Historical-anthropological-forensic analysis of a skeleton from a grave datable about year 1000 with traumatic lesions that indicate causes and modalities of the death

Abstract

The archaeological finding of an isolated buried skeleton in the neighbourhood of a small medieval church has made to date, by the archaeologists, the grave approximately about the year 1000. The study of the skeleton with forensic-anthropological techniques has allowed to obtain many marks about the physical features of the subject; but, above all, very thorough forensic-pathological examination, also using of optical and electronic microscopical techniques, has allowed to characterize meaningful injuries at the head, evocative of their intra-vitam production, indicative of some features of the productive mean and much evocative of causes and modalities of the death, probably identifiable in an execution. The purpose is to suggest the comparative use of macroscopic, microscopic and ultra-microscopic morphologic analysis compared can suggest solutions of cases happened in far historical ages, cases of which we only have the skeletal substrate.