Science Note: Developing a collective osteobiographical approach to cemetery analysis

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 407

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In the past, most analyses of human remains have examined specific, discrete aspects of osteological data such as health, trauma, and migration. In an attempt to provide a more holistic approach to the analysis of cemeteries, researchers at the University of Cambridge have used an ‘osteobiographical’ approach to analyse human remains from the cemetery of the Hospital of St John the Evangelist. While this method has been used to determine the probable life-course of specific individuals in the past, this is one of the first studies to attempt a collective biography for a whole burial assemblage.

The Hospital of St John the Evangelist was founded in Cambridge c.1195 and dissolved in 1511; during its tenure, the hospital is believed to have cared for approximately a dozen or so people at any given time. Unlike modern hospitals, their medieval counterparts were not used for medical treatment, but served as places where the poor and infirm could find succour. With surviving records mainly focusing on the rich donors to these establishments, though, very little is known about their inhabitants.

The hospital’s main cemetery, where it is believed many of the inmates would have been buried, was excavated in 2010-2011 by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, recovering almost 400 partial and complete skeletons (see CA 286). Each was assessed (as part of the ‘After the Plague’ project) to collect a variety of bioarchaeological and molecular data, including burial treatment, age at death, sex, palaeopathological conditions, markings of muscle attachments and other activity-related skeletal changes, as well as diet-related isotopes (carbon and nitrogen), mobility-related isotopes (strontium), and both human and pathogen ancient DNA. These were then compared with similar data taken from 121 skeletons from the All Saints by the Castle church cemetery (see CA 378), as well as 18 friars from the Augustinian Friary. By combining these different datapoints and comparing the three populations, the team hoped to determine the criteria the hospital may have used to decide who they were able to support.

The analysis revealed five loosely defined ‘groups’ could be found among the hospital cemetery population (above). The largest, representing roughly half of the hospital cemetery, was skeletally similar to the townspeople and friars from medieval Cambridge. This similarity could be due to the fact that they were not actually inmates of the hospital but rather corrodians (laypeople who gave up their possessions to the church in order to live in religious houses), servants, or other members of the public who had asked to be buried there. Some of them, however, may have been inmates who were not born into poverty or ill health but may have experienced an acute period in their lives. This appears to have been the case particularly for at least five (possibly up to eight) individuals whose carbon and nitrogen isotope values show that they enjoyed a good, well-balanced childhood diet, but poorer adult diet, suggesting that they had come from a better-off background but had then fallen unexpectedly on hard times.

For the other half of the examined individuals, many appear to have died younger than was typical for the general population and had several different osteological markers indicative of chronic ill health. Another significant proportion of individuals, most of whom were older adults, had markers suggesting they had endured years of poor nutrition and hard labour. This seems to indicate that both sick orphans and those who suffered a lifetime of poverty were frequent inmates of the hospital.

Of the final two types of people that seem to be represented in the data, the first appear to have lived well-off lives, at least compared to the other probable inmates, and may represent university scholars who either suffered a period of ill health or were ‘poorer’ than others and required the hospital’s assistance. The last group is represented by only three individuals whose strontium isotopes indicate that they had come from outside East Anglia. These could represent individuals who were visiting Cambridge for various reasons, and the hospital had then given them a Christian burial as a final act of charity.

As summarised in the Antiquity paper publishing the results of the project (https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.167): ‘At any time, the dozen or so people living together in the hospital’s dormitory might include weak, chronically ill, poor children and young adults, older individuals who had toiled in poverty until they could work no longer, people who had lived comfortably until they encountered some misfortune, ill or retired university scholars, and townspeople who had purchased a place as a retirement plan. A few others joined them in the cemetery, including possible visitors who died while in Cambridge.’

 Text: Kathryn Krakowka / Image: Inskip et al. (2023) Antiquity