Posted on 04/10/2006 3:07:19 PM PDT by blam
Burial find reveals ancient lives
Greig Watson
BBC News, Leicester
A huge amount can be learnt from skeletal remains
They are dust and dry bones. Hundreds of people, generation upon generation, reduced to neatly boxed scraps and splinters. But a team from the University of Leicester archaeology unit has a rare opportunity to tell us about the lives these people led.
Work on the extension to a shopping centre in Leicester city centre unearthed the largest medieval parish cemetery outside London, containing more than 1,300 skeletons.
As well as the sheer scale of the site, the significance lies in its close identification with an area over a defined period of time, roughly from 1200 to 1600, effectively recording the human history of a neighbourhood.
Harriet Jacklin is an osteologist, trained to examine human bones for clues about their lives - and deaths.
We have discovered there are a high number of infants and juveniles
Harriet Jacklin, Osteologist
She said: "It's a fantastic opportunity - we have such a large number of individuals.
"It's one of the largest to be excavated in recent years and therefore full analysis will be able to tell us about the population who lived, worked and died in Leicester."
She added: "We can look at the age of the individual, the sex of the individual, we can look at their diet and lifestyle and social status and sometimes we can even see what they died of."
Age and gender can be estimated by the development and shape of the bones. While children are usually obvious from their size, the formative nature of their skeletons mean it is not possible to gauge sex.
First results from the St Peters site indicate how dark and difficult medieval life could be for children.
There appears to have been a slightly better standard of dental health among individuals buried within the church
Harriet Jacklin
Ms Jacklin added: "We have discovered there are a high number of infants and juveniles and this could be an indication of the quantity of diseases which while they leave little direct effect on the skeleton, would have a big effect on the child mortality rate."
Another valuable source of information is the teeth.
She said: "Many of the teeth are very worn, showing a coarse diet. There are also possible abscesses, where decay has eaten into the jawbone, which would have caused a huge amount of pain.
"There appears to have been a slightly better standard of dental health among individuals buried within the church, indicated perhaps a better standard of living and therefore higher social status."
Tony Ratnam, a University of Leicester Archaeology Service (ULAS) field officer, said: "Since it is a church site, you don't get much of the day to day items you would associate with domestic life.
"We did, however, find materials associated with the church and religious life - including what we think is the left arm from a crucifix.
Two skeletons a day
There are also tiles from the church, often decorated with the coats of arms from local nobility.
"It's interesting to think the feet of those people we dug up probably walked across these tiles on their way to pray."
Another find from the site was the lead seal from a papal bull, a document purchased from the Church in hope of absolving sins and shortening the individual's time in purgatory.
It dates from the reign of Pope Innocent VI who reigned from 1352 to 1362.
Mr Ratnam said: "This is shortly after the Black Death, which killed millions of people and may well have focussed people's thoughts on the afterlife."
The team hopes to record an average of two skeletons per person per day - with those of special interest sent for further analysis - and expects to get through the collection in roughly two years.
GGG Ping.
If you're of British ancestry, there's probably at least one of your ancestors that they are digging up with this dig.
You go back to 1200, and pretty much everyone is related to everyone.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
Gods, Graves, Glyphs PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Huh? The Beeb once again reveals itself to be a font of middle-class ignorance and mediocrity.
A papal bull is simply a proclamation (on any subject) by a pope, which is sealed for authenticity by a lead-stamp called a bulla.
What the dork reporter or editor is thinking of is an indulgence (a remission of punishment for sins that have already been duly confessed to a priest), which is the only Catholic concept Marxists are capable of remembering. They remember it only to scorn the idea of sin and concern for its consequences—which I suspect is unwise, for people with their attitude toward morality.
The archaeological find is interesting, and thanks for the post, by the way—even if the write-up is a specimen of anti-papal bull.
Is nothing sacred? These folks were buried within a church. If the American Indians can sue to make our paleontologists return their skeletel remains, I think I should be able to sue to have the Brits leave my ancestors alone!
Yo, cuz!
They'll probably be digging up our bones in several hundred years, too.
You're probably right. *sigh*
Look at that stud in the researcher's lip in the photo accompanying this article. I wonder what the archeologists and paleontologists will say about that primitive decoration?
While I've never worked in Leicester, I can tell you that the most freckled woman on earth is currently living there and that I nearly died from food poisoning there two weeks ago.
Talk about a stay at home kind of guy. They found a 9,000 year old skeleton of one of his relatives about 2 miles from where he lives, see link below.
Descendant Of Stone Age Skeleton Found (Cheddar Man - 9,000 YO)
Well, I'd say he'd better father some children FAST. It would be a shame to interrupt a 9,000 year old line. Lucky thing that he's a guy because he can produce children up into his 80s. LOL.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.