The construction of an underground car park beneath the main square of Turin, Italy in 2004 led to the unearthing of the skeletonised remains of twenty-two individuals attributable to the early eighteenth century. At this time the city was besieged during the War of the Spanish Succession in a hard-fought battle that resulted in unexpected triumph for the Piedmontese, a victory that marked a fundamental turning point in Italian history. The current study assesses the strength of evidence linking the excavated individuals to the siege and assesses their possible role in the battle through consideration of their biological profiles, patterns of pathology and the presence of traumatic injuries. This article presents the first analysis of evidence for the siege of Turin from an anthropological point of view, providing new and unbiased information from the most direct source of evidence available: the remains of those who actually took part.
. Intriago Leiva, ‘Managing commingled remains from mass graves: considerations, implications and recommendations from a human rights case in Chile’, Forensic Science International, 219 (2012), e19–e24. For example, in relation to the First World War, see D. Gaudio, A. Betto, S. Vanin, A. De Guio, A. Galassi & C. Cattaneo, ‘Excavation and study of skeletal remains from a World War I mass grave’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, DOI: 10.1002/oa.2333 (2013); R. Howard, V. Encheva, J. Thomson, K. Bache, Y.-T. Chan, S. Cowen, P. Debenham, A. Dixon, J.-U. Krause, E
Ethnography of the Beothuk, pp. 388–98; S. M. Black, I. Marshall and A. Kitchener, ‘The skulls of Chief Nonosabasut and his wife Demasduit – Beothuk of Newfoundland’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 19:1 (2009), 659–77, 660–1. 32 G. Patterson, ‘The Beothiks or Red Indians of Newfoundland’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 2 (1892), 123–71, 157. 33 Howley, The Beothucks or Red Indians, p. 333. 34 The berry-picking story is narrated by Howley, who says he heard it from Mr Coffin himself (ibid.). It is repeated in Marshall’s History and
World Archaeological Congress (WAC) and the WAC first code of ethics’, Australian Archaeology, 32 (1991), 64–7. 22 Examples include the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, URL: www.babao.org.uk/index/ethics-and-standards; the Deutscher Museumsbund (German Museums Association), URL: www.museumsbund.de/fileadmin/geschaefts/dokumente/Leitfaeden_ und_anderes/2013__Recommendations_for_the_Care_of_Human_ Remains.pdf; Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, URL: www.heritage.org.nz/~/-/media/a483bc2fdcf14f1aa67dd84e3e