The last battle of Anne of Brittany: solving mass grave through an interdisciplinary approach (paleopathology, anthropobiology, history, multiple isotopes and radiocarbon dating)

Abstract

Mass graves are usually key historical markers with strong incentive for archeological investigations. The identification of individuals buried in mass graves has long benefitted from traditional historical, archaeological, anthropological and paleopathological techniques. The addition of novel methods including genetic, genomic and isotopic geochemistry have renewed interest in solving unidentified mass graves. In this study, we demonstrate that the combined use of these techniques allows the identification of the individuals found in two Breton historical mass graves, where one method alone would not have revealed the importance of this discovery. The skeletons likely belong to soldiers from the two enemy armies who fought during a major event of Breton history: the siege of Rennes in 1491, which ended by the wedding of the Duchess of Brittany with the King of France and signaled the end of the independence of the region. Our study highlights the value of interdisciplinary approaches with a particular emphasis on increasingly accurate isotopic markers. The development of the sulfur isoscape and testing of the triple isotope geographic assignment are detailed in a companion paper [1].

3D Reconstruction and Geostatic Analysis of an Early Medieval Cemetery (Olonne-sur-Mer, France)

“…Today, aiming for a "total archaeology", the studies are at times, based on in depth biological research (characterization of samples, recruitment, DNA, isotopes, forensics, pathology, etc.) [11][12][13][14], a funerary archaeology, which is very descriptive about the tomb to reconstituted funeral practices [15][16][17][18] and the precise analysis of contexts, sediments and associated artefacts [19][20][21][22]. The objectives cover the reconstitution of past populations (diets, mortality and morbidity, relatives, migration, etc.)…”

Investigating individual migration life histories: An isotopic case study from 17th to 18th century Nouvelle France

“…In order to investigate the possible geographical origins of “non‐local” individuals, six bioarchaeological studies including isotopic data have been selected for North America (France et al, 2014) and Europe (Bataille et al, 2021; Colleter et al, 2021; Daux et al, 2005; Millard et al, 2020; Trickett, 2018). Table 2 summarizes these δ 18 O C data, in addition to the ones obtained from three studies from Eastern Canada (Emery et al, 2017; Munkittrick et al, 2019; Schwarcz et al, 1991).…”

“…Similarly, within North America, δ 18 O C increases, as both latitude decreases and temperature increases (northern region mean: 24.5 ± 1.5 ‰; southern region mean: 25.5 ± 1.5 ‰; France et al, 2014). However, Europeans sites seem to provide a range of variation ( δ 18 O C : 24.4–34.8 ‰; Daux et al, 2005; Mays et al, 2011; Emery et al, 2017; Trickett, 2018; Millard et al, 2020, Bataille et al, 2021, Colleter et al, 2021) that is not very different from North America ( δ 18 O C : 20.4–29.7 ‰; France et al, 2014), as all these values overlap. These isotopic similarities between two continents imply that, when using only δ 18 O C , interpretations about past mobility in a transatlantic context must remain very cautious.…”

“…Geographical distribution of key comparative δ 18 O CARBONATE data used for Montreal. Sources: (1) Emery et al (2017); (2) Schwarcz et al (1991); (3) Munkittrick et al (2019); (4 and 5) France et al (2014); (6) Daux et al (2005), Bataille et al (2021), Colleter et al (2021); (7) Trickett (2018). Map created with Global and Regional Precipitation values from Waterisotopes.org ( https://wateriso.utah.edu/waterisotopes/pages/data_access/ArcGrids.html) based on OIPC v3.2 database values from Bowen and Revenaugh (2003) and Bowen et al (2005) papers.…”