Archaeologists shed light on the treatment of individuals with disabilities in the late Middle Ages

Medieval Skeleton Reveals What Life Was Like With a Disability in the Middle Ages

Learn how researchers combined modern tech, text, and bones to uncover details about a disabled man’s life in medieval Sweden.

During construction work on the site of a former fish market in Barcelona, an archaeological sensation has come to light: a wreck from the late Middle Ages had been swallowed by the waters off the Catalan capital 500 or 600 years ago. Further finds have already been made on the site – an air raid shelter from the Spanish civil war has already appeared. At the beginning of April this year, the old ship wreck appeared – probably during a storm in …

Archaeologists shed light on the treatment of individuals with disabilities in the late Middle Ages

The skeleton of a man with a severe dislocated fracture of the knee, found in a cemetery in Lund, southern Sweden, is helping to unravel the complexities of social attitudes toward individuals with disabilities in the late medieval period. The research combines traditional osteological methods and 3D modeling—a cutting-edge technique for viewing and studying traumatic injury and related skeletal changes—with contextual information from historica…