Patterns of trauma in a unique medieval parish cemetery

The church and cemetery of St Margaret Fyebridgegate, Norwich were in use from AD 1245 to 1468. The cemetery was used to bury both the parishioners and hanged felons. On excavation, 52 group burials of various sizes were encountered, some containing prone individuals. Four hundred and thirteen inhumations have been examined, of which one-third had evidence of episodes of trauma. Comparison is made of the types of trauma present with evidence from the sites of the Blackfriars, Ipswich and the Mary Rose. Evidence is presented for some possible activity-related trauma at two of the sites.     

Directional bilateral asymmetry in human sacral morphology

Directional bilateral asymmetries in human gross skeletal morphology are largely attributable to differential mechanical loading from handedness during endochondral bone growth. While much has been done in the way of identifying directional asymmetries of the upper limb in relation to handedness, comparatively little research has focused on asymmetry in the lower body. The present paper analyses asymmetry in the human sacrum in a sample of 238 modern individuals. Measurements of right and left sides of the lateral and posterior breadths of the alae and the maximum height of the auricular surface were used. Asymmetry was calculated as: [(left side − right side) ÷ right side] * 100. Directional asymmetry was identified using a one‐sample t‐test against a hypothesized mean of zero. Significant directional asymmetry (P < 0.05) was found in all three dimensions. The pattern of asymmetry is consistent with models describing the influence of right‐handedness on the lower body, which predicts that left side dimensions will be larger. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Examining Activity Patterns and Biological Confounding Factors: Differences between Fibrocartilaginous and Fibrous Musculoskeletal Stress Markers

The present study examines a sample of 105 hunter–gatherer California Amerinds to determine whether fibrocartilaginous musculoskeletal stress markers (MSMs) are better for activity reconstructions than fibrous MSMs. Femoral and humeral head diameters were measured as proxies to body size. All data were analysed for statistical significance using non‐parametric tests. Fibrous MSMs of the left deltoideus, left and right hip adductors, and left and right tibial soleus correlate positively with body size proxies. For fibrocartilaginous MSMs, the right humeral teres minor insertion negatively correlates with humeral head diameter. Both types of MSMs correlate positively with age. More upper limb fibrocartilaginous MSMs display asymmetry than do upper limb fibrous MSMs. Lower limb sex differences were found at the same MSM sites that correlated with body size. Upper limb sex differences at the right teres major, a fibrous site, and the right triceps brachii, a fibrocartilaginous site, seem to reflect activity patterns. Results suggest that fibrocartilaginous MSMs are more useful in reconstructing activity patterns because they display more asymmetry in upper limbs and are less affected by body size than are fibrous MSMs. Yet, correlations with age and a lack of variability at fibrocartilaginous MSM sites may hinder their utility in activity reconstructions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘True British sailors’: a comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose

Bell et al. (2009) have recently published an isotopic investigation of the origins of 18 men whose remains were found in the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship, which sank in 1545. They conclude that a high proportion of the ship's crew were foreigners and that this may have contributed to confusion on board ship and the sinking of the vessel. We have re-evaluated the data of Bell et al. and conclude that only one of the 18 sailors demonstrably spent his childhood outside the British Isles.     

Wools from textiles in the Mary Rose, a sixteenth-century English warship

Wool fibre diameter measurements defining fleece type are described for 25 yarns from fabric remains recovered from the 16th century wreck of the Mary Rose in Portsmouth harbour. Over half had natural grey pigmentation and nearly two-thirds were of primitive hairy medium wool.     

The Cables and Cablets of the Mary Rose (1545)

Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose sank in the Solent on 19 July 1545, during an engagement with a Franco/Papal invasion fleet. During excavation between 1979 and 1982, four cable coils and a number of lengths of cable and cablets were discovered. Direct study of these, combined with the excavation, finds, and conservation records, have established the number of cables found on the wreck, their spatial organization on the vessel, and their function at the time of the wrecking. Analysis of the cables has illuminated 16th‐century rope‐making techniques. The possible presence of Tudor salvage cables is also discussed.     

