Dr Simon Mays has just come back from a successful osteoarchaeology conference organised by the University of the Philippines. We share his comments about the conference and the SSCIP sponsored session.
“Last week I attended a two-day conference in Manila, entitled ‘For the Love of Death: Human Osteoarchaeology in South-East Asia and the Pacific’, organised by Rebecca Crozier and the Archaeological Studies Programme of the University of the Philippines. There were 20 oral presentations and eight posters from workers from nine different countries. SSCIP sponsored a session of four oral presentations on the osteoarchaeology of juveniles. The first of these, authored by Natthamon Kongkasuriachai of Chang Mai University, dealt with an important group of prehistoric cave burials from Thailand. Jessica Pena, of the University of the Philippines, studied taphonomic changes in immature skeletal remains from a cave site in the Philippines. A paper authored by Adam Lauer, of the University of Hawaii, explored differences in mortuary treatment of adults and children at an archaeological site in the Philippine Cordillera, and Neha Dhavale of the University of Otago, studied growth patterns in prehistoric Thailand. Other sessions at the meeting included those themed around mortuary practices, palaeopathology and human remains in the Philippines. There was also plenty of time for networking and for viewing the facilities in the Archaeological Studies Department. This was the first osteoarchaeological conference to be organised in the Philippines, and I came away impressed both with the richness of the osteoarchaeological record there (with excavated remains dating from 67,000 BP right up to the 20th century) and with the work being conducted on the remains.”
Dr Simon Mays is a Human Skeletal Biologist for Historic England, based in Portsmouth, UK see here. He is also also visiting lecturer in the Archaeology Department at the University of Southampton see here and Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh see here.