Biological Anthropology

ERA's biological anthropology and archaeology team is prepared to develop any type of project in this area of activity, whether in terms of processes related to construction projects or land use planning or in terms of programmed research. Due to the scope of interventions, both geographically and chronologically, we contribute to the processes of knowledge about the biological and cultural aspects of ancient populations. 

The specialized observation of an individual's skeleton makes it possible to assess multiple aspects of their life history, such as sex diagnosis, age, eating and oral hygiene habits, growth problems or illnesses. If this analysis is expanded to a statistically significant and representative sample, then it is possible to carry out a population approach and to analyse, for example, paleodemographic and paleoepidemiological aspects. Through this analysis, issues such as the demographic structures of a population and the frequency with which certain diseases affected it are investigated. Finally, if we compare different populations, we can obtain evidence of specificities related to culturally, biologically, and chronologically distinct populations. 

On the other hand, in addition to analysing the life of the individuals of past populations, we can also understand how the living treated their dead. In fact, the way in which the latter are treated reflects social and cultural patterns, since funerary rites are evidence of ritual gestures that are associated with the cultural systems to which they relate. Like paleobiological data, funerary data must, in addition to an individual perspective, be approached from a population perspective. In this way, it is possible to trace funerary and, subsequently, cultural patterns that can and should be compared between populations, thus revealing specificities or similarities between culturally, biologically and chronologically distinct or analogous populations. 

Some of the human osteological series exhumed in interventions by ERA Arqueologia have been part of fundamental research projects. Others were and/or are in the process of being studied in the context of master's and doctoral theses. The projects developed by ERA demonstrate the virtues of our model of action based on the communion between safeguard archaeology/anthropology and research archaeology/anthropology, as well as contributing to closer ties between corporate archaeology/anthropology and university-based archaeology/anthropology. 

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