 I would like to present part of my PhD thesis today. And my question is, does being wealthy mean you're healthy? And I will focus now on the post-medieval period. That means 17, still 19, till 20th century in some cases. So first of all, my PhD thesis is about Cript Mammus in Germania. And I would like to give you a short introduction into the context. These cripts are church vaults that means that are structures that are either in the church, next to the church, and they can be above ground or also subterranean barrier places for the nobility. So the clergy and the bourgeoisie. And most of them date between the 16th and 19th century. And we're also created in this timeframe. Usually the cripts have a skillfully devised ventilation system. And this is important because otherwise it starts to smell in the church and bodies are decomposing. Of course, those places are a matter of social distinction. Only the rich people who can afford it will be buried there. And usually I'm researching cripts from rural areas. That means we have the land owners there. When it comes to the research history, the first studies that have been conducted started in the 18th and 19th century. But at this time, the bodies were usually mummified because of this ventilation system were seen as curiosities. For example, the German novelist Theodor Fontana described some of these cripts in his book, Ramblings through Brandenburg. Then with the discovery of several Egyptian and South American mummies, they started to compare those kind of mummies and describe the difference between artificial and natural mummification. In the 20th century, the first attempts were done to compare different sites to collect the evidence. But it was only in the 21st century that we have detailed interdisciplinary studies on those cripts. And this means not only history, archaeology, but also textile analysis, bioarchaeological analysis, and so on. So the aim of my study is the first I have to establish the identity of these mummies. That means I have to give them back their names. I have to try to identify the bodies by comparing historical, archaeological, sometimes genetic, and anthropological records. In the second step, I can determine single pathologic conditions of the individuals and then collect data on the general health status of the population. And I will focus now on body health and dental health because those are the things that I can do. I can't do everything because it's a mummy and usually it has closest on it. So I don't see a lot of bone parameters that we usually use in physical anthropology. The third aim would be to evaluate the influence of social status and health and diet by comparing those cripts to other rural church yards. So this is my material. I will focus on six sites in my talk. All are coming from Germany, maybe from the eastern part, and two from Bavaria. And those churches are all Protestant churches. So when you have a look at the sample, you will see I'm not talking about many individuals because usually those cripts have limited space. That means usually you have an average about 10 coffins, sometimes a bit more, but we don't have so many material as in the rural church yards, of course. And as you can see, the cripts are still preserved today. I'm just, we'll talk about mummified individuals now, but we have also usually some additional scattered remains that are usually the previous occupants of this cript, or maybe some bones who just came into the cript from the cemetery who was around the church. So cript investigations are quite complex and you need to have a lot of disciplines who contribute to it. So first of all, you have the historical records. This is nice for the post-medieval period. And in most of the cases, it's written on the coffin who's inside. That's very practical, of course, but you have to read the inscription. Sometimes you have name plates. If this is not the case, you can always have a look at the church register. And usually, especially for these people who are buried in crips, they say where were they buried and for which reason? And because it's noble people, usually you will find them. Sometimes for this noble families, you have also familical chronicles. So you can check there more about their identity. So you will find out their name, the ancestry, their occupation, date of birth, date of death, and so on. Then it comes to the ecological part. So we were investigating the coffins. We were investigating the padding of the coffins through the filling. Usually it's botanical remains. And in a lot of cases, we have also brave quotes. It's usually razors, combs, whatever, because it's Protestant, we don't have any religious medals or something like this. It is possible for us to date this coffins type of chronologically because we have a very good framework for that in Germany nowadays. So as I said, we need a lot of disciplines. Those are the ones that we are trying to do. So we need some partners to do that. And to get more information on the bioarchology, we also need imaging methods. So I was investigating around 67 mummies. I did sex and age determination. In most cases, sex determination is easier and also possible for non-adults because you have the genitalia. So it's quite obvious in most of the cases. We reconstructed body height. We did some paleopostological observations and we had a look on the preservation of the mummies and on mummification. I will say now all of them are natural mummies. What I mean with postmortem manipulation is that usually the scripts have been looted in the past. Usually after World War II, sometimes even in the 80s, 90s, so you will find a lot of things in the coffins that do not belong there originally. And then, of course, you have the scale of our mind where we determined a minimum number of individuals and the body height. So first question, are those people equal and as if I compare different signs? And when you have this pattern, you will see not at all. They're completely different. And it depends on where you go. Here, for example, you have a