Researchers studied the remains of more than 300 individuals from different social backgrounds, buried in three different city cemeteries from the 10th to the 14th centuries.
The University of Cambridge team examined bones from a parish cemetery for working people, a charity hospital where the sick and needy were buried, and a monastery for the wealthy, detailing each break and fracture to provide a barometer of social inequality. to create.
X-ray analysis of the bones revealed different levels of deprivation – accident, work accident, or violence – across the social spectrum.
Of the three sites, the remains excavated at the hospital of St. John the Evangelist – a 12th-century home for the needy – contain the fewest fractures. Many residents had skeletal evidence of chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, and would not be able to work.
About 44% of the working people had fractures, compared to 32% of those in the monastery and 27% of those buried by the hospital. Meanwhile, fractures were more common in men (40%) than in women (26%).
“By comparing the skeletal trauma of remains buried in different locations in a city like Cambridge, we can measure the dangers of daily life experienced by different spheres of medieval society,” said Jenna Dittmar, lead author of the study, Monday. in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
“We can see that ordinary working people had a higher risk of injury compared to the brothers and their benefactors or the more sheltered hospital inmates,” said Dittmar, a research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.
“These were people who spent their days doing heavy manual labor. In the city people worked in crafts such as stonemason and blacksmiths, or as general laborers. Outside the city many spent bone-breaking work in the fields or herding cattle from sunrise to sunset,” she added.
The team found that physical trauma was widespread across the social spectrum, but it was most difficult for the poorest people, who suffered the most from physical labor.
Yet the most extreme injury was seen in a monk, who had complete fractures mid-thigh, while violence-related skeletal injuries were found in about 4% of the population.
“We can see this inequality in the bones of medieval Cambridge residents. However, severe trauma was widespread across the social spectrum. Life was hardest at the bottom, but life was tough everywhere,” added Dittmar.