Christophe Snoeck

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Analytical-Environmental-& Geo-Chemistry (AMGC)

RATIONALEStrontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) are used in archaeological and forensic science as markers of residence or mobility because they reflect the local geological substrate. Currently, tooth enamel is considered to be the most reliable tissue, but it rarely survives heating so that in cremations only calcined bone fragments survive. We set out t...

Cremated human remains from Stonehenge provide direct evidence on the life of those few select individuals buried at this iconic Neolithic monument. The practice of cremation has, however, precluded the application of strontium isotope analysis of tooth enamel as the standard chemical approach to study their origin. New developments in strontium is...

Strontium isotopes are used in archaeology, ecology, forensics, and other disciplines to study the origin of artefacts, humans, animals and food items. Strontium in animal and human tissues such as bone and teeth originates from food and drink consumed during life, leaving an isotopic signal corresponding to their geographical origin (i.e. where th...

Preventing the inclusion of oxygen bearing compounds from the organic fraction of skeletal tissues is often considered key to obtaining faithful δ¹⁸O measurements of the mineral fraction, which are widely used across the archaeological, forensic and geochemical sciences. Here we re-explore the contentious issue of organic removal pretreatments by e...

Osteological data, such as biological sex, constitute a base for research in paleodemography and palaeopathology, as well as for understanding past socio-cultural practices. Despite extensive research efforts concerning cremated human remains over the past decades, an internationally acknowledged, standardized osteological protocol is not fully agr...

The site of San Valentino in San Vito al Tagliamento is one of the main urnfield cemeteries in northeastern Italy. Archaeological excavations carried out in the seventies brought to light a cremation cemetery consisting of mainly urn graves with pottery and metal artefacts as grave goods. These materials suggest that the individuals buried in San V...

Cremation graves appear in different forms and shapes, from urns to simple pits and from single to plural graves. The challenging nature of highly fragmented cremated human remains renders the identification of multiple individuals within the same cremation grave rather complex. Osteological analyses alone are often insufficient to detect the prese...

Post-mortem manipulation of human bodies, including the commingling of multiple individuals, is attested throughout the past. More rarely, the bones of different individuals are assembled to create a single 'individual' for burial. Rarer still are composite individuals with skeletal elements separated by hundreds or even thousands of years. Here, t...

The Late Bronze Age is characterized by the increasing homogenization of material culture and the prevalence of urn burials. The cemetery of Inzersdorf, located in the Lower Traisen Valley, Austria, is used to investigate whether changes in burial practices during the Late Bronze Age were locally driven or influenced by external factors. This study...

Cremation was a very common ritual in ancient Roman funerary traditions. However, the study of cremated human remains has always been complex and challenging, which has often led to an imbalance in data recording between inhumations and cremations. In this work, we study 14 cremation burials from two different urban cemeteries in the Roman city of...

The Merovingian period (5th to 8th cc AD) was a time of demographic, socioeconomic, cultural, and political realignment in Western Europe. Here, we report the whole-genome shotgun sequence data of 30 human skeletal remains from a coastal Late Merovingian site of Koksijde (675 to 750 AD), alongside 18 remains from two Early to Late Medieval sites in...

Upon passage through Earth's atmosphere, micrometeorites undergo variable degrees of melting and evaporation. Among the various textural and chemical groups recognized among cosmic spherules, that is, melted micrometeorites, a subset of particles may indicate anomalously high degrees of vaporization based on their chemical and isotopic properties....

This study presents a methodological advancement in the field of clumped‐isotope (∆47) thermometry, specifically tailored for application to freshwater ostracods. The novel ostracod clumped isotope approach enables quantitative temperature and hydrological reconstruction in lacustrine records. The relationship between ∆47 and the temperature at whi...

Variations in human subsistence and settlement patterns have been documented at Holocene archaeological sites across Island and Mainland Southeast Asia. Although climate is frequently invoked as a causal mechanism underlying this variation, direct evidence of ancient rainfall variability on the scale of human lifetimes has thus far been elusive. He...

This study shows, for the first time, the absence of a vital effect in the clumped isotope carbonate (Δ47) fossil ostracod signal and confirms the ability of the novel ostracod-Δ47 thermometer to reconstruct past temperatures and hydrological conditions in complex lacustrine systems. Furthermore, the application of Δ47 analyses on the ostracod spec...

Burial rites of archaeological populations are frequently interpreted based on cremated remains of the human body and the urn they were deposited in. In comparison to inhumations, information about the deceased is much more limited and dependent on fragmentation, selection of body regions, taphonomic processes, and excavation techniques. So far, li...

In this study we show, for the first time, the absence of a vital effect in the clumped isotope carbonate (Δ47) fossil ostracod signal, as well as the ability of the novel ostracod-Δ47 thermometer to reconstruct past hydrological conditions in complex lacustrine systems. Furthermore, through the application of Δ47 analyses on the ostracod species C...

