Bertrand Ludes

This article examines the role of rural communities in shaping early Egyptian statehood through the evolution of funerary beliefs. Drawing on the analysis of 504 tombs from the cemetery of Adaïma (Upper Egypt, 3300–2700 BCE), we trace a growing variability in mortuary practices from the First to the Third Dynasty. By the Third Dynasty, a remarkable alignment between the heliacal rising of Sirius, the summer solstice, and the Nile inundation began to reconfigure both ritual time and space. The celestial events became instrumental in transforming materially grounded beliefs—such as the symbolic dismemberment and reassembly of the body—into immaterial religious concepts underpinning royal ideology. Through comparison with earlier necropolises and later Pyramid Texts, we demonstrate how cosmogonic myths originate from long-standing ritual patterns and how the nascent state co-opts local traditions, reframing them through the appropriation of high-status individuals and celestial legitimation to consolidate central authority.

This article evaluates the criteria for diatom testing in forensic investigations, focusing on drowning cases. Diatoms, unicellular algae found in aquatic environments, are critical to the determination of drowning because water containing diatoms is inhaled during submersion. The primary objectives include defining the exact amount and type of tissue to be analyzed, expressed in terms of diatom concentration relative to tissue weight, and detailing the conditions under which water samples are collected to study the diatom flora at the site. In addition, the importance of accurately identifying diatom taxa and comparing them by unit weight is emphasized. To improve the reliability of diatom testing, the study discusses advanced methods such as microwave digestion, vacuum filtration, and automated scanning electron microscopy (MD-VF-Auto SEM), which offer higher sensitivity and specificity. The integration of DNA sequencing and deep learning techniques is explored, offering promising improvements in diatom detection and classification. These advances aim to reduce false positives and improve the accuracy of determining drowning as the cause of death. The article highlights the need for standardized protocols for diatom testing to ensure consistency and reliability. By incorporating new technologies and refining existing methods, the forensic application of diatom testing can be significantly improved, allowing for more accurate and reliable conclusions in drowning investigations.

The European Council of Legal Medicine (ECLM) is the body established in 1992 to represent practitioners forensic & legal medicine and is composed of delegates of the countries of the European Union (EU) and from other countries which form part of Europe to a current total of 34 member countries. The aims of this study were to determine the current status of undergraduate forensic & legal medicine teaching in the curriculum of medical studies in ECLM countries and to use the results of this study to determine whether it would be appropriate to develop new guidelines and standards for harmonising the content of undergraduate forensic medicine training across ECLM member countries. A detailed questionnaire was sent to all individuals or organisations listed on the ECLM contact database. Responses were received from 21 of 33 countries on the database. These responses showed considerable emphasis on undergraduate teaching of forensic medicine in all countries with the exception of Belgium and the United Kingdom. There was great general consistency in the subjects taught. The data from this survey provide a baseline which should assist in developing a strategy to harmonise forensic & legal medicine undergraduate training in member countries of the ECLM. The ECLM is now in a good position to establish a pan-European working group to coordinate a consensus document identifying an appropriate and modern core undergraduate forensic medicine curriculum that can be presented to the medical education authorities in each country, and which can be adapted for local requirements, based on available personnel, the forensic medicine structure in the country, and most importantly, the needs of the local population.

In the Rhône Valley’s Middle Neolithic gathering site of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (France), the positioning of two females within a structure aligned with the solstices is atypical. Their placement (back and prone) under the overhang of a silo in front of a third in a central position suggests a ritualized form of homicidal ligature strangulation. The first occurrence dates back to the Mesolithic, and it is from the Early Neolithic of Central Europe that the practice expands, becoming a sacrificial rite associated with an agricultural context in the Middle Neolithic. Examining 20 cases from 14 sites spanning nearly two millennia from Eastern Europe to Catalonia reveals the evolution of this ritual murder practice.

