, hospital practitioners and experts from the biological, human, social and medical sciences, interested in understanding the specificities and technical and biological characteristics of bone material, as well as the social, funerary, scientific or patrimonial uses to which the anthropo-biological remains may be put
Based in particular on the study of the numerous collections of the laboratory's osteotheque and of the regional osteotheque, hosted by our laboratory and administered by our colleagues Brunot Bizot and Yann Ardagna, the research conducted within the BONES team is developed within a vast multidisciplinary perimeter integrating archaeology (archaeothanatology, funerary archaeology), forensic anthropology, biological anthropology and social anthropology, paleomicrobiology, paleopathology and paleoanthropology.
The current studies are deployed around three main axes: an osteo-biographical axis (which aims to develop an evolutionary and bio-cultural reading of anthropo-biological remains), a thanatological axis (open to the questioning of taphonomic processes and funerary practices, particularly in contexts of mortality crises), and a methodological axis that aims to develop new procedures that will make it possible to make the reading of bone pieces more reliable and to improve the interpretation of the contexts in which "death and the dead" were studied.
Highlights
The 2018-2022 five-year period was marked by the obtaining of numerous national and international research contracts, among which two contracts funded by the ANR: the Starch4Sapiens program led by Silvana Condemi (2020) and the Transfunéraire program led by Elisabeth Anstett (2019), which played a structuring role and contributed to consolidate the scientific and bibliographic record of the BONES team.
This five-year period was also marked by the importance of the collaborations initiated with the universities of the CIVIS consortium through the launch of The archaeology of death: courses and fieldwork training in archaeothanatology led by Gaëlle Granier, but also with research groups such as War Losses (based on an association with Sciences-Po Aix and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom), Death in Time of Crisis (based on an association with the University of Tohoku, in Japan), the Amorce project of the ARKAIA Institute "MorAnt: les sociétés de l'antiquité face à la mort" (led by Gaëlle Granier and Florence Mocci of the CCJ), the NGO Ciblé bringing together various experts specialized in lesion ballistics, or the collective research program "Présence de la lèpre en Provence" financed by the SRA/DRAC PACA.
The team's dynamism and its anchorage in the scientific world have also been reflected in the organization of numerous scientific meetings, such as the international colloquium Death and the societies of Late Antiquity (3-5 November 2021), the study day Funerary areas: ownership, management, occupation and reoccupation in the ancient world (5th century BCE - 5th century CE) (September 23, 2021), the annual colloquium of the Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe in 2018, the days on Syphilis Itinéraires croisés en Méditerranée et au-delà , XVIe-XXIe siècle organized in October 2017 by Benoit Pouget and Yann Ardagna.
The activity of the BONES team has also been supported by research agreements signed between our laboratory and prestigious French and foreign institutional partners such as the Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives (INRAP), the Service Historique de la Défense (SHD) or the Forensic Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and supported by our team.
The influence of the BONES team has been ensured by the awards received by young researchers such as the prize for the best thesis of the University of Aix-Marseille awarded to the archaeo-anthropologist Avril Meffray in 2021, the Thesis Prize of the City of Marseille awarded to the archaeo-anthropologist David Gandia and the military history prize awarded to the historian Benoit Pouget in 2018.
Finally, its influence is also ensured by the lasting involvement of some of its members in national and international learned societies such as the Anthropology Society of Paris, of which François Marchal is Secretary General, the French Archaeology and Anthropology Group, of which Yann Ardagna is a member of the board, and the Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe, of which Pascal Adalian is now President.