This study presents the ostracod clumped-isotope (∆47) thermometer, a new tool that provides quantitative temperature and hydrological reconstruction from lacustrine systems, which are among the best archives to reconstruct continental paleotemperature variations. The relationship between ∆47 and the temperature at which ostracod shell crystallized...

While commonly used in the identification of ‘non-locals’, strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) can also inform on landscape use by the local community. Here, we report strontium isotope and concentration values for 24 Bronze Age cremations from Dunragit, Southwest Scotland, together with measurements on 23 modern plants to refine the available regional...

Urnfields were the common type of cemetery in the Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) in much of Northwest Europe. Rarely are there clear social or chronological differences between burials apart from changing pottery types. The cemetery of Destelbergen stands out because of the relatively high prevalence of monumental ditches surroundin...

The barrow cemetery at Heath Wood, Derbyshire, is the only known Viking cremation cemetery in the British Isles. It dates to the late ninth century and is associated with the over-wintering of the Viking Great Army at nearby Repton in AD 873–4. Only the cremated remains of three humans and of a few animals are still available for research. Using st...

The Final Neolithic and the Bronze Age (3000-800 BC) are periods of great transformations in the communities inhabiting the area of modern-day Belgium, as testified by archaeological evidence showing an increasing complexity in social structure, technological transformations, and large-scale contacts. By combining 599 available radiocarbon dates wi...

During the early medieval period (5th–9th century CE), the North Sea coastal societies were involved in long distance maritime trade relations, which resulted in a pronounced mobility of individuals throughout the North Sea area. This work presents the first isotope data from human remains on diet and mobility from early medieval Belgian coastal po...

The high temperatures reached during cremation lead to the destruction of organic matter preventing the use of traditional isotopic methods for dietary reconstructions. Still, strontium isotope (87 Sr/ 86 Sr) and concentration ([Sr]) analyses of cremated human remains offer a novel way to assess changing consumption patterns in past populations tha...

The Pliocene sedimentary record provides a window into Earth's climate dynamics under warmer-than-present boundary conditions. However, the Pliocene cannot be considered a stable warm climate that constitutes a solid baseline for middle-of-the-road future climate projections. The increasing availability of time-continuous sedimentary archives (e.g....

Cremation was the main funerary practice in Belgium during the Late Bronze Age (LBA), the Early Iron Age (EIA), and the Roman period. As a result, burnt human bones are commonly found in Belgian archaeological contexts. The high temperatures reached during burning (up to 1000°C) lead to significant structural, chemical, and isotopic changes to the...

The application of incremental enamel sampling on human dental enamel allows researchers to observe how isotopic values may vary over an individual’s early life. For archaeologists, this means we can observe how an individual’s diet and geographical mobility may have changed over time. Currently, incremental isotope studies on human enamel primaril...

Cremated human remains are commonly found in the archaeological records, especially in Europe during the Metal Ages and the Roman period. Due to the high temperatures reached during cremation (up to 1000°C), most biological information locked in the isotopic composition of different tissues is heavily altered or even destroyed. The recent demonstra...

This paper collates previously published data from incremental isotopic studies performed on faunal remains found within the modern boundaries of the United Kingdom (UK). The dataset represents a complete collection of zooarchaeological incremental data from the UK, consisting of 1,092 data points, obtained from 152 faunal specimens from 20 archaeo...

Studies of funerary practices provide information about many aspects of death in past societies. However, only limited archaeological evidence documents the circumstances under which cremations occurred and the person(s) who were performing the funerary rituals. Lying at the border between Atlantic and Continental cultural traditions, the Scheldt a...

The Pliocene sedimentary record provides a window into Earth’s climate dynamics under warmer-than-present boundary conditions. However, the Pliocene cannot be considered a stable warm climate that constitutes a solid baseline for middle-road future climate projections. Indeed, the increasing availability of time-continuous sedimentary archives (e.g...

Vitamin D deficiency has hugely impacted the health of past societies. Its identification in skeletal remains provides insights into the daily activities, cultural habits, and the disease load of past populations. However, up till now, this approach remained impossible in cremated bones, because temperatures reached during cremations destroyed all...

Cremation is a complex mortuary practice, involving a number of activities of the living towards the dead before, during, and after the destruction of the bodily soft tissues by fire. The limiting information concerning these behavioral patterns obtained from the pyre remains and/or cremation deposits prevents the reconstruction of the handling of...

The funerary Bronze Age culture in the Belgian part of the Meuse valley is poorly understood due to the challenging nature of cremation deposits that dominate the archaeological record. Only a few sites were analysed in that region, limiting the possibilities to reconstruct the development of Bronze Age populations in Belgium. Due to its good prese...

