(Bio)Archaeological Approaches to Disease and Death in Early Medieval France

Date: 

Friday, June 24, 2022, 3:00pm to 4:30pm

Location: 

Zoom or in person (see post for details)

Our world has changed. The Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped the way we think about diseases, their transmission, and their impact on our lives. But are we the first to face such a crisis?

A shrinking written record marks past pandemics. But the victims remain, and from their strange burials and ancient DNA, the Science of the Human Past has begun to reconstruct what happened, in France and across western Eurasia, during the first pandemic of bubonic plague in the Roman Empire and its neighbors from 541 to 750 AD.

Come and be a part of the launch of a pioneering international investigation of anomalous burials in France that take us back to that first pandemic. Learn what French archaeologists and the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for Archaeoscience’s biomolecular archaeologists are discovering today.

Join us and our expert archaeologists in a new transatlantic collaboration that brings together Harvard University, the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for Archaeoscience and the advanced research of France

Hybrid In-Person and Remote Event! To register in advance for a Zoom webinar link:
https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dJ-IPc0ZTUq79hSHElP3vA

In-person location: CGIS South: Belfer Case Study Room (Lower Level)  1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA
 

Speakers and Discussants:

  • Philippe Blanchard, Archéologue, Ingénieur chargé de Recherche INRAP/UMR 5199 PACEA
  • Isabelle Catteddu, Ingénieure Chargée de Recherche à l'INRAP Grand Ouest, Archéologue Spécialiste du premier Moyen Age rural, UMR 6566 CReAAH
  • Valérie Delattre, Archéo-anthropologue Inrap, UMR 6298 ARTeHIS -Université de Bourgogne
  • Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University; Chair, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard (SoHP); Director at Harvard, Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean (MHAAM).
  • Claude Raynaud, Directeur de recherches, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, UMR 5140 ASM, LabEx
  • Solenn Troadec, Postdoctoral Fellow, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past, Harvard University
  • Marie-Cécile Truc, Responsable d’opération et étude du petit mobilier haut Moyen Âge - Moyen Âge, Ingénieure de recherche Inrap, UMR 6273 CRAHAM Université de Caen

Sponsored by the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean (MHAAM) and the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard (SoHP), with the support of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, fostering French-American cooperation in science and technology

 

bioarchaeological_approaches_poster_24june2022.pdf5.34 MB