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Craniofacial reconstruction of female skeleton from the Nidaros graveyard, Trondheim, representing a complex immigrant history. Analysis of oxygen isotopes suggests she was possibly born in north-western Russia, while her mitochondrial DNA indicates her mother may have been from southern or central Europe. Her cranial morphology shows Mongoloid-type traits, suggesting an Inuit or Asian influence. Image reproduced with permission from Hamre et al 2017; # Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University.
Source publication
THIS ARTICLE CRITICALLY REVIEWS THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY of high- to late-medieval burials (c ad 1000–1550), examining how and why research questions have changed in recent decades. Examples are drawn from Christian mortuary practices principally from Britain, northern and central Europe, to demonstrate increasing emphasis on the social study of em...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... The skeletons were chosen to represent ordinary people buried in the Nidaros graveyard, dated 1175-1275, all aged in their 20 s or 30 s. The evocative names given to the case studies convey their most significant stories: 'the girl who travelled far' (Fig 2), 'the woman of central European descent' and 'the man who needed surgery'. Their osteobiographies emphasise the diversity and mobility of the medieval urban population, with around 40% of Trondheim's population originating from outside the city. ...
Citations
The late medieval Ypres De Meersen site revealed part of the cemetery and habitation remains of the parish of Saint Nicholas. The exceptional finds catalogue includes the wooden remains of hundreds of coffins, utensils and several barrels. Dendrochronological research allowed 96 chests to be dated, in addition to five barrels, a well and four posts. One striking observation is that local wood was hardly used for the construction of the coffins. The dendrochronologically dated coffin boards appear to originate from remote (forested) areas: northern Poland, the northwest of Germany and the Rhine and Meuse basins can be identified as the most common regions of origin. An extensive technical study of the recorded coffins resulted in a typology for the 13th and 14th centuries, in which 9 basic types could be distinguished. The wooden utensils yielded a number of unique finds, in addition to a set of 13 vessels from the 13th century. The interdisciplinary research strategy applied here, in which results from the natural science research (wood and tree-ring analysis, physical anthropological research, etc.) and the archaeological study of the coffins and excavation data are linked and cross-checked, clearly leads to substantial knowledge gains.