Forensic medicine is a thriving application field for artificial intelligence (AI). Indeed, AI applications intended to forensic pathologists or forensic physicians have emerged since the last decade. For example, AI models were developed to help estimate the biological age of migrants or human remains. However, the uses of AI applications by forensic pathologists or physicians and their levels of integration in medicolegal practices are not well described yet. Therefore, a scoping review was conducted on PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Scopus databases. This review included articles that mention any AI application used by forensic pathologists or physicians in practice or any AI model applied in one expertise field of the forensic pathologist or physician. Articles in other languages than English or French or dealing mainly with complementary analyses handled by experts who are not forensic pathologists or physicians or with AI to analyze data for research purposes in forensic medicine were excluded from this review. All the relevant information was retrieved in each article from a grid analysis derived and adapted from the TRIPOD checklist. This review included 35 articles and revealed that AI applications are developed in thanatology and in clinical forensic medicine. However, those applications seem to mainly remain in research and development stages. Indeed, the use of AI applications by forensic pathologists or physicians is not actual due to issues discussed in this article. Finally, the integration of AI in daily medicolegal practice involves not only forensic pathologists or physicians but also legal professionals.

The need to perform autopsies to establish the cause and manner of death has existed for a long time. This identifies signs of violence and helps to determine whether a death is due to natural causes, an accident, or the criminal action of another person (1). The developments in medicolegal autopsies have been shaped and greatly influenced by the judicial system adopted in any given country, with the major goals being the detection and investigation of criminal and other unnatural or unexpected deaths. Because of different legal frameworks, medico-legal autopsy rates and practices are quite different between countries. The European Council of Legal Medicine (ECLM), which is an official body dealing with scientific, educational, and professional matters in Europe, has been very active since the early 1990s in proposing guidelines and working to harmonize medico-legal autopsies. The general assembly of the ECLM, held in London in 1995, adopted a declaration entitled: “Harmonization of the Performance of the Medicolegal Autopsy”. This work was conducted by the Council of Europe and led to the adoption of recommendation 1159, concerning the harmonization of autopsy rules, during its 43rd Ordinary Session (1991). This recommendation was followed by the constitution in 1996, under the Committee of Bioethics, of a working party of international experts in legal medicine and law, with representatives of the International Academy of Legal Medicine, as well as Interpol. The purpose of the group was to make a proposal regarding autopsy rules. The group finished its work in November 1998 and European recommendation R (99) 3 on the “harmonization of the medicolegal autopsy rules and its explanatory memorandum” was adopted by the committee of ministers on February 2, 1999, at the 658th meeting of the ministers’ deputies (1). It must be pointed out that this document is only a “recommendation”.

The diagnosis of drowning is one of the most difficult tasks in forensic medicine. The diatom test is a complementary analysis method that may help the forensic pathologist in the diagnosis of drowning and the localization of the drowning site. This test consists in detecting or identifying diatoms, unicellular algae, in tissue and water samples. In order to observe diatoms under light microscopy, those samples may be digested by enzymes such as proteinase K. However, this digestion method may leave high amounts of debris, leading thus to a difficult detection and identification of diatoms. To the best of our knowledge, no model is proved to detect and identify accurately diatom species observed in highly complex backgrounds under light microscopy. Therefore, a novel method of model development for diatom detection and identification in a forensic context, based on sequential transfer learning of object detection models, is proposed in this article. The best resulting models are able to detect and identify up to 50 species of forensically relevant diatoms with an average precision and an average recall ranging from 0.7 to 1 depending on the concerned species. The models were developed by sequential transfer learning and globally outperformed those developed by traditional transfer learning. The best model of diatom species identification is expected to be used in routine at the Medicolegal Institute of Paris.

(1) Background: The way tobacco and tea spread among virgin populations is of major interest our understanding of how ancient economic and cultural practices could have influenced current habits. (2) Methods: hair concentrations of theobromine, theophylline, caffeine, nicotine, and cotinine were measured in hair samples from 47 frozen bodies of people from eastern Siberia, dated from the contact with Europeans to the assimilation of people into Russian society. (3) Results: hair concentration of theobromine, theophylline, and caffeine vary with the type of beverage consumed: green, black, or local herbal teas. Shortly after the first contacts, a few heavy consumers of tobacco were found among light or passive consumers. Tobacco-related co-morbidities began to be recorded one century after and heavy tea users were only found from the 19th century (4) Conclusions: Economic factors and social and family contacts seem to have played a decisive role in tobacco consumption very early on. Behavioral evolution governed the process of substance integration into Siberian culture and was a determinant for the continuity of its use across long periods of time. Analyzing the respective contributions of social and economic processes in the use of these substances opens avenues of investigation for today’s public health.