family of mayors. In this case here, you have a lot of priests and that's why you have a lot of male individuals, of course. In other cases, this was surprising for us. You have a lot of infants and not so many adult individuals. We are lacking them in the other crypts, actually, because the infants were not buried in the crypt. It's a very special barrier place. The infants of these families were buried under the church here. So obviously in other families, you must have reached a certain age or status to be buried in a crypt like that. Well, the two last ones, here we have a predominance of females. And I think this is because they had a lot of widowed women in their families and a lot of unmarried women who stayed actually at that place of births. Which was also surprising for us when we had a look at the historical sources. They were not only family members buried in a crypt, but also a lot of people who visited the family who were maybe distant related, but who died there by occasion and then were buried in the crypt. If you have a look at the age distribution, you will see we have 28% of subadults, so not so many. And what we can also see that it's quite a natural curve, actually. We have these cases in infants too and juvenile enviroments. The question now, are those people taller than the average farmer who was buried on the church yard? So we compare those sides and our average body height is 172 for the males and 159 for the females from different sides. So now we set it into a context. And actually for me, the difference is not very high to the rural and urban church yards from the same periods. We have another problem that are different body height estimation methods. Not all of these studies were conducted the same way, so it's very difficult to compare those data. But for me, I think the difference is not so striking as I would have expected. When we have a look at dental health, we determine carious intensity and frequency. And with carious intensity, I mean the percentage of teeth who was affected from the total number of teeth. So here. And those numbers are also not very striking as you can see here. The carousal frequency means a number of individuals from the whole observable sample who had caries. On other, those numbers are quite in the context of numbers that we know from rural environments that is usually between 70 and 80% of individuals that had caries. So I think our numbers are fine, especially when you see how many individuals we could actually investigate for carious. We have the problem that usually if you have soft tissue around, it's not easy to see the teeth and if the mouse is closed, of course, it's not possible. So you have to do either computer tomography or x-rays to have a look at teeth. And not all of the mummies have still the heads because usually the heads were stolen in the past. However, it's possible to determine some single pathological conditions that we might lose and skeletal remains. For example, that one, it's a mature male. He had renal stones and gallbladder in the kidneys and the bladder. And those are crystalline deposits. And in this case, I think it's also related to obesity because you can see the strange body posture of this individual. It barely fit into the CT. So this indicates a quite rich diet, actually. Another case that was really interesting for me was this girl where we could do x-ray analysis. She died at the age of 10 months. You also know her identity. And she had a healed fracture of the left radius and not only the radius, but also possibly a fracture of the left fibula. Which is interesting. I was thinking first, maybe child abuse or something like this, but the story around her that she was first buried on a cemetery, actually, near the church. And when her mother died, even worse to her brother later, her father decided to exhume her and to place her in the crypt. So I would say that shows maybe that there's a great affection in this family. So maybe just fallen from somewhere. So I showed you the results that we have so far and it's still an ongoing study, but we are also encountering a lot of problems. When we do x-ray and we try to do it systematically right now, we have always an overlap of other radion structures of the fabrics and of soft tissue. So if I want to get to the bones, I can't. And in this case, for example, you can see the pelvic area and those things are all like bricks and stones that someone have thrown into the coffin. And what I will not do is empty the coffin just to see the mummy properly. Another problem is I cannot evaluate the classical, occupational or stress markers like fever or vitalia or peristates or something. Those are non-observable to me. And there's no standardized protocol for mummy investigations and we have to always do it in place. It's not any museum. It's not an ecological storage unit. So we have to do it in place and leave everything there. So coming back to my aims, the first one I think is quite doable. We can identify them even though if they're non-inscriptions, we can determine some pathological conditions and we can collect data on the health status but on a very low level. But the third time, I think we need more data and we will do stable isotopes in the future. Right now we cannot say if there's really a difference between those people buried in the crypt or the farmers on the church. I think we will do this with stable isotopes but right now the data does not tell us. So to conclude, we have a unique composition of individuals and every crypt. Of course it's a place that was just for high status individuals, nobles and bourgeois people. And surprisingly, we have family and non-family members and so far no major physical differences between the crypt and the church population. And we need more data and I would like to encourage everyone to share the data to publish so that we can compare throughout Europe. So thank you for your attention and I would like to thank all the people who helped with the research and the people who were in the crypt with me and did the investigations.