By Press Association 2021
The remains of an individual buried in the Augustinian friary, taken during the 2016 excavation. (Nick Saffell/University of Cambridge/ PA)
A study of skeletons from three graveyards has indicated that poor people were at greatest risk of injury in medieval Cambridge.
Researchers from Cambridge University used X-ray analysis to establish that skeletal trauma was highest in a parish graveyard for ordinary working people, called All Saints by the Castle.
The team found that 44% of working people buried there had bone fractures, compared with 32% of the skeletons at an Augustinian friary that buried wealthy donors alongside clergy.
There were fewer injuries to those buried at the charitable Hospital of St John the Evangelist, where the infirm and destitute were interred, with 27% of the skeletons there fractured.
A new paper published in the
American Journal of Physical Anthropology presents the results of a study of the bones of “314 individuals dating from the 10
th to the 14
th century,” excavated from three burial sites in Cambridge. The skeletal samples were taken from a parish graveyard where working people were buried, a hospital graveyard where the infirm and destitute were buried, and from an Augustinian friary where wealthy sponsors were interred beside rich clergymen. The researchers studied the levels of skeletal trauma in the skeletons, which they say indicated the hardship endured in life.” Their paper concludes that “ social inequality is recorded on the bones of Cambridge’s medieval residents”.