Bones find from abandoned village 'shows tough life of medieval women'

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Guardian.co.uk
Martin Wainright

The fearsome northern woman of legend and cliche, broadchested and with a frying pan poised to whack sense into her man, has proved to have genuine historic origins.

Analysis of bones from Britain's biggest medieval excavation has unearthed a race of real-life Nora Battys, ruling a Yorkshire roost nearly 1,000 years ago.

Skeletons from Wharram Percy, a village on the Yorkshire Wolds abandoned after the 14th century Black Death, have much larger bones than those of contemporaries elsewhere.

"The differences are really quite pronounced," said Simon Mays, of English Heritage, who has measured 120 sets of women's bones from the site. "Women at Wharram were much more muscular and bigger boned than their city counterparts. Whilst they were still doing the domestic chores and looking after children, they clearly also mucked in with the hard labour in the fields, building up their arm strength."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/dec/17/women-yorkshire-archeaology-find

[yodermon]

1. You're on a roll!!!

where are you finding these articles?
:thumbsup:

[enlightenment]

2. Interesting. Thank you for all your posts Adsos.

According to this website, Wharram Percy was the 'village that sheep ate' (enclosure) in the 16th century; I wonder why the Guardian article suggested the 14th century as the period of abandonment?

http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/country/wharram.shtml

[Hannah Bell]

3. between the 14th century plague & 16th c. enclosures there could have been repopulation.

[enlightenment]

6. Good point.

I wonder if they've done a comparison of the skeletal size to see if those sturdy Yorkshire girls lost mass after the 14th century?

[EFerrari]

15. There was a lot of displacement during the war, too.

That's why all those "country house" poems are so strangely depopulated.

[XemaSab]

4. This is not surprising

The notion of women as the weaker sex is a very upper class idea.

Women back in the day were digging up potatoes and helping the cows give birth as surely as the men were.

[pansypoo53219]

5. shit.

our great great grandma's. i just bought an antique coffee/tea pot at an estate sale. cast iron. weighs 12lbs. schlepping that to the wood stove or fire.......SAD IRONS TOO!

[enlightenment]

7. My grandmother (born in 1899)

could beat fudge (the old fashioned kind) for half an hour, non-stop - well into her 70s. That's a bit like dragging a board through setting cement and she never even stopped to shake out her wrist. When I was little I'd sit and watch in wonder . . . I can still hear the 'thwap, thwap' of that spoon hitting the sides of the pan and see her rather gigantic batwing (upper arm flab) flopping back and forth with enough velocity to slap the unwary into next week.

She used to talk about her family's cook, who made beaten biscuits. REAL beaten biscuits - no leavening; she would literally beat the dough with a rolling pin, upward of 100 whacks. They'd rise up pretty as you please and be light as a feather. They also incorporated air into bread dough (lacking leavening, especially during the Civil War) by beating it in a butter churn.

Makes my arms hurt just thinking about it.

[roguevalley]

8. my cousin Cheer was roofing her barn into her 90's

[enlightenment]

9. Damn. I'm impressed.

As a certified wimp, especially.

[Odin2005]

18. My grandma was a tough old farm girl. Very strong even after polio...

...left her weak on the left side of her body.

[JeffR]

10. K & R

Fascinating.

[enigmatic]

11. Thanks for this

I love your posts; keep up the great finds!

[EFerrari]

12. This may be silly but might that not just mean they had a better diet

than city women?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

13. They probably did.

Since they grew their own food, they likely ate well.

I don't imagine they had to buy much.

[EFerrari]

14. Calcium -- could that just mean better access to dairy products

like fresh milk?

[Hannah Bell]

16. maybe, but bone gets stronger/thicker the more it's used. modern populations

in general supposedly have more gracile bone structure than their forebearers - including, e.g. jawbones.

[Odin2005]

19. Yep, that's why we have more wisdom tooth issues now.

We have a softer diet so the jawbones don't develop as much in childhood.

[Odin2005]

17. The frying pan thing sent me laughing my ass off!

:rofl:

[Mira]

20. Fascinating: I have a photo of one of my fore-mothers in my kitchen,

she is about 6'4" and in family legend she was able to pull a plow by herself through the fields.