Department of Anthropology under Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Southern Denmark - colloquially called ADBOU - is servicing the authorities through forensic anthropological investigations. Furthermore, ADBOU is one of in total two state institutions in Denmark that stores and registers human skeletons from archaeological excavations for the museums. The skeletons are used for teaching of students, and for research of diseases like tuberculosis, leprosy and syphilis. Ageing is also subject to research.
The Collection stores more than 16.000 skeletons, primarily from the Danish medieval and after-reformation times. The Collection is rather famous abroad, and guest researchers and collaborators from the States, Canada and other countries are frequent guests every year.
Originally, ADBOU was short for Anthropological DataBase at Odense University (now University of Southern Denmark). Nowadays, ADBOU has become an established name. ADBOU links to its own homepage(www.adbou.dk), where information about excavtions, cemeteries, registrations, reports, research and many other things can be found.