Young soldiers in Late Antiquity: two deaths in Northern Apulia between the Greek-Gothic war and the Lombard invasion

The current work concerns the anthropological study of skeletal remains of two young adults involved in violent – and possibly related to war – combats. The two cases described are young male adults who both belong to the same territorial context and chronological span, between the Greek-Gothic war and the Lombard invasion, a period of great social and political upheavals in Italy, especially in Northern Apulia. This research is based on historical, archaeological, anthropological and paleopathological sources and it focuses on the role of young adults in Medieval society, especially during wars, showing labour differences defined by gender or age. Furthermore, the trauma analysis, such as the one which caused a death by beheading, allows us to reconstruct the dynamics, to hypothesize the weapons used, so that we can recreate a profile of the assaulters and the performance of certain rituals after the fighting. Finally, we can attest the presence of foreign fighters – maybe mercenaries or invaders – in Medieval Italy.