According to Italian law, unclaimed skeletal remains can be granted by cemeteries to universities for education and research purposes. An agreement was concluded between the Laboratorio di Antropologia e Odontologia Forense (LABANOF), the city of Milan and three cemeteries of Milan and resulted in the acquisition and assemblage of a contemporary skeletal collection. The CAL Milano Cemetery Skeletal Collection is a new identified collection constituted of 2127 skeletons and housed in the LABANOF. This modern collection possesses the advantage of being documented: each skeleton is associated with both demographic data (sex, age, dates and places of birth and death) and a death certificate (the stature is not indicated). Indeed, the law forces the completion of a death certificate when the death is pronounced. In collaboration with health services, these death certificates can be recovered and provide the cause of death and its related pathological and/or traumatic chain of events. The collection is equally representative of males (47.9%) and females (51.5%) with ages-at-death ranging from 0 to 104 years. The years of birth range from 1866 to 2000 (including 1637 individuals born before 1940) and those of death from 1910 to 2001. About 90% of the individuals were born in Lombardy. Although 91% of the collection is composed of adults, 189 individuals are subadults including 97 infants. When available, autopsy reports and personal photographs are also added to the documentation. The collection presents tremendous potential for population-specific studies, the testing and development of age and sex estimation techniques for both adults and subadults, the study of taphonomy and trauma but also for bone pathologies. Indeed, the death certificates retrieved in our skeletal collection offer an invaluable tool for the understanding of the aspect of these pathologies on bones given that we know that the individuals were diagnosed with the diseases during life. This presentation illustrates through a series of examples the potential of this modern collection for the discipline of paleopathology.

The CAL Milano Cemetery Skeletal Collection: a modern and documented Italian identified skeletal collection / L. BIEHLER GOMEZ, M. Mattia, D. Mazzarelli, C. Cattaneo. ((Intervento presentato al convegno European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association tenutosi a Zagreb nel 2018.

The CAL Milano Cemetery Skeletal Collection: a modern and documented Italian identified skeletal collection

L. BIEHLER GOMEZ
;
M. Mattia;D. Mazzarelli;C. Cattaneo
2018

Abstract

According to Italian law, unclaimed skeletal remains can be granted by cemeteries to universities for education and research purposes. An agreement was concluded between the Laboratorio di Antropologia e Odontologia Forense (LABANOF), the city of Milan and three cemeteries of Milan and resulted in the acquisition and assemblage of a contemporary skeletal collection. The CAL Milano Cemetery Skeletal Collection is a new identified collection constituted of 2127 skeletons and housed in the LABANOF. This modern collection possesses the advantage of being documented: each skeleton is associated with both demographic data (sex, age, dates and places of birth and death) and a death certificate (the stature is not indicated). Indeed, the law forces the completion of a death certificate when the death is pronounced. In collaboration with health services, these death certificates can be recovered and provide the cause of death and its related pathological and/or traumatic chain of events. The collection is equally representative of males (47.9%) and females (51.5%) with ages-at-death ranging from 0 to 104 years. The years of birth range from 1866 to 2000 (including 1637 individuals born before 1940) and those of death from 1910 to 2001. About 90% of the individuals were born in Lombardy. Although 91% of the collection is composed of adults, 189 individuals are subadults including 97 infants. When available, autopsy reports and personal photographs are also added to the documentation. The collection presents tremendous potential for population-specific studies, the testing and development of age and sex estimation techniques for both adults and subadults, the study of taphonomy and trauma but also for bone pathologies. Indeed, the death certificates retrieved in our skeletal collection offer an invaluable tool for the understanding of the aspect of these pathologies on bones given that we know that the individuals were diagnosed with the diseases during life. This presentation illustrates through a series of examples the potential of this modern collection for the discipline of paleopathology.
31-ago-2018
Settore BIO/08 - Antropologia
The CAL Milano Cemetery Skeletal Collection: a modern and documented Italian identified skeletal collection / L. BIEHLER GOMEZ, M. Mattia, D. Mazzarelli, C. Cattaneo. ((Intervento presentato al convegno European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association tenutosi a Zagreb nel 2018.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/662305
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