Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Winchester Days - Loud Cheers for Jenni Lane and Andante



Saturday 10 May

Cricketers Inn, Easton. My room is over the bar, and Friday evening was worryingly noisy, but it is very comfortable, light & large. Nice old building.
 
Today is another departure from the genealogy theme, as I have booked to do a one-day course on osteo-archaeology. It has been organised by Andante Travels, with whom I went to Pompeii some years ago. They have started doing courses on various archaeology/history related themes, and this was one happening while I was in the country, and in a place I love and have research in, so was a complete no-brainer!


                                                                Dr Katie Tucker
Dr Katie Tucker of the University of Winchester led the day. She did her PhD thesis on “the osteology and archaeology of human decapitation” – sounds fascinating. She has also been involved in the hunt for the remains of King Alfred, and was in the news in January announcing that they may have found part of his remains. Lloyd sent me the link - http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/national/news/10945624.Museum_bones__are_Alfred_the_Great_/
 
Katie is a friendly, informal and very knowledgeable speaker. 

There were twelve people on the course, the maximum number they allowed for. Jenni, the Andante organiser, whose original idea this was, said she had a hard job convincing the rest of the team that anyone would be interested! She organised for the one-day course to run twice, and both days sold out, so she was obviously spot on in her thinking!

We started with an introduction to the subject, and Katie had some great slides to illustrate her talk. She discussed the reasons for the preservation or otherwise of bones – soil type, wet or dry, hot or cold (hot and dry conditions mean fragile and brittle bones, wet and cold give much better preservation), container type (if it is a sealed container, the skeleton will lie in its own decomposition liquids, so lower parts of the bones will begin to disintegrate while the upper can be well preserved)  and what we can learn from them with careful study, including age, sex and pathology, and often how they died, or some contributing causes. Then we walked around the corner to the Museum Stores, where three long tables were set out, just like you see on Time Team. Four of us gathered around each table, and the curator (Helen?) brought out three boxes for each group. 

... the ankle bone connects to the ...

Then came the fun part, we had to carefully unpack the bags of bones and assemble them on the table in the right order. It helped that the bags mostly had labels with basic information, like ‘right hand’. There was a plastic skeleton on wheels that we were able to bring over to compare ours with, so Audrey and I used him to great advantage while re-assembling a hand. Gudrun (Jenni’s assistant) found it hilarious that I was holding hands with the plastic man so lovingly while I figured out how the bones went together, and took several photos. Jenni was also very helpful in the placing if we got it wrong – turned out that she did a year of osteo-archaeology as part of her own degree a few years ago.

                                               ... intimately holding hands with a skeleton


We were lucky in that the man  in our foursome (whose name I forget) worked with and had experience of cutting up animals, so was familiar with basic anatomy. He got busy putting the back-bone together, and his wife did the long arm and leg bones, and the other hand. 

                                             'Alfie' complete, with Jenni admiring our work


Katie had left several example sheets on each table to help us to figure the sex, age and height of our remains. We were fairly sure ours was a male, he looked very sturdy, and the good old pelvic girdle V, that Margaret always shows us on Time Team, did look quite narrow. 

Next we measured one of the long bones, and our ‘token male’ got out a notebook and attempted the arithmetic, with a resulting height of about 5’ 4”

To calculate his age we looked  closely at the wear on the teeth, alongside the examples, and decided perhaps he came into the 36-45 range. (Ages are guestimated as: up to 18, 19-25, 26-35, 36-45, 45+.) Next the ends of the pelvis were compared, and this part was not at all easy. To lay people, the differences in the examples were minute, and we were really not sure, but felt the same age range was a possibility. 

When Katie came by, we told her what we thought, and she looked pensively at him for a moment, and then said decidedly 'taller and younger'! She measured two bone lengths and added them together, then did the calculation on a smart-phone, and came up with 5’9”. Next she discussed why she thought he was in the 26-35 age bracket – possible near the top end, which made us feel a little better. I asked where he was found, and it turned out to be a Saxon graveyard here in Winchester.  So I have been intimately fondling the hand of a Saxon gentleman (approximately 450 – 1066 AD). For someone over 1000 years old, he is in remarkable good condition!


