Practical
Registrations for this event are now closed but you can still join, please send an email to jane.verlinden@vub.be
Inaugural Lecture by ERC Grant Holder Christophe Snoeck
"Geochemistry meets Archaeology - Reconstructing past human lives in Europe"
You are what (and where) you eat! All foods and drinks we consume leave a geochemical mark on our body depending on the type of food and its geographical origin. This information is stored in our bones and teeth for thousands of years after our death. Taking advantage of new developments in isotopegeochemistry, it has become possible to extract this information from the bones and teeth of human remains found in different archaeological excavations. Combining this new data with archaeological and historical records, new insights can be gained into different aspects of the lives of our ancestors such as diet, mobility, migration and landscape use. For example, it was possible to show that almost half of the individuals buried at Stonehenge came from up to 250km away from the site! The aim of this new project is to apply these new techniques to human remains from all across Europe, from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages, to better understand major changes in the European landscape and how these affected human lives.