 And thank you for being here. I'm really pleased to all the authors that are here, but also to the others. And so I just want to start this very long day. And I know that most of us are from an archaeological or a bioarchaeological background. And this session is actually an idea from archaeologists and bioarchaeologists. So I hope that we can produce some new ideas or we have some new arguments or new issues to discuss. Especially maybe in future to talk with these historians in another context. So let's start with the question why we are here today. This idea is born especially to introduce some the health and the disease. So how these experiences were in the past times, especially in post-classical and early medieval times. And clearly these, both of them are linked with health care practices. And clearly, as you'll see during this day, many of us are from different backgrounds, especially from different periods and different areas of Europe. And so I think that there are so many different impressions from culture, from the economics, and the Bedots from the religion that is very important. And it is just a tip note that most of us are from the Christianity world at the moment. And we are discussing about context is all case studies that come from this part of the world. But actually, we have some important and very important textis and codecs from the Islamic world. So today, at the moment, we are just discussing one part of this very big issue. I know that these slides has a lot of information. And just to spend a couple of seconds, I'm specialized in the post-classical period. So I've done these slides just thinking to my period. But it's clear that it can be related also to other time periods of our fraying period from post-classical, especially medieval times. And for example, I'm studying the barbaric invasions, we can say, but also the Germanic migrations to the south of Europe. And so in this period, there are so many movements of people. And that can be linked to moving people not only from different parts of Europe, but also, for example, from the countryside to the cities because they are safest. And then it's clear that the world, we can say, is changing that moment, that period. Also, for example, the food supply is changing. There are many necropolises from the north of Italy when there is a different diet from there is a changing from the sea free plants to minor, singular plants. And it is just a glimpse of all the things that we are going to discuss today. And clearly, we have some important events, just like the black ones, a couple of times, at minimum in this time period. And so what we are going to do today is to have an idea of not only from the bioarchaeology points of view, but also from the archeology points of view. And we can be guided in this path thanks to the textual information. And just to say, we can just think that the textual information can give us some opportunities to understand the treatments, the theories, but especially we can have some notes about the people, so about the healers or the doctors in this time period just to take a note about it from the laws of the Lombards at the time studying. We know that there was a doctor present in the community, because if there was an arguing and if someone lost an eye instead of a hand, the doctor has to be present just to judge the degree of this lesion. So we know not only from the proper medical treatments and codexies that these people were present in the communities, but also thanks to the many others' textual information. And so now just to go ahead, I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about these two very important terms, so about disability and about care. So for the disability, we clearly have help from the World Health Organization site and clearly there are different degrees of disability. So we have impairment in the body, but then a measure that we can consider that is impairment in doing activities and clearly the impairment or minimations that are very influence a person's life. And in the end, we have to say as some case studies that are reported today, injuries or, for example, disease can happen at certain point in the life course. And here there are some different aspects about the care because we have basic care. If you just need some water, if you need the food supply, or you need maybe an advance of care. And then in this case, maybe there can be a surgery help. And then obviously there is a different time period. So there could be a short period. And then this people is OK, is fine, and can go ahead with his or her life. Or maybe she or he is died. So there is a different frame for the period, for the short and for the long period. And clearly there are then the care can be visible and known or invisible and unknown. As I introduced before, we are in the Christianity moment, we need the Christianity points of view now to afford this process. And it's clear that from thanks to the textual information that there are some monastic orders. For example, the Benedictines that look after the care, not only of impaired people, but also for ill people creating some places to take care of them. And here there are just a couple of examples from these images, from these pictures, that I like a lot. Because here there is maybe in that one, in the other one, we can see very well, but we will see better in a couple of seconds. There are some examples of cooperation, not only of healers or doctors, we can say, but with blacksmiths. So they have a cooperation to build these kinds of support just to help ill people. And so the questions that can maybe arise during this session can try to answer to how we can break the limits of this disability in the past and how the care was, the approaching of care and how much is important from this point of view, from this period to have so much textual information. And clearly these new perspectives can help us to have some new perspectives in the past lives. I know that this slide is full as well, but I like it very much because as I said in the first part, we are archaeologists and bioarchaeologists. So it depends from which are our background and which is the question that we have at the moment that we start to study a skeleton instead of an entire skeletal collection. So if we want to have a glimpse of the pathologies that a person can have, we look at the osteobiography. So we start with the paleopathological assessment. But if we want to know how this person really had the relationship with his families and his relatives and to his community, we have to look at the archaeological context. So for example, it's very interesting to see where these people were buried into the necropolises or in the cemeteries. And in this way, the written sources that are not just the proper written part, but also the images can help us to understand how deep was the medicine knowledge. And especially sometimes it's very common to find, for example, in the codexies, at the beginning of the codexies, some say, especially for the saints biographies, where there is this saying that just look at a new person and how he helped the ill person at that moment. And here there are some studies. So from the first one is that they're introduced before. So from the case study from an amputation and the method, the iron support. So here we have again the cooperation between doctor and healer and the blacksmith. As well as in the second case, there is a proper support for a forearm amputation. And the last case is a case that we have studied all together with Marianne and with others of our lab. And studying all of these three cases, there is just, I can say a glimpse of it, but it's clear that there are some others, many others, works as I've introduced here briefly, that has a strength methodology to afford this kind of study. And just because I already said that we have started to study the last case, we had the intention to deep this one and how we can do that. We have tried to have, we have introduced not only this section that could be very helpful for all of us, but there is also a project that is running in Sapienza now. And we are in front of an important moment because we had to decide how we can manage with all this information. And so we have not only the archeological, biological points of view, but for example, the history of the medicine, but also the ethics is very important to afford in this path. So just to say a couple of things about today, this is the first part, so the morning first part, there is an introduction and there are some papers that are very interactive to our case studies that we have in the afternoon. And there are some case studies from many of you and they are with different approaches. Then I invite you to see the two posters from this session. And I hope that you can have time to do this. And clearly all of you are invited to the final discussion. So the aims for this day are two. The first one basically two, then maybe more. The first one is to find a key to read this time period, this very long time period with so many information. And the second one is maybe to create a network among us just to be in connection for future maybe other congresses or if we want just to keep in touch to maybe if you have new case studies we can just compare them and have ideas together. And here I will just spend a second saying that a couple of editors are interested in this session. So I invite all the authors and I'm telling them that very soon they're gonna be contacted. And we have a couple of ideas with a couple of options from Spring and Rebels. So, but we are anyway open to any other your suggestions and ideas that you can have during this day but also very soon in next days or months. I want to thank so much all of you because you are from all over the world and how we'll see it today. And especially thanks to my co-organizers because they were so helpful and very encouraging me in doing this. Thank you.