Karin Wiltschke-Schrotta

Naturhistorisches Museum Wien

The multitude of legal requirements for working with biodiversity specimens is challenging and time consuming for researchers and biodiversity research institutions, including universities, museums, governmental and private institutions managing natural science collections (e.g., biobanks, preserved and living collections). This challenge significa...

This paper describes the design and build of a pilot Natural Sciences Collections Digitisation Dashboard (CDD). The CDD will become a key service for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections Research Infrastructure (DiSSCo) and aims to improve the discoverability of natural science collections (NSCs) held in European institutions, both digi...

We present two different typologies of legal/contractual information in the context of natural history objects: the Biodiversity Permit/Contract Typology categorises permits and contracts, and the Typology of Legal/Contractual Terms for Biodiversity Specimens categorises the terms within permits and contracts. The Typologies have been developed und...

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide today, but are not just a modern phenomenon. To explore the deep roots of CVDs in human history, this book, for the first time, brings together bioarchaeological evidence from different periods, as old as 5000 BC, and geographic locations from Alaska to Northern Africa. Experts...

This article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled “Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward,” which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6–8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop...

This study presents for the first time the early medieval cemetery of Podersdorf am See in its landscape archaeological, diachronic context. The interdisciplinary methods applied show the cemetery in a completely unexpected dense spatial setting, with additional cemeteries, settlements and roads, over a time span reaching from the Roman Empire Peri...

The SYNTHESYS consortium has been operational since 2004, and has facilitated physical access by individual researchers to European natural history collections through virtual access to collections through digitisation, with two calls for the programme, the first in 2020 and the second in 2021. The Virtual Access (VA) programme is not a direct digi...

Three graves from the Latène period were uncovered in Schrattenberg (political district Mistelbach, Lower Austria) in 1913 and 1914. The material from the graves has been housed in the Departments of Prehistory and Anthropology at the Natural History Museum Vienna but had not been properly scientifically analysed before now. The three graves consis...

Archaeological research excavations in Podersdorf am See (Burgenland, Austria) in 2015 and 2016 exposed 31 burials (7th cent. AD, Avar Period) and two pit houses (5th - 7th century and 2nd half of 13th/early 14th century, respectively). The archaeological site is located east of the Neusiedler See on a small east-west trending ridge, hardly more th...

In 1924 a prehistoric excavation was carried out in the Torrener Bärenhöhle cave, located near the town of Golling an der Salzach (Salzburg, Austria). Several faunal bones were unearthed, most of them belonging to Ursus spelaeus, hence the name of the cave (“Bear Cave”). Some of the bones had presumably been manipulated by humans and identified as...

The Avar period cemetery in Frohsdorf is located in eastern Austria in the area of the former western periphery of the Avar Khaganate. In a non-literate culture like that of the Avars, it is only possible to reconstruct everyday culture, including funerary rituals, through archaeological sources. Through archaeological field seasons from 2001 to 20...

During an excavation in the city center of Neunkirchen (Lower Austria), underneath a roman vicus house wall a skeleton in contracted position was found. Due to a 14C analysis of some bone material the burial was dated into the Chalcolithicum, a period where the area of Neunkirchen was inhabited by people of the Badener Kultur.

The early medieval »Reihengräberfeld« on the Mariahilfer Gürtel in Vienna was discovered and excavated by Matthias Much in 1897 and 1898. Recently discovered archival documents and the site-plan allow the exact location of the cemetery and the reconstruction of some of the grave assemblages. The few remaining human remains and grave-goods are curr...

The cause of an individual’s death is a frequent question when we investigate human skeletal remains. Unfortunately, in most cases the cause of death is impossible to determine. However, while investigating an Avar period population (630–800 A.D.) with 540 burials from Mödling Goldene Stiege, Austria, three individuals with sharp cut marks at the c...

Schamall D., Kneissel M., Wiltschke-Schrotta K., Teschler-Nicola M.: Bone Structure and Mineralization in a Late Antique Skeleton with Osteomalacia Osteomalacia is characterized by mineral disturbances of bone tissue caused by lack of vitamin D due to inadequate exposure of sunlight and also by malnutrition. This disease manifests itself in mechan...

Disturbances of bone growth were investigated in the skeletal remains of two individuals. These two--unrelated--mature males possessed limbs with marked atrophy as a result of immobilization, while the non-affected limbs showed a massive hyper-robusticity of the bones. The atrophied bones were investigated metrically and histologically. We assessed...

The epigenetic variants of 635 early Bronze Age individuals from Franzhausen I, Lower Austria, were studied. The main interest of this examination, besides getting data, was the calculation of frequencies and testing the variants for sex and age dependence. Additionally, intertraits and side-to-side correlation were discussed. The results showed th...