The BIOarchaeology of SOCIO-POLitical changes in AmphipolIS: Exploring the impact of broad historical trends and status quo transitions on human lifeways and deathways, through a multi-proxy approach

This project will develop a new interpretive model to reveal the extent to which multiple socio-political transitions, representing different forms of urbanism, affect human lifeways and deathways, in a diachronic perspective.

This is achieved by implementing an interdisciplinary methodology combining archaeological and historical theory, macroscopic bioarchaeological approaches and stable isotopes.

The diachronic case of Amphipolis in Northern Greece experiencing many different political models between the Late Archaic/Classical and Roman periods is an ideal case study. Human skeletal remains from 300 inhumation and 100 cremation burials, spanning between the 5th c. B.C. to 1st c. A.D. will be analyzed.

Methods will include: 1) studying funerary practices and deathways, 2) investigating health and lifestyle and 3) exploring biodistance and human mobility.

I will also initiate an open access collaborative morphological biodistance database to create long term impacts on human mobility studies.

By moving to AUTh, I will work closely with Sevi Triantaphyllou, a top-leader in funerary practices and osteoarchaeology.

Her expertise, along with resources and specialties of other distinguished staff members of School of History and Archeology provide the perfect environment for the multi-dimensional contextual training, necessary for the project and for my career metamorphosis.

A period of secondment is included at BB-LAB (VUB), with Christophe Snoeck, an expert on isotopic geochemistry and a global pioneer on the topic of isotopic study of cremated human remains.

My career goal is to be a research leader in Social Bioarchaeology, which this project will enable by developing an integrated method for the combined analysis of mortuary environment with lived experience.

Through a multi-faceted training in core skills, along with supervision, teaching and public outreach, I will develop key resources to maximize the impact of my career advancement.