The trap you took outside the monkey bars in fourth grade it may feel like a lifetime ago, but for scientists studying skeletal remains, these important and painful moments can be important clues as to how we lived hundreds of years after our death.
Skeletal trauma is evidence of accumulated fractures and fractures over a lifetime. These clues are especially important when it comes to decoding the lives of those who lived centuries before, including the inhabitants of the Middle Ages.
In a new study, between the 10th and 14th centuries, archaeologists used X-ray analysis of 314 skeletal remains exposed in Cambridge, UK, to look back at the past. Specifically, the researchers were interested in documenting the toll that social class differences can take on the body. What they found was at least said.
Why it matters – The team uncovered some grizzly truths about the lives of these medieval Britons – life for the poor was especially cruel. They also discovered the harsh reality of domestic violence during the period.
The findings are Monday in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Here is the background – Modern Cambridge is mostly associated with the university of the city, which hosted academic outcomes from Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking. But in the Middle Ages, Cambridge looked very different from the cute colleges, cobbled streets and well-tended riverbanks for which the city is known today.
In the 13th century, the city was home to about 4,000 laborers, artisans, farmers, and religious brothers who attended the then emerging university.
The difference in the labor of a farmer and that of a brother may seem obvious, but the research team of the University of Cambridge who conducted this study followed a deeper approach to truly live the people’s daily lives. reconstruct.
The research team looked at skeletal remains of three different tombs across the city:
The Augustinian hatchery: the last resting place of rich wealthy religious patrons and brothers
The Hospital of John the Evangelist: Graves of the Seriously Ill or Charitable Homes
The All Saints Congregation: The Cemetery of Ordinary Laborers
Using the fractures and fractures left in the bones of these skeletons, the researchers tried to reconstruct how each individual’s life really was.
What they did – Archaeologists have examined 75 remains of the Augustinian Friary, 155 of St. John the Evangelist Hospital, and 84 of the All Saints Cemetery. They use a combination of macroscopic examination – examinations with the naked eye – and a portable X-ray machine to look below the surface of the bones.
The team uses clues such as tooth calcification, the shape or size of skull, pubic and rib bones to assess the age of each skeleton at death and sex. Once determined, the excess was categorized as adolescent (12-17), young adult (18-25), middle-aged (26 – 44), mature adult (45 – 60) and old adult (60+).
Children under 12 were excluded from the study because they were less likely to work outside the home.
“Life was the hardest at the bottom, but life was hard everywhere.”
What they discovered – Perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest number of skeletal traumas were seen in the remains of All Saints, with 37 of the 84 individuals providing evidence of some type of bone trauma.
Jenna Dittmar is the lead author and research fellow of the study at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. She explains in a statement why individuals buried at All Saints probably sustained their injuries during their daily labor as laborers.
“We can see that ordinary workers are at greater risk of injury compared to the brothers and their benefactors or the more sheltered hospital inmates,” she says.
“These were people who worked long hours on heavy manual labor. In the city, people worked on trades such as stone masonry and blacksmithing, or as general laborers.”
“Many people spent the day outside the city until dusk in the veld or herding cattle,” she adds.
The researchers found that older adults had more evidence of skeletal trauma than their female counterparts. But this is not necessarily because women have spent all their time indoors. Their tasks may have been less dangerous, but women would also have worked outdoors, especially on farms, the researchers say.
The link between poverty and physical hardship and injury is no shock. People living below the poverty line today still suffer disproportionate trauma for those with more privilege. But the research did reveal other, counter-intuitive findings about the lives of brothers, domestic violence and the role of Cambridge in the war.
For example, they found evidence that some brothers may have led dangerous lives before joining the church, while domestic violence in the Middle Ages was far more common than previously thought.
What we do not know – Although this evidence is in the bone, it does not necessarily mean that the conclusions drawn in this study were set in stone, the researchers say. While it is possible to make educated guesses about how these individuals sustained their injuries – whether through work, accident or interpersonal violence – it is difficult to know for sure.
Oddly enough, the study also found lower scores of interpersonal knife violence than previously reported, which the researchers said was due to a lack of evidence of soft tissue, rather than any indication of the reality of life in medieval Cambridge.
According to Dittmar, there is one thing they can definitely say: life was difficult for the medieval Cantabrigians.
‘We can see it inequality recorded on the legs of medieval inhabitants of Cambridge, “said Dittmar.” Severe trauma was common in the social spectrum. Life was the toughest at the bottom – but the whole life was hard. ‘
Summary:
Aim: To investigate how the medieval living conditions, occupation and role of an individual within society influenced their risk of skeletal trauma.
Material: The skeletal remains of 314 individuals from the medieval Cambridge buried in the All Saints parish cemetery by the castle (n = 84), the Augustinian courtship (n = 75) and the St John the Evangelist Hospital cemetery. (n = 155) was analyzed.
Methods: Macroscopic examination and plain X-rays were used to classify the fracture. The causal mechanisms and forces applied to a bone were inferred from fracture morphology.
Results: The skeletal skeleton represents accidental injuries, probably caused by occupational or everyday activities, and violence. The highest incidence was observed in the individuals buried at All Saints at the castle (44%, n = 37/84), and the lowest was seen in St John’s hospital (27%, n = 42/155). Fractures were more common in males (40%, n = 57/143) than females (26%, n = 25/95).
Conclusions: The trauma of the skeleton was highest in the All Saints Congregation cemetery, indicating that the poor, whether urban or rural, were at greatest risk of injury. The observed pattern and types of fractures indicate that males experience worse traumatic events than females. However, females who were regularly involved in manual labor also had a greater risk of injury.
Meaning: this article enhances our understanding of how traumatic injuries differ in age, gender, and cemeteries in the Middle Ages.
Further research: Additional comparative studies in different geographical regions are needed to determine how representative these findings are.