East Kirk of St Nicholas dig December 2007
East Kirk of St Nicholas dig - December 2007
Paul Duffy, human remains specialist, writes…
As the year draws to a close, so too does one part of the analysis of the skeletal material from the Church of St Nicholas Uniting. With only a few days to go until Christmas, GUARD osteologist Maureen Kilpatrick has successfully managed to complete the initial analysis of the disarticulated skeletal material. This is what we term the bits and pieces of bone recovered during the excavation that had been disturbed in the past, and could not be identified as being part of any particular skeleton. In total, the excavation team carefully recovered, recorded, cleaned and packaged 306 large cardboard boxes full of these bones, an assemblage weighing in the region of 2.5 metric tons, before Maureen patiently examined every single bone. As I’m sure you’ll agree that this represents an outstanding achievement by Maureen and the team in Aberdeen. The photo below gives you a little idea of just how much material this represents
The presence of so much disarticulated bone may be a surprise to some of you, and the idea of disturbing burials once they have been interred is quite a strange concept to our modern minds. Medieval gravediggers, however, had no such qualms: just think of the gravediggers in Shakespeare’s Hamlet!
In the medieval period mortality rates were higher than they are today leading to pressure for burial spaces in places like St Nicholas Church. Death was also something people encountered on a regular basis, and approached in a more practical, everyday way. Burials were disturbed and bones moved on a regular basis in graveyards leading to the recovery of large quantities of what we call ‘charnel’ during modern excavations. To the medieval Christian mind the important thing was that the individual was buried in sanctified ground within a churchyard, not that all the constituent pieces of the skeleton were kept together. A definite change from the way in which we view the world today.
The study of the material has led to many interesting things being discovered. Some very good examples of typical bone diseases have been found, such as this example of osteomyelitis of a tibia. Here the condition was severe and appears to have been long lasting, undoubtedly leading to a great deal of pain for the individual, and ulcerations that would have been visible on the leg itself.
A wide variety of fractures have also been recorded, with examples from most sites in the body. The example pictured here shows a depressed fracture on the left side of the skull, which I have circled in red. This may have been the result of a bad fall, or a severe blow to the head. Interestingly, there is evidence of healing, suggesting the individual survived this traumatic incident.
Evidence of medical practices have also been observed in a number of cases where such healing must have been assisted by medical intervention. More unusually, evidence of early medical practice has also been recovered from the disarticulated material in the form of post-mortem examination evidence. The picture below shows one side of a breastbone (sternum), which has been carefully cut in half. Whilst this may be the result of a violent incident, the location and precision of the cut make suspect strongly that it was part of a post-mortem procedure.
More clearly, the top half of this skull below has been removed in a manner which convincingly points to examination after death. Such procedures were often performed in front of medical students, as a means of instruction about human anatomy. It is probable that the operation on the individual pictured here was part of the training of some of the many hundreds of skilled medical professionals that were trained at King’s College in Aberdeen.
Other examples have also shown us a strangely familiar obsession with the ‘body-beautiful’. The picture below shows rare evidence of early cosmetic surgery.
On the left of the row of teeth, a small gold wire can clearly be seen stretched across a gap in the dentition. Based on evidence from other sites, and from historical records, it is probable that the wire acted as a support for a replacement tooth. Historical evidence from the 18th century reveals that replacement teeth were often taken voluntarily from living individuals in exchange for payment, and it is possible that this was the case here too. More certainly, it demonstrates that the individual was concerned enough with their public image to undergo an early orthodontic procedure to rectify problems with their smile.
It also suggests that the individual had enough money to fund the procedure, which fits with what we know of the likely population buried in St Nicholas. Most individuals buried in the church were probably relatively well off, mostly as a result of the sea trade with Holland and the northern states of Europe. It was these people to who helped to establish medieval Aberdeen as a thriving seaport, and whose donations to the church established St Nicholas as the biggest burgh church in Scotland during the medieval period.
This small article represents only a small portion of what we have come to understand through the thorough analysis of the disarticulated remains. Not only have we increased our knowledge of the diseases and conditions that afflicted individuals, but also hints of the wider society in which such individuals lived. Maureen now moves on to analysing the data she has collected over the last year, whilst the analysis of the articulated burials will reach its final stage early next year.
All that remains for me to do for 2007, however, is to wish you all a very restful and happy holiday, from all the GUARD team in Glasgow, from Aberdeen City Council Archaeology Unit and everyone at the Church of St Nicholas Uniting. We all eagerly await, as I hope you do to, the discoveries that 2008 will bring.
Happy Christmas!!!
Paul
For further information and comment, please contact judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk
East Kirk of St Nicholas November 2007
