Osteoarchaeology and the History of Medicine in our experience.

The encounter between archaeology and medicine is no longer the result of sporadic or intermittent research. Stemming from different areas of expertise and training, as well as historical sciences, archaeology, biology and medicine, common investigative objectives must come together in a coordinated manner. However, defining the boundaries of different areas of work, collaboration, interferences and interconnections is not an easy task.

The acquisition of scientific methods and instruments has become fundamental for archaeological research (1). The concept of New Archaeology is essential to this convergence towards other sciences and the creation of a close alliance between the humanities and science. Archaeology and biology meet along the path of research, albeit for the free and respectful coexistence, perhaps a certain amount of distance should be kept. Through mediated listening and interaction, we can create the basis for a harmonious growth of archaeology within science and science within archaeology. Constant communication and the interconnection between humanistic, biological and technological research has revealed the need to delineate bioarchaeology as an autonomous science. Therefore, this underlines the need to clarify the professional identity. We are living in a time of constant scientific progress that enriches the face of archaeology and professionals working in this field. Moreover, “osteoarcheology” is also a field with its own specialized skill set. The image of archaeological work is changing shape, while the contents are redefined in these widening boundaries and limits. We should draw on archaeology’s strong traditions, and at the same time confide in a culture that stems from monological thinking, and in our Research Centre where we often discuss how to handle the autonomy of the individual professional skills involved in the study of antiquity. Currently, we are focusing on the precise meaning behind training tomorrow’s leading researchers in managing data capture and the application of concepts and models that can influence a scientist’s way of thinking in a difficult balance that finds itself at the crossroads of new and rapidly changing trends (2).

When studying the bone remains, another important question is their destination.

Important osteological finding are often stored in anthropology laboratories or superintendence warehouses. However, it is not uncommon, to find some of these artefacts in museums in different cities (3).

For this reason, museology must now deal with the reality of special funding, and biology should not fail to oversee the task of carrying out training for these specialized skills (4). Museums need vast and wide-reaching scientific knowledge, alongside historical and humanistic traditions, and therefore doctors and biologists should also have a role in guiding and managing these collections due to their complexity. In human remains from antiquity, there is a high and irreplaceable value of pathogenic factors over time (5, 6, 7).

This is a complex operation that, by fragmenting skills and general operations into various activities defined as segments or parts of the work process, appears to have succeeded in breaking down and explaining the complexity of an aspect of archaeology that requires more resources and expensive commitments in order to be enriched and properly developed.

Archaeological finds become truly important based on our awareness of historical facts, yet also due to the study of the variation of pathogenic factors over time. Should strong limitations continue to prevent the fundamental understanding of these numerous illnesses, museums would remain alien to the growth process of modern health and paleopathology, an aspect that stands out in these studies. However, proper use of museums and their resources would allow today’s scientists, as well as tomorrow’s scientific and historical studies, to offer important information and approaches that perhaps had been previously overlooked or ignored.