An Osteological Museum inside the Varese Medical School? A proposal from the Medical, Anthropological and Paleopathological point of view

摘要

During the years, an amazing collection of archaeological bone materials came to life inside the rooms of the Physical Anthropology Laboratory of Varese Medical School. This impressive gathering will grow in the next years, as Varese is a very fertile soil from the archeological point of view. It is not unusual that ancient skeletal findings are discovered in this region, especially while churches or buildings are under renovation. Most of the times the discovery of ancient finds is not intentional but happens by chance. Varese is a very important archeological area from the funerary point of view, in fact a great many funerary structures were found here. For this reason, the Lombardy Archaeological Heritage Department has planned to support a paleobiological study about the local ancient population. In 1998, many of the skeletons found in the archeological sites were transferred to the laboratories of the Varese University. They were then analyzed under the anthropological and paleopathological profile (1). Few years later, about hundred skeletons filled the rooms of our laboratories. Therefore, we started to take into consideration the transformation of this informal collection into a Didactic Osteological Museum. The museum would be a place of study and research, and not just an archeological collection. The academic departments of Medicine, Biology, Anthropology and Archaeology would be the institutions more involved in this didactical project. The museum would be a great teaching and learning tool. Findings would be showcased as a vehicle to promote academic research. Students would be encourage to closely analyze them. We believe that an osteological museum with a didactic orientation should include two different sections: an anthropological exhibition and a paleopathological area. The anthropological section will be designed as a space for those who wish to specialize in the field of Physical-Forensic Anthropology. It would include all skeletal remains that are considered essential for the identification analysis (sex determination, age of death estimation, height estimation etc. ...) (2). Skulls and pelvis would be displayed in order to clearly show the dimorphic traits. Another sector would be focused on bone portions useful to study the phases of the bone growth, such as dental arches and long bones in children, and the phases of the skeleton senescence, such as ilium auricular surface, pubic symphysis, sternal rib end, in adults. It would be very helpful to display the parts of the appendicular skeleton, as these findings are important to gather information about the statures of several population groups. The phenotypic diversity of skulls collected inside the Varese Medical School is impressive. It would be extremely interesting for the researchers and for the students to have access to this collection to investigate the craniofacial morphological changes in ancient and modern Lombardy populations. It would include skulls that belong to the three different morphologies: brachycephalic, mesaticephal-ic, dolichocephalic. We envision a museum with an innovative, scientific structure that leads the students to better study the antique demographic dimensions.