Human Osteoarchaeology SIG online day conference

Human Osteoarchaeology Group online day conference

Saturday 14 November 2026, 09:00 - 16:00

CIfA's Human Osteoarchaeology Special Interest Group 2nd online conference will take place online on Saturday 14 November 2026 and will focus on commercial and research osteoarchaeology projects, burial ground fieldwork, student osteology projects.

The group welcomes anyone studying, working or simply interested in the field of human osteoarchaeology to join us for the day. The agenda is set out below.

Price

• £5 for those that hold CIfA student or early career membership
• £20 CIfA members or registered Human Osteoarchaeology Group supporters
• £40 non-member (includes 1 year of Human Osteoarchaeology Group supporter membership!)

Student bursaries are available. Please contact groups@archaeologists.net if you require support with funding for student members.

Agenda

09:00 Welcome

09:10 Damien Huffer - A role for the machine? Computer vision, artificial intelligence, and some humans in the loop studying the human remains trade

09:35 Keynote questions

09:45 Martin Smith, Miles Russell, Paul Cheetham - ‘Fraught with tragedy’: new radiocarbon dating insights regarding the dead of Maiden Castle 

10:00 Alfred R. J. Hawkins, Katie E Faillace, Richard Madgwick, Jane Sidell - Life, death and worship at his Majestie’s Tower of London: an isotopic investigation of two individuals from outside the Chapel Royal and Royal Peculiar of Saint Peter ad Vincula

10:15 Caitlin Hendrie - New perspectives: an investigation of bioarchaeological and biocultural evidence for Anglo-Saxon childhoods in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire 

10:30 Group questions

10:45 Break

10:50 Melie Le Roy, Martin Smith - ‘Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favour’*: Applying an Archaeothanatological Protocol to the Iron Age and Roman Mortuary Deposits of Winterbourne Kingston

11:05 Sharon Clough - A Roman cremation cemetery near Bicester

11:20 Sophia Mills - Excavations at the Early Anglo-Saxon Monastery, Cookham Abbey

11:35 Paola Ponce - The palaeopathology of the early medieval skeletons from Bishopstone, East Sussex

11:50 Louise Loe, Helen Webb - Health, hardship and death in Medieval Oxford: the human skeletal assemblage from Magdalen College, Oxford

12:05 Group questions

12:15 Lunch break

13:00 Irina Ellenberg - Three deviant burials from truncated cone storage pits in the Rhine-Main Region, Germany – an osteoarchaeological case study 

13:15 Mahsa Najafi, Dr. Abolfazl Ali - Perimortem decapitation and defensive trauma in a looted burial from the Royal Cemetery of Soltaniyeh, Iran: an osteological perspective

13:30 Dilan Avcil - Pilot study: the application of portable XRF in the reassociation of burned commingled remains

13:35 Shivani Sanger - Bilateral asymmetry in the long bones of a Medieval population: an osteometric analysis of Poulton, Cheshire

13:40 Nancy Mein - Beyond binary: diagnosing an intersex variation in the archaeological record

13:55 Chloe Arbury - Skeletal impacts of gender-affirming medical care and their applicability to the forensic anthropological context

14:10 Emma Glosson - Tracing lives and afterlives: an osteobiographical and object itinerary investigation of thirteen unprovenanced skulls housed at Surgeons' Hall Museum, Edinburgh

14:15 Lindsey Buster - Age-old stories: increasing the visibility of older adults past and present

14:30 Group questions

14:40 Break

14:40 Frankie Wildmun - The Corset - the underwear that shaped us. Analysis of rib cages from the population from Stapleton Workhouse Cemetery, Bristol. Cotswold Archaeology 

15:05 Rose Drew - Worked to death: overcrowded workhouses and pulmonary distress

15:20 Ria Davies and Paola Ponce - 'The Great Exposer’:  an exploration of cholera, water and social status in the 1849 epidemic in York

15:25 Ellen Green - The Dead of the Saint of Boundaries: the people of St. Botolph's without Aldgate, London

15:40 Solange Bohling - The Heritage Science Data Service: moving forward with a database for human remains collections

15:55 Group questions and close