Resource Exploitation and Wood Mobility in Northern European Oak: dendroprovenancing of individual timbers from the Mary Rose (1510/11–1545)

Dendrochronology has proved useful in suggesting the provenance of timbers in northern Europe, particularly for ship‐timbers, which may have originated from a distant source. Historical chronologies are usually derived from timbers of uncertain origin. In trying to provenance a new chronology, therefore, trends in the geographical distribution of statistical matches should be viewed, rather than individual strong matches. While it is usual to test a site‐chronology created from several individual timbers, in a situation such as the Mary Rose, where individual timbers may have been sourced from several regions, the matches of individual timbers may shed light on their origins. © 2010 The Author     

‘True British sailors’: a comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose

Bell et al. (2009) have recently published an isotopic investigation of the origins of 18 men whose remains were found in the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship, which sank in 1545. They conclude that a high proportion of the ship's crew were foreigners and that this may have contributed to confusion on board ship and the sinking of the vessel. We have re-evaluated the data of Bell et al. and conclude that only one of the 18 sailors demonstrably spent his childhood outside the British Isles.     

The sinking of the Mary Rose warship: a medieval mystery solved?

The cause of the sinking of Henry VIII's Vice Flagship, the Mary Rose, as she sailed out to meet the French fleet on 19th July AD 1545, has remained an enduring mystery and contested encounter between the English and French Navies. The French claim was that the ship was holed by French cannon fire, whilst the English maintained that she sank due to a poorly executed navigational manoeuvre during the engagement. On the day of the sinking there was a total listed crew complement of 415 men onboard. Minimum number analysis of the commingled human assemblage identified only 179, from which we sampled 18 individuals from differing decks within the ship. We measured δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N in bone collagen, and δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C in enamel apatite of these individuals in order to obtain information about their diets and origins. While the collagen δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N data are similar to other medieval populations, the δ¹⁸O data indicate that a significant proportion of the crew did not originate in Britain, but rather they emanated from warmer, more southerly, regions. These data suggest the presence of 33–60% of non-natives, possibly mercenaries and/or ‘prest’ men, amongst the crew. Together with the contemporary remark shouted from the Mary Rose to a passing ship, that the Captain had the “type of knaves of whom, he could not rule”, our results lend weight to the suggestion that poor communication may well have contributed the observed fatal navigational manoeuvre which led to her sinking.     

Directional asymmetry in the human clavicle

The human right clavicle tends to be shorter than the left. A range of possible explanations can be advanced to account for this asymmetry. In the present work, clavicular morphology was studied in a medieval skeletal assemblage from Wharram Percy, England, with the aim of evaluating these competing explanations. At Wharram Percy, as anticipated, the right clavicle tended to be shorter. Patterns of asymmetry in curvature, robusticity, vascularization, and in the morphology of ligament and muscle attachment sites were also studied. The patterning in these data at Wharram Percy is consistent with inhibition of longitudinal growth of the clavicle on the dominant side due to lateral bias in mechanical loading, particularly in axial compression. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Byzantine hagiographical parody: Life of Mary the Younger

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that The Life of Mary the Younger, an anonymous Byzantine text of the eleventh century, has a conscious intertextual dialogue with the oldest Byzantine Life venerating a holy woman, the Life of Macrina written by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, between 380 and 383. The intertextual relation between these two female Lives takes the form of parody. Following Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody, this article shows how the anonymous hagiographer of Mary reworks Gregory's authoritative text to create a new work, a parody in terms of postmodern literary criticism, whose aim was to criticise old and contemporary customs, conventions and ideologies. In other words, the present article approaches and decodes the literariness, the function and ideology of Mary's Life in the light of Macrina's Life.     

Gender,sexuality and power in Arab society: Arab feminist criticism of discourse and social order

Adnan, Etel. Sitt Marie Rose. Sausalito, California: Post‐Apollo Press, 1982. 105 pp. $7.50 paper.

El Saadawi. Woman at Point Zero. London: Zed Press, 1983. iv + 106 pp. $6.25 paper.

Sabbah, Fatna A. Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. New York: Pergamon Press. 132 pp. including footnotes and index. $22.50 cloth, $9.95 paper.     

