The quiet rest of the warrior: a story of life, death, taphonomy and bone diagenesis

The abundance of human skeletal remains housed in museum collections can promote multidisciplinary expert collaborations and training following forensic protocols and methodologies. These can assist in the reconstruction of part of the history of the ecofacts, add to the cultural heritage and highlight the scientific and social value of museum collections. This study aims to present a typical example. A human skull recovered in the late 1960s / early 1970s in the Po River alluvial plain, in northern Italy, has since been housed in a local ethnographic museum, the Fondazione Museo Ettore Guatelli ( https://www.museoguatelli.it/en/ ). Recently rediscovered, the skull shows several morpho-anatomical alterations suggestive of congenital disease and perimortem trauma, along with peculiar bone staining of taphonomic and diagenetic origin. Despite remarkable limitations, including the skull fragility, an international multidisciplinary research team was able to apply modern protocols of forensic investigations to determine the biological profile, as well as a pathological condition, the cause of death (non-natural), the postmortem interval (PMI) (late Middle Ages) and the postmortem taphonomic history, reincluding the individual into the cultural narrative of the local community.