The archaeology of disability is a relatively recent and little-known approach in France. While the study of palaeopathology now goes hand in hand with funerary archaeology and osteoarchaeology, the French study of disabilities and disabling pathologies remains marginal and unevenly treated, depending on location, chronology and researcher’s interest. This paper focuses on highlighting the compatibility between this new research area, the obligations of osteoarchaeology, and the benefits of developing a national, diachronic, and interdisciplinary study. A database is designed within an interpretive, consensual framework, that can be adapted to overcome limitations and promote open-minded research on the care of the disabled in their own communities. A preliminary category selection of disabling pathologies has been made. These are trepanation, completely edentulous and/or compensating denture, neuronal impairment, severe scoliosis, Paget's disease, Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis (DISH), rickets, dwarfism, infectious diseases, unreduced fracture, amputation, severe degenerative disease and others. This list has been critically reviewed by experts in the field; it will evolve in a somewhat Darwinian fashion. Our database is hosted on the Huma-Num platform, with a management interface and quick access based on multiple tabs. The data includes information about archaeological operations, subjects, and pathologies; it is complemented by pictorial data stored on the Nakala platform. The development involved creating a prototype using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and PHP, with features to display, add, modify, and delete operations and subjects. Enhancements have been made, including search optimization, charts, and the ability to export data in CSV format. The database, whose administrative interface can be accessed at archeohandi.huma-num.fr, contains so far 211 existing operations with a total of 1232 registered subjects spread throughout metropolitan France. These initial data reveal numerous research perspectives in osteoarchaeology that can be combined with other research topics, such as virtual reality.

Non-metric variations, also referred to as "epigenetic variations" or asymptomatic bone variants, are bone or dental phenotypic variants of unknown origin, with no known pathological etiology. They are classically identified during osteological analysis to develop an individual profile, analyse biological affinities between individuals and outline possible genetic relatedness clusters in burial spaces. However, although numerous studies have focused on their occurrence in adult archaeological samples, data on their development, expression and frequency in skeletally immature individuals are still scarce. The aim of this study was therefore to document the expression and frequencies of a selection of non-metric variations in an archaeological sample of 116 individuals who died during the perinatal period, in order to outline a diachronic reference database for comparative analysis. The individuals analysed are from an ancient Sudanese necropolis and two medieval/modern cemeteries and churches in the Paris Basin. Altogether, the occurrence of 22 selected variants were scored directly from the examination of the bones. No significant population-based difference was found between the Nubian and the Western European samples. Frequencies in the perinatal sample were compared with those of samples including juvenile and adult individuals from other chrono-geographical contexts.

The Upper Seine Valley sees during the Bronze Age an increase in settlements and cemeteries characterized by a variety of architectures and funerary practices. This variability originates from the coalescence of two cultural traditions, the Atlantic culture from the northwest and the Continental culture from the east, which find its roots in the Upper Rhine area. In this context, our research aims to understand the cultural identity of these communities by reconstructing subsistence economy and palaeodietary patterns and to trace human mobility, which influenced lifestyle and social–economic dynamics. Adding new 10 AMS dating and using multi-isotope (δ 13 C, δ 15 N, δ 34 S) and multi-proxy (botanical, animal and human remains) biochemical investigations, we detected changes in dietary habits throughout the Bronze Age linked to varying C 3 and C 4 plant consumption and diverse animal protein intake by humans. Three main outcomes are highlighted: (1) a variety of farming strategies with different manuring intensity according to the cereal species; (2) site-specific dietary patterns; (3) an increase in millet and animal protein intake during the Late Bronze Age. Moreover, results from one cemetery reveal that individual mobility is more significant for males. These dietary variations, differential agricultural strategies and mobility are consistent with other western Europe research, supporting major global changes in all of Europe at the end of the Bronze Age.

L'archéologie du handicap est une thématique novatrice et encore peu documentée. Si la paléopathologie est désormais intrinsèque de l'archéologie funéraire et de l'archéo-anthropologie lato sensu, la spécificité du handicap et des pathologies invalidantes demeure encore très marginale et inégalement considérée selon les territoires, les périodes chronologiques voire même l'intérêt des chercheurs. Pourtant, cette recherche fait pleinement écho à des questionnements contemporains et documente un champ entier de la lecture des comportements des humains face à la vulnérabilité des leurs.L'objectif de cette recherche est d'affirmer la compatibilité entre la documentation de ce nouvel axe de recherche, les contraintes de l'archéo-anthropologie et l'apport d'une recherche diachronique et transversale. La mise en place de cette démarche suppose une grille de lecture qui fasse consensus et soit adaptée aux lésions invalidantes lisibles sur la matière osseuse pour une recherche des prévalences et une observation de la prise en charge - par leur groupe d'appartenance - des sujets atteints.