Osteoarchaeology: The Truth in Our Bones–A Free Online Course from Universiteit Leiden

Taught by Andrea Waters-Rist from Uni­ver­siteit Lei­den, Osteoar­chae­ol­o­gy: The Truth in Our Bones explores “what we can learn from exam­in­ing the human skele­ton, and how we can use this knowl­edge to recon­struct the lives of peo­ple who lived in the past.” The course descrip­tion con­tin­ues:

In archae­ol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy, human skele­tal remains can pro­vide unique insights into the past and the present; insights that can­not be gained oth­er­wise.

These insights are explored in five main themes spread out over five weeks of learn­ing. First, it is shown how age-at-death, sex and stature can be esti­mat­ed by the close exam­i­na­tion of (archae­o­log­i­cal) skele­tal remains. In sub­se­quent mod­ules it is shown how human bones can pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the dis­eases and injuries that peo­ple suf­fered from and what they ate. Also, it is shown how the human skele­ton pro­vides infor­ma­tion about the kinds of activ­i­ties that peo­ple engaged in and about how they migrat­ed and moved around their land­scapes

You can take Osteoar­chae­ol­o­gy: The Truth in Our Bones for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Osteoar­chae­ol­o­gy: The Truth in Our Bones will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.