Unique marine taphonomy in human skeletal material recovered from the medieval warship Mary Rose

The effect of skeletal exposure in a marine environment is an area of taphonomy that has been little investigated at the microscopic level. Understanding the peri‐mortem and subsequent post mortem history of deposition and/or redeposition is extremely important for event reconstruction and to identify deliberate or accidental redeposition. The material used for this study comes primarily from the Mary Rose shipwreck (a marine mass fatality dated AD 1545), and forensic material recovered from marine, lacustrine and terrestrial contexts is retrospectively referenced. Work presented here outlines a definitive type of marine exposure seen in temperate shallow off‐shore and intertidal marine contexts, and illustrates how it may be differentially identified from terrestrial deposition and exposure. Furthermore, the effects of rapid deposition on skeletal remains have been documented, and results indicate that marine organism fouling activity can be fully inhibited by rapid deposition of sediment. The responsible organism itself remains unidentified, but produces tunnels which are peripheral in their distribution and maintain fixed dimensions and morphology and are here associated with marine exposure. This type of microstructural change is unique and is not found in terrestrial or freshwater contexts. The study demonstrates a taphonomic microstructural change to bone and teeth which may be identified microscopically and interpreted as evidence of marine exposure. Secondarily, the history of depositional exposure between the two main Tudor layers has provided a new level of detail concerning exposure and site formation processes. The earliest Tudor layer formed rapidly over a period of months and contained no evidence of microstructural tunnelling, whereas microstructural tunnelling was seen exclusively in the second Tudor layer, formed over a period of decades, a period during which the ship's hull collapsed and a more open marine environment dominated. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Charting the Development of Portsmouth Harbour, Dockyard and Town in the Tudor Period

Portsmouth was crucial to the defence of Tudor England and consequently it was mapped for military planning purposes throughout the Tudor period from 1545. The resulting sequence of maps records much of the town and harbour. The maps offer opportunities for furthering our understanding of Tudor Portsmouth and its population Additionally, images of the urban landscape provided by the “Cowdray Engraving”, which depicts the loss of Henry VIII’s warship Mary Rose on the 19th July 1545, may also be considered and compared with those presented in the early maps of the town. This paper considers the Portsmouth maps of 1545, 1552, 1584 and the chart of Portsmouth Harbour dating from between 1586 and 1620. These are examined in relation to one another and compared with evidence from the Cowdray Engraving.     

Diameter of the human internal acoustic meatus and sex determination

We report the results of testing the diameter of the internal opening of the acoustic canal in the petrous part of the temporal bone for sex determination of skeletal remains. The method involves measuring the diameter using a suite of ordinary drills. The method is very simple and has the great advantage of utilising one of the sturdiest bone elements of the human skeleton. The method may be especially useful for the analyses of very fragmented skeletal remains or cremated bones, where the petrous bone may still be readily recognisable. The method was tested using a forensic sample of 113 left petrous bones with known sex. Intra‐ and inter‐observer testing was also performed. We found a statistically significant difference in diameter between males and females (means: males: 3.7 mm; females: 3.4 mm; P < 0.009). However, the low predictive value (70%) for correct sexing using two sectioning points ( < 3.0 mm = female; >3.5 mm = male) was disappointing. No additional accuracy was gained by employing both left and right petrous bones (a bilateral sample of 60 petrous bones was also tested), although left and right side diameter is highly correlated (R = 0.778; P = 0.0001). Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessment of Musculoskeletal Stress Marker Development in the Hand

The analysis of musculoskeletal stress marker (MSM) development is a commonly employed tool in osteological surveys and is used to infer patterns of occupational activity and societal organisation in archaeological populations. Although the majority of research into upper limb MSMs has focused on the bones of the arm, the bones of the hand have been conspicuous by their absence. This is likely to be due to methodological issues surrounding the study of hand bones and a presumed lack of variation in MSM development in this area. To date, there have been no systematic studies investigating the presence and variation in MSM morphology for the muscles of the human hand. To address this issue, a presence/absence scoring system was developed for twelve sites of muscle origin and insertion in the metacarpals and phalanges, which was used to determine bilateral asymmetry in the hands of 31 individuals from the Naval Hospital Cemetery site in Greenwich, London. Analysis found observable variation in MSM development between and within the hands, which could be used to determine patterns of asymmetry within the sample. Comparisons with MSM scores from the humeri of these individuals indicate a differentiation in MSM development and asymmetry between these anatomical regions. Levels of asymmetry in the hands and humeri were generally low, with only the dorsal interossei displaying statistically significant asymmetry. Subsequent upper limb MSM research will benefit from the inclusion of data from the hands. These results do not support the continued use of the humerus as a proxy for MSM expression across the upper limb as a whole and suggest that important information regarding behavioural asymmetry in the hands is being lost because of the continual exclusion of this anatomical unit from MSM research. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing the Accidental Versus Deliberate Colour Modification of Shell Beads: a Case Study on Perforated Nassarius kraussianus from Blombos Cave Middle Stone Age levels

