Dr. Alice Toso

I am a Junior Professor in Bioarchaeology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (University of Bonn) and I am head of the Anthropology and Biomolecular Labs at the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences (BoCAS). I am interested in studying life and living conditions of past human populations based on their skeletal human remains, combining more traditional anthropological methods with novel biomolecular approaches. 

Since my very first year as an undergraduate student in Archaeology, I have been fascinated by the stories that human remains could tell. My first excavation happened to be an Iron Age necropolis in Northern Italy and I remember thinking the anthropologist on site must have had some kind of super powers, as he moved from burial to burial, identifying sex and age of the individuals just by looking at them. 

I have followed through that initial fascination thanks to a MSc in Palaeopathology at the University of Durham and a PhD in Archaeology at the University of York. Within the framework of my PhD I have explored the connection between faith affiliation and dietary practices in medieval Portuguese populations, through the use of stable isotope analysis of δ13C and δ15N of human and animal remains. This work has been important as it was the first time Portuguese historical populations were isotopically analyzed and finally put on the map of the ever expanding dietary studies in the European Middle Ages.  I could observe a number of intriguing patterns including sex-related access to food, as well as differing economies and diets among different faith groups (Christians and Muslims) and chronological periods (before and after the Christina conquest).  To know more please see recent publications:

Toso, A., Gaspar, S., Banha da Silva, R., Garcia, S.J., Alexander, M., 2019. High status diet and health in Medieval Lisbon: a combined isotopic and osteological analysis of the Islamic population from São Jorge Castle, Portugal. Archaeol. Anthropol. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00822-7 

Toso, A., Schifano, S., Oxborough, C., McGrath, K., Spindler, L., Castro, A., Evangelista, L., Filipe, V., Gonçalves, M.J., Marques, A., Mendes da Silva, I., Santos, R., Valente, M.J., McCleery, I., Alexander, M., 2021. Beyond faith: Biomolecular evidence for changing urban economies in multi-faith medieval Portugal. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24343 

As a result of my PhD, marine economies became another central topics of my research. The human-environment relationship, especially in marine ecosystems, was the focus of my postdoctoral work as part of the ERC Tradition team. I analyzed hundreds of human individuals that lived during the last 4000 years along the Atlantic Forest coast of Brazil. We wanted to understand how such long marine exploitation was undertaken by so many different groups during millennia and what impact this might have had. The results highlighted a clear shift of targeting higher trophic level species around 2200 BCE suggesting a social re-organisation of the local population was closely related to environmental changes. Read more here:

Toso, A., Hallingstad, E., McGrath, K., Fossile, T., Conlan, C., Ferreira, J., da Rocha Bandeira, D., Giannini, P.C.F., Gilson, S.-P., de Melo Reis Bueno, L., Bastos, M.Q.R., Borba, F.M., do Santos, A.M.P., Colonese, A.C., 2021. Fishing intensification as response to Late Holocene socio-ecological instability in southeastern South America. Sci. Rep. 11, 23506. 

In my recent work I have been focusing more and more on using biomolecular methods to give a voice to historical actors that were often silenced in historical sources. This included enslaved individuals during the medieval and post-medieval times as well as women and children. This work has received funding in the form of a Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual fellowship (EMPIRE), and continues to be one of my main focus of the research I am developing. To know more about my research focus visit the Research tab. 

I am currently devoting a lot of my time to developing further the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences, setting up collaborations within and beyond the university of Bonn, while also establishing a new curriculum at Bachelor and Master level that will train the next generation of bioarchaeologists.