We enjoyed a delicious buffet lunch, and I hope no-one minded the planned dessert being changed from cheesecake to chocolate tart, after I filled in the space on the application form for dietary requirements with ‘chocolate’. Jenni certainly does aim to please her customers. Almost the best part was being able to sit down – not many of us are used to standing for long stretches. Sitting at lunch with Audrey, John & Fiona, and it turns out the latter couple are genealogists, so the conversation went with a swing <g>

Back at the stores, we gathered around Katie while she showed us some samples of bones with diseases and injuries. Leprosy eats away the bone, often the middle sides of small toes and fingers, so you are left with a bar-bell type of shape. Tuberculosis chews through the bones fairly indiscriminately, and arthritis – you could feel the heightened interest here - leaves pock marks and smooth, shiny surfaces where it wears away against the bone next to it. Malnutrition in the young puts sideways lines across the teeth enamel while it is forming. 

Injuries included broken legs and arms that had bonded well (or not so well), sword marks, including a decapitation that had needed several tries, and various other things, and then we were sent back to our tables to see what we could find. ‘Alfie’ as I had privately nick-named him, (after the local Saxon, King Alfred obviously), turned out to have a bit of arthritis, which he was fortunately saved from the worst effects of by having his head chopped off! (Remember what I said Katie’s thesis was on?!) 

        Reminds me of Gilbert & Sullivan - except I don't remember if this was his 'cervical vertebrae'

Helen was nearby, and remembered that Alfie had been found with his hands behind his back, so my ‘gentleman’ was very likely a criminal being executed. It looked like a clean cut, so hopefully he didn’t suffer too much. 

At the other tables they had a Roman man, who was not very well preserved, and a dainty mediaeval lady, but I don’t remember if their teams discovered the cause of death. One of them did have leprosy, I think the woman. 

After a final question & answer session over coffee back at the Lecture Theatre foyer, John & Fiona very kindly offered to drop me home, as the weather was definitely not conducive to standing around at bus-stops.  We hurriedly introduced ourselves in the car, having forgotten that courtesy at lunchtime, so I didn’t have to tell Lloyd I accepted a lift with two strangers ...

Reading: Mary Rose Museum: the story continues – a good update of the building of the new museum

Sunday 11 May

A nice quiet day in my room

Monday 12 May

Hampshire Archives -not really in the mood for anything, so looked up a couple of wills on fiche, paid for a 10-print Xerox card ($10) as opposed to a camera licence for $25.00. That might be worth it if I saved everything for one day, but only being here for the one, it is too expensive.  Printed them off  as there is no facility to scan to pc & save to flash-drive - the NZSG is so far ahead of so many of the English places. 

Looked at the Prisoners indexes and then looked up the Quarter Sessions books for the WHEATLAND and OSGOOD people I found. As these are new ancestral names for me, I collected all of them in case they fit in to my ROSSEY line later on. Mostly they were in jail for 3-6 months hard labour for various thefts – it is nice to know that Thomas & William TITHERIDGE weren’t the only members of Mum’s family to have spent time in the Winchester jail <g>
Left early. It is almost unheard of for me to a) not be at a record office until they kick me out or b) not to visit Winchester Cathedral, one of my favourites.  I really am getting tired. Next trip I will definitely stay in fewer places for longer.


                                                             View from Easton Lane
After strolling back to Easton down my picturesque country lane I felt too guilty to not even look at the local church, so detoured up the side road until I found it. Built in the mid twelfth century on the site of an even earlier Saxon church, it was of course extensively ‘restored’ by the Victorians. However there are still some really nice early features – the Norman south door is stunning, and the apse is original, as is the piscina. In the end I was pleased I had made the effort to see it.



St Mary's






Reading: Frost at Christmas by RD Wingfield

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