Burials in the cemetery of Alt Inden (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Archaeological settlement and cemetery excavations open a window into the past. They are a prerequisite for giving us an insight into the reality of life and the imaginary world of our ancestors. Anthropological findings of human skeletal remains play a special role. They provide us with knowledge about the demographic and social structures of historical and prehistoric human communities and their changes through the ages.
19th century
Strong decomposition phenomena on a femur bone
All tissues of an organism are perishable. The decomposition of soft tissues is mainly promoted by the body's own enzymes, whereas the soil chemistry is of great importance for the decomposition of bones. The more acidic the soil, the faster bone dissolves. If it is alkaline, bones can remain practically intact for thousands of years. These degradation processes, also called decomposition, are crucial for the quality of morphological and molecular genetic anthropological analyses.
medieval
Femur bone with pathological change due to bone marrow inflammation
Infectious diseases used to be the most frequent cause of death. In addition to the epidemic infectious diseases (plague, tuberculosis, cholera and typhoid), which cost many lives, inflamed injuries could also take a fatal course. If purulent inflammations reached the bone (osteomyelitis), this was often followed by years of infirmity with clear changes in the bone structure. It was not until the discovery of penicillin in the 1930s that such diseases became treatable.
19th century
Lower jaw of an individual about 6 years old
Demographic structures are central characteristics of populations. Besides gender, age at death is a particularly informative datum. Thus, the average life expectancy in (pre)history was lower than today; only a few people lived to a significant age over 60. High infant mortality due to infectious diseases was the main factor contributing to the lower life expectancy; from the Middle Ages to modern times, only every second child reached adulthood.
medieval
Anthropological Collection
The collection of the Department of Historical Anthropology and Human Ecology is one of the relatively young collections of the university. In the 1950s, the foundation was laid by the transfer of an extensive collection of human skulls from the Hamburg Ethnological Museum. The Remane collection of primate skulls from Kiel supplemented this in the 1970s. In the meantime, the Göttingen collection contains numerous skeletal series of different periods from various regions of Germany. It is constantly being expanded with (pre)historical skeletons that are not intended for reburial.
