RESEARCH

The NHM team will take care of the anthropological preparation of skeletons for sampling in Austria and other countries, which involves systematic estimations of sex, age at death, body height, as well as conspicuous features. In selected cases, anthropological in-depth analysis of cemeteries or particular skeletons will follow, mostly from the Avar core area.

For in-depth analysis of subgroups, the team of anthropologists intends to shed light on questions such as:

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• Did the migrations cause physical stress?

• Were men more prone to violence? And what about the workload/activity level of women and juveniles in comparison to men?

• Did all people have enough to eat? Was the quality of the diet sufficient and equal among all groups and subgroups?

• Can we depict differences in life ways when comparing elite burials with those from commoners?

• Do morphological traits, such as infectious disease lesions, mirror differences in parasite aDNA?

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These questions will be systematically analyzed based on traces suggestive of or indicating: nutritional deficiencies, infectious and degenerative diseases, fractures due to violence or accidents, stress symptoms, long bone measurements, bony changes due to activity/workload, mortality and other demographic indicators.