Colour plays an eminent role in beadwork. Colour modifications are reported on early shell beads from Middle Stone Age sites. However, identifying the colouring agent and demonstrating the intentional nature of the colouring process is not straightforward. Here, we provide analytical data on colour and structural modifications observed on Nassarius kraussianus (Nk) collected in modern thanatocoenoses and on shells of the same species experimentally heated in oxidizing and reductive atmospheres. Comparison with Nk shell beads from the 72 ka old Middle Stone Age levels of Blombos Cave, South Africa, and contextual analysis of other malacological remains from the same levels that were not used as ornaments identify the mechanisms responsible for the change of colour in modern Nk thanatocoenoses and heated shells, and show that although some Nk shell beads were heated, intentional heat treatment of shell beads is not demonstrated.     

Rooms and room use in Norwich housing, 1580–1730

Abstract

The search for ‘total history’, combined with improvements in flexible computer techniques, has focused fresh analytical attention upon multiform documentary records relating to everyday living and working conditions. Prominent among such sources, for the early modern period of English history, are probate inventories. Their richly detailed and intricate contents are now under renewed scrutiny for many purposes. This survey looks briefly at the general problems highlighted by one batch of urban inventories; and analyses detailed evidence relating to rooms and their use, in the housing of the city of Norwich, 1580–1730. Investigation of 871 surviving inventories yields information about the number of rooms per house (and their heating), plus a survey of room use, as inferred from location of furnishings. These findings illuminate conditions of urban housing, suggest a developing specialisation in room use, and illustrate the manifold complexities of room nomenclature. The study was undertaken for the Norwich Survey, to collate the documentary with the archaeological record. Although it did not prove possible to match inventories directly with surviving seventeenth-century buildings in Norwich, the general picture confirmed the archaeological evidence—especially in showing considerable reorganisation and subdivision of housing in the later seventeenth century.¹ The research upon which this article is based was carried out for the Norwich Survey, at the University of East Anglia. The computer scheme was devised by Ursula Priestley and Helen Sutermeister, who was still working on the project, with great stoicism, right up until her untimely death in May 1979. Subsequently, the project has been undertaken by Ursula Priestley; and the text drafted and edited jointly with P. J. Corfield—with an introductory note (P.J.C.), comments on the problems inherent in the source data (P.J.C. and U.P.) and analysis of rooms and room use (U.P.). Special thanks are due to Alan Jenyon at the University of East Anglia Computing Centre, for his interest and invaluable help; to Dr. J. F. Pound for advice on sources; to all the staff of the Norwich Survey, for the production of drawings and data; to Philip Judge for his original drawing of housing on Timberhill; and particularly to Alan Carter, the Survey Director, for his unfailing encouragement and good advice. Copyright to Figures 1 and 10 is retained by the Norwich Survey.     

‘Knitting needles,knotting shuttles, & Totums & Cards & Counters’: The Bluestockings and the Material Culture of Fibre Arts

In this paper I want to tease out threads in the socio-economic narrative of fibre arts by using the case study of the Bluestocking Circle, in particular Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), Mary Delany (1700–1788) and Montagu’s sister, Sarah Scott (1721–1795). To contrast these lives through the lens of material culture, we can identify needlework and textiles as a subtle marker of social mobility and disparities in wealth within one social circle (the Bluestockings) and family. Whilst Mary Delany combined scientific interest with technical skills, Elizabeth Montagu commissioned decorative fibre arts, such as her famous feather work, for public display, and her sister Sarah Scott, forced by diminished social and economic circumstances, concentrated on practical dress-making and alteration and appliqué. Both sisters, though born into the same family, thus developed very different textile skill sets. The production of textiles carried class markers in terms of what kind of work was produced and what kind of materials and techniques were used. Thus, fibre arts, like fashion, were ‘an emblem of material self-advancement, [and] … a badge of moral worth’ (John Styles, The Dress of the People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 60).