The course of syphilis or coffin births. It's not just archaeologists and anthropologists debating

Human bones can reveal a lot of information about the deceased. Archaeologists and anthropologists know this, especially those who gathered at the Connected By People student conference in Wroclaw. It was the third time that students and academics from the UWB met with their foreign colleagues.

Visitors to the interdisciplinary meeting on 8-10 November had the opportunity to listen to a wide range of lectures in the field of archaeology and anthropology, from research on burial sites in Peru and Sudan to the examination of mummified bodies, how serious the course of syphilis can be or how marks on the bones can reveal the type of work of our ancestors.

"Of the presentations, I was probably most interested in the presentation by Gabriela Jungová Vrtalová, who dealt with the issue of so-called coffin births. This is a very interesting phenomenon that appears throughout human history, and a closer anthropological study of it will certainly bring many insights," evaluated one of the conference participants, Tomáš Kroupa, a doctoral student of the Department of Archaeology at UWB, who contributed the topic of archaeological research of the landscape in the case of Brdy.

Archaeologists and anthropologists work very often with the concept of trauma. Thanks to this, it is often possible to find out very detailed information about the deceased, both in terms of the course of his life and the cause of death. Trauma can generally be characterised as an injury to both soft and hard tissues, including bone. The injury depends on the object with which it was inflicted, and each trauma is more or less specific, as each instrument leaves different marks. Forensic anthropology then uses the findings of other disciplines such as ballistics, chemistry or physics to identify trauma.The conference also included topics such as the analysis of Bronze Age antler ornamentation or the chapel at Drábské světničky.

Students and academics from the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (FF UWB), the Department of Anthropology of the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław and the Department of Protohistory and History of the University of Vienna gathered in Wrocław.

"I believe that this conference allows us to establish pleasant relations and new contacts and cooperation not only between the two inviting universities, but also between the Czech Republic and Poland in general. More and more students and experts from other institutions are getting involved," said Klementyna Mackiewicz, a member of the organising team. She hopes that future editions of the conference will be as successful as this year's. The success of the meeting is demonstrated by the ever-expanding base of partner institutions, which now includes the University of Tübingen in Germany and the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

"On behalf of the organizing team from the University of West Bohemia, we look forward to welcoming our colleagues from foreign and domestic universities to the fourth edition of the Connected By People conference at our university in 2025," said Atilla Vatansever from the University of West Bohemia.