Il significato e le problematiche dei resti scheletrici commisti: una sfida antropologica

Commingled skeletal remains represent the intermixing of body parts from two or several individuals. For their study, the anthropologists must first reconstitute the individual skeletons to elaborate a complete biological profile. To tackle this challenging task, anthropologists rely on morphological and osteometric techniques that segregate the remains by re-associating the pairs of bilateral bones and the skeletal elements that form a congruent joint. Over the years, limitations of such approaches have been highlighted and novel techniques are constantly explored. This chapter presents the circumstances where an anthropologist may encounter this peculiar scenario and describes the methods that have been devised to resolve the mingling and segregate the bone assemblages. The Ca’ Granda crypt is the perfect example of a depository with thousands of intermixed remains from different time periods. The study of this site and the disentanglement of the commingled assemblage may provide enlightening information on the history of the city of Milan.