Bruno De Graeve

Before the platforms, there were bones

From 1994 to 1998 I studied at Ghent University. I started with two years of History, then moved to Archaeology for my licentiate (today's master's), deeply inspired by Professor Jean Bourgeois.

My thesis was an archaeozoological study: what animal remains from three sites in the Viroin valley tell us about the people who lived there in the Iron Age and the Roman period.

Animal bones tell us more than what was on the menu. They also help reconstruct the landscape people lived in. Many pig bones, for example, can point to woodland nearby: pigs were often herded into oak woods to feed on acorns, a practice known as pannage.

Finds can also point to contacts far beyond the valley. Oyster shells found this far inland raise questions about trade between the coast and the interior, and about how such perishable goods were transported and kept fresh along the way. Both the pig bones and the oysters turned up in the remains I studied.

By measuring the bones and comparing them with reference data from the literature, we could also show that the aurochs, the wild ancestor of our cattle, still lived in the Viroin valley or the wider region in Roman times. The last known aurochs died in Poland in 1627.

The three sites, upstream to downstream. Schematic, not to scale.

After my studies

After graduating I worked as a scientific researcher on studies for the Vlaamse Landmaatschappij (VLM), including the archaeological inventory for the land development project "Leie en Schelde – Zone 1".

I also did research for the Musée national d'histoire et d'art in Luxembourg (today the Nationalmusée um Fëschmaart, on the Marché-aux-Poissons), studying the animal remains from Remerschen-Schengerwis. My preliminary report was published in Lunula in 2000.

At the time, archaeology offered few prospects beyond a handful of temporary jobs. Belgium did not yet have the commercial archaeology firms that, in Flanders today, examine a site before it is demolished or built on.

So at the end of 1999 I reoriented. The Y2K problem and the coming euro were drawing many of us into IT, and I have worked there ever since, today as a ServiceNow Platform Architect. You can find that part of my career on LinkedIn.

Thesis

Archeozoölogisch onderzoek van enkele sites uit de vallei van de Viroin: de La Tène-vindplaats La Roche Albéric te Couvin, de Gallo-Romeinse villa van Bruyères te Treignes en Roche à Lomme te Dourbes (prov. Namur, België)

Bruno De Graeve. Licentiate thesis (licentiaatsverhandeling), Archaeology, Ghent University, 1998. In Dutch.

The thesis is held by the Ghent University Library, but its files can't be downloaded there. You can download it here instead.

Library record: Ghent University Library catalogue

Publications