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 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.
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.
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.
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?!)
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.
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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