The CRUMBEL project brings together researchers from three Belgian universities and the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage. The purpose of this collaboration is to study the Belgian archaeological collections of cremated bones dating from the Neolithic till the Merovingian period. Th e project aims to improve knowledge concerning the living cond...

This study aims to better understand the development of group identity, mobility, and health in the Early Medieval Meuse Valley. This is achieved by combining existing demographic and palaeopathological information from 73 cremation deposits from Echt, the Netherlands, with new strontium isotope ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) and strontium concentrations ([Sr]...

Objectives This study aims to increase the rate of correctly sexed calcined individuals from archaeological and forensic contexts. This is achieved by evaluating sexual dimorphism of commonly used and new skeletal elements via uni‐ and multi‐variate metric trait analyses. Materials and methods Twenty‐two skeletal traits were evaluated in 86 indivi...

The limestone islands of the Bahamian archipelago provide a challenging environment for human settlement, one that was not taken up until after AD 700. The analysis of human skeletal remains offers new insights into how this challenge was met. A substantial program of AMS ¹⁴C dating on pre-Columbian humans (n = 66) provides a robust chronological f...

Strontium isotope ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) are commonly used in archeological and forensic studies to assess if humans and fauna are local to the place they were found or not. This approach is largely unexplored for wooden artifacts recovered in archeological contexts, as wood – in the rare instances it does survive – is often poorly preserved. One of th...

Studies of funerary practices provide information about many aspects of death in past societies. However, only limited archaeological evidence documents the circumstances under which cremations occurred and the person(s) who were performing the funerary rituals. Lying at the border between Atlantic and Continental cultural traditions, the Scheldt a...

Egyptian blue is a copper-based blue pigment that was widely used across the Mediterranean from ca. 3300 BC up to late antiquity and even later. For this case study, we analyzed the provenance of Egyptian blue from a Campana relief from the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Denmark. Campana reliefs are terracotta plaques, which were named a...

Objectives The Falys–Prangle‐method assesses age‐related morphological changes to the sternal clavicle end (SCE), enabling the observation of mature adults from the 5th decade onwards in unburnt human skeletal remains. The aim of this study is to investigate the applicability of the Falys–Prangle‐method on burnt human remains. Materials and method...

Rationale Strontium isotope analysis can be applied to the calcined human otic capsule in the petrous part (pars petrosa ossis temporalis; PP) to gain information on childhood mobility in archaeological and forensic contexts. However, only a thin layer of the otic capsule, the inner cortex, demonstrates virtually no remodelling. This paper proposes...

The distribution of the first domesticated animals and crops along the coastal area of Atlantic NW Europe, which triggered the transition from a hunter-gatherer-fisher to a farmer-herder economy, has been debated for many decades among archaeologists. While some advocate a gradual transition in which indigenous hunter-gatherers from the very beginn...

The adoption of a new funerary ritual with all its social and cognitive meanings is of great importance to understanding social transformations of past societies. The first known occurrence of cremation in the territory corresponding to modern Belgium dates back to the Mesolithic period. From the end of the Neolithic onward, the practice of cremati...

The Campanian age (Late Cretaceous) is characterized by a warm greenhouse climate with limited land-ice volume. This makes this period an ideal target for studying climate dynamics during greenhouse periods, which are essential for predictions of future climate change due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Well-preserved fossil shells from...

This paper contributes to the current debate regarding the ethno-cultural identity and origins of the post-Archaic (5th to 4th centuries BCE) population of the town of Satricum by introducing bioarchaeologial data including strontium isotope ratios, strontium concentrations, δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O values of tooth enamel, as well as dental morphological trai...

L’article suivant est un résumé des résultats préliminaires des crémations étudiées dans le cadre du projet CRUMBEL (Crémations, urnes et mobilité, la dynamique du peuplement de la Belgique - Projet EOS N°30999782) qui seront publiés dans une prochaine monographie dédiée au site de Pommeroeul.

We investigated the rate at which endogenous DNA from differently prepared (butchered, boiled and baked) compact pig bones degrades in five different Danish terrestrial and marine environments over a period of 12 months. Although >70% of the estimated endogenous mtDNA is lost after just four weeks of exposure, no cytosine deamination of DNA was obs...

The adsorption of phosphate on hydrated ferric oxide (HFO) was studied in solutions containing major seawater ions (Na⁺, Mg²⁺, Cl⁻, SO4²⁻, Ca²⁺, K⁺) at pHs 6.5, 7.5 and 8.5. The presence of these ions promotes phosphate adsorption and the process is electrostatic in nature. Despite this electrostatic force, the precipitation of hydroxyapatite in th...

The CRUMBEL project aims to investigate the mobility of the former population in Belgium from the Neolithic period until the Early Middle Ages. To reach these research goals different topics will be studied. In a preliminary phase, the ancient collections of cremated bone will be documented. A selection of these funerary sites will be studied to un...