ya...that's gonna leave a mark

I’ve recently been spending far too much time staring, with equal parts horror and fascination, at pictures of skeletal pathologies and trauma. A really cool resource I was introduced to through a different class is a downloadable excel table which has links to thousands of pictures of skeletal pathologies/traumas (To access the table just follow the link and click ‘skeleton photos’ to initiate the download).

It’s worth mentioning that these are photos of real human remains and some of the pathologies can be quite unpleasant looking so if you find that sort of thing disturbing then this resource is not for you! If you have an iron constitution however and are bored one evening feel free to peruse the collection. Personally I find many of the pathologies give me the heebie-geebies but I do enjoy the battle-type wounds such as sword or battle-axe wounds. Sorry, perhaps I should rephrase that. I am interested in looking at the effects of battle on the skeleton; I’m quite sure I wouldn’t 'enjoy' getting my skull sliced through with a sword.

 At this point you may be asking yourself what is the relevance of all this babbling. Aside from being very interesting, blade injuries are quite useful to a mortuary archaeologist because they are one of the few skeletal pathologies or skeletal markings that are relatively easily attributable to a cause. Blade wounds appear, to the trained eye, quite different than post-depositional damage and unlike the diseases which leave skeletal traces, are much more easily attributable to their specific cause.

Of course evidence of blade wounds only appear on the skeleton if the blade comes into contact with the bone. It is quite possible to kill someone with a blade and leave no evidence of the injury on the skeleton. Additionally, blade wounds cannot always be determined to be cause of death. Some blade wounds, for example, are clearly severe enough to have caused the death of an individual if they were inflicted ante-mortem.

The problem is that peri-mortem injuries (that occur around time of death) can’t be attributed to occurring before (causing death) or after death (post-mortem mutilation) with certainty. Nevertheless blade injuries present on skeletal remains are one of the most useful forms of evidence available to archaeologists for reconstructing cause of death.

 References:
Images from Donald J. Ortner, Ohio State University, Global History Health Project.
Image 1: Towton No. 006, Adult male from Towton, England collection AD 1461. Sword wound to top of Skull.
Image 2: ANM 2069, Adult male from Prague, Czechoslovakia collection. Sword wound, dislodged bone on skull.