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Project
The Make-Up of the Cities: A Transdisciplinary and Comparative Study of Urban Societies in the Pre- Modern Low Countries (IRP26)
Whereas more than half of today’s global population live in cities, this has not always been the case. Important steps in the development towards our present-day urbanised societies were taken during the second half of the middle ages in the Low Countries (roughly what is now Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and northern France), where cities came to dominate political, economic and social life in a way they did not do elsewhere in Europa. Scholars worldwide have studied medieval urban life in this area since the nineteenth century, but have failed to answer questions about some of its most crucial aspects. Largely responsible for these frustrations was a tradition of working in isolated disciplines and going back to the same problematic data sets. Make-Up of the Cities therefore adopts a transdisciplinary approach, bringing together the VUB’s internationally acclaimed expertise in history, archaeology, geochemistry and medicine. Working jointly as
‘scientists of the past’, the project team will draw on the macroscopic osteological study of the skeletal remains of city-dwellers to get a better understanding of their health and lifestyles and on the analysis of the isotopes in the bone material to shed light on their origins and mobility. The project’s predecessor has shown that this approach can provide crucial new insights for one medieval city. Make-Up of the Cities will now explore to what extent these findings can be transferred to the rest of the urban landscape, broadening the scope to cover three large cities and two smaller towns. This will allow the project to develop a more representative perspective on the urban experience during a key stage of urban history, to assess the differences between medieval and present-day human populations and to design methodologies suited for tackling future multidisciplinary problems.
‘scientists of the past’, the project team will draw on the macroscopic osteological study of the skeletal remains of city-dwellers to get a better understanding of their health and lifestyles and on the analysis of the isotopes in the bone material to shed light on their origins and mobility. The project’s predecessor has shown that this approach can provide crucial new insights for one medieval city. Make-Up of the Cities will now explore to what extent these findings can be transferred to the rest of the urban landscape, broadening the scope to cover three large cities and two smaller towns. This will allow the project to develop a more representative perspective on the urban experience during a key stage of urban history, to assess the differences between medieval and present-day human populations and to design methodologies suited for tackling future multidisciplinary problems.
Date:1 Nov 2024 → Today
Keywords:historical bioarchaeology, medieval urban history, isotope analysis, palaeopathology
Disciplines:Bioarchaeology, Medieval history, History of medicine, Biogeochemistry, Anatomy