First bioarchaeological evidence of the familial practice of embalming of infant and adult relatives in Early Modern France.

While medieval and modern embalming practices in Western Europe are attested to historically and bioarcheologically, especially for famous historical figures, there are few recorded occurrences of this type of corpse preparation for a large number of archaeological individuals from the same lineage. Moreover, evidence of such practices mainly concerns adult individuals, whereas traces of child embalming are extremely rare. In 2017, the discovery of a crypt in the chapel of the Château des Milandes (Castelnaud-la-Chapelle, Dordogne, France) revealed a collective burial of the scattered remains of seven adults and five children of the aristocratic Caumont family, who died in the 16th and 17th centuries and whose skeletons all show marks of embalming practices.

Enhancing the learning of evolutionary anthropology skills by combining student-active teaching with actual and virtual immersion of Master's students in fieldwork, laboratory practice, and dissemination.

Higher education in evolutionary anthropology involves providing students with in-depth knowledge of biological and cultural heritage sites and collections that are frequently inaccessible. Indeed, most sites, fossils, and archaeological remains can be visited or manipulated only rarely and solely by specialists with extensive experience. Owing to the development of 3D and medical imaging techniques, this fragile heritage is now more widely accessible, and in a dynamic way.

Middle pleistocene human remains from Tourville-la-Rivière (Normandy, France) and their archaeological context.

Despite numerous sites of great antiquity having been excavated since the end of the 19th century, Middle Pleistocene human fossils are still extremely rare in northwestern Europe. Apart from the two partial crania from Biache-Saint-Vaast in northern France, all known human fossils from this period have been found from ten sites in either Germany or England. Here we report the discovery of three long bones from the same left upper limb discovered at the open-air site of Tourville-la-Rivière in the Seine Valley of northern France.

Three-dimensional terahertz computed tomography of human bones.

Three-dimensional terahertz computed tomography has been used to investigate dried human bones such as a lumbar vertebra, a coxal bone, and a skull, with a direct comparison with standard radiography. In spite of lower spatial resolution compared with x-ray, terahertz imaging clearly discerns a compact bone from a spongy one, with strong terahertz absorption as shown by additional terahertz time-domain transmission spectroscopy.