Laforest, Caroline

University of Bordeaux

Research Topic: Burial Customs in Roman and Proto-Byzantine Asia Minor: An Archaeo-Anthropological Perspective

Her university education consists in a B.A. in archaeology (University of Dijon, France) and in a M.A. in biological anthropology (University of Bordeaux, France). Before her PhD, she worked two years in rescue archeology as an archeo-anthropologist for two French public departments. She started conducting researches in Anatolia for her PhD when she was proposed in 2010 to launch the excavation of a roman house-tomb in Hierapolis of Phrygia. The analysis of funeral gestures and practices, through archeothanatology, osteological quantification, stratigraphy, and study of funeral goods, allowed to reconstitute the management of this densely occupied tomb (MNI: 293 individuals) over a long time, from Augustan period to the VIIth century. She defended her PhD thesis in december 2015; currently she is extending her researches on Asia Minor; her aim is to understand how funeral spaces, from the skeletons scale to the necropolis scale were conceived and managed, in order to overtake the rather static vision we have of the funeral monuments.