Anthropological research on osteological collections of the Natural History Museum in Florence

n the second half of the nineteenth century, under the direction of Paolo Mantegazza, the National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology of Florence (now Section of the Museum of Natural History) began to gather anthropological collections relating to people from all over the world. Thanks to collaborations with naturalists and travelers from all over in Europe, Mantegazza constituted a heritage of unique skeletal collections, which still today constitute an invaluable tool for studying the evolution and variability of the human species. The collection includes human remains of the Neolithic, Eneolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, important examples of Italian paleoanthropology, a large number of Etruscan remains and a modern osteological collection of over 7,000 specimens, donated by public institutions and resulting from scientific missions carried out in the second half of the XIX century in several European countries and beyond. Among these ones, there are recognized populations now extinct, such as the Fuegians, or now hybridized with the invaders and assimilated to Western culture as, for example, the inhabitants of the Indonesian and Melanesian islands. The osteological collections of the Museum is still a destination for Italian and foreign researchers which carry out researches in diverse sectors as biometrics, auxology, dental anatomy, paleopathology, paleodemography, ecology, dating (with 14C), genetic similarity between populations (ancient DNA). The present paper will explain the latest research, conducted in collaboration with the Department of Biology, University of Florence and with other public and private institutions