The skeletons used as the primary data set for this thesis are from the Folkebibliotekstomt
(Library site) in the centre of medieval Nidaros (Holt 2007), now known as Trondheim, west-central Norway. The skeletons were originally interred in the graveyard of St Olav’s Church. Many of the excavations in Trondheim, including this one, were carried out after a surge in building and the commencement of street improvements in the town in the 1970s. The place of excavation is currently situated in the foundations of what is now the public library.
Two excavations have been carried out on the graveyard since its discovery. The first, and most extensive, from 1984 to 1985, involved excavation of approximately 200m2 of the churchyard at the northern limit of the cemetery. In total, 389 skeletons were excavated at this time, estimated as representing 40% of the total graveyard population (Anderson and Göthberg 1986). The second excavation, carried out in the late 1980s, revealed another 29
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skeletons from the third phase of interment (described below). In total, these skeletons comprised a total of 418 individuals. In all, approximately 928 individuals have been recovered from churchyards around Trondheim dated to the medieval to early modern periods (Mays et al. 2006).
The skeletons excavated were cleaned, recorded and identified on site. Excavation sheets recorded bone preservation, presence of elements, preliminary age and sex estimations and contextual information. These forms are available for examination at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage (NIKU) in Trondheim.
Of the individuals excavated, all but one were buried with an east-west orientation and almost all were found in single graves. Preservation of the skeletons varied according to the area in which they were buried. Those best preserved were from the middle and north of excavated areas and found in organic, often waterlogged, wood chip layers. Those where bone preservation was poor were found in the southern area, which consisted mostly of gravelly sand. Despite discrepancies in preservation, bones examined for post-mortem modification showed signs that the normal diagenetic process had stopped, or at least slowed quite dramatically, following burial, probably due to the rainfall patterns and low temperatures of Trondheim (Turner-Walker et al. 2002). Analysis of bone from this skeletal sample exhibited high collagen content and little microbial degradation of hard tissue (Turner-Walker et al. 2002).
The skeletal sample used for the present study comprised 389 individuals recovered during the first excavation at the Library site and excluded those 29 individuals from the second excavation as these were unavailable for assessment. At some point between the initial assessments and today these had been misplaced, possibly during the move of items from the Vitenkapsmuseet itself to their current storage facility. Two individuals, believed to be individuals 390 and 392 from the second excavation, are displayed at the Trondheim Public Library (see Figure 3.2), and were also unavailable for assessment.
The remaining 389 individuals are held by the Vitenkapsmuseet, part of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Access to the sample is via DORA1, the ex-World War 2 submarine facility, now a research and storage facility. From these remaining skeletons, a number of teeth were removed for examination by another research group from the University of Copenhagen. This equated to 272 teeth across all phases of the sample, approximately 6.1% of the total number of preserved alveoli. These teeth were
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pulverised in order to undertake more complex analyses and thus, were unable to be assessed in the following examinations.
These 389 individuals from the first excavation were all initially included in the present examination. All skeletons that were assessed as subadult or whose adult/subadult status could not be determined were excluded from analysis. Because of the need to apply at least one age determination technique, those remains that could be aged generally had a fairly high level of preservation.
Figure 3.2: Library site individuals currently on display the Trondheim Public Library
In all but one case, individuals had been previously allocated by Göthberg (1986) into phases using evidence from grave goods and stratigraphic analyses:
Phase A (12th century): 22 individuals
Phase B (12th-13th centuries): 198 individuals
Phase C (13th-17th centuries): 168 individuals One individual, SK327, was not allocated to a phase.
A study published by Nordeide (1989b) attempted to place the chronology and phasing of the Library site material utilising construction at the site, pertaining to "a structural
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(Nordeide 1989b). The author further describes the phases used as an analytical tool which sorts the material into contemporary blocks, which should be viewed as time sequences rather than fixed intervals. As a result, in the case of the Library site, the analysis of the phases is predominantly based on the structures uncovered. As the site had well-preserved structural remains, it was possible to relate material (e.g. skeletal remains) to buildings and therefore, stratigraphic layers and phases. Artefact analyses were also utilised in order to aid in the dating of the site. With the exception of material located between the fire layers of the stratigraphy at the Library site, for the most part, individuals could only be attributed to the main phases as above. The fire layers are a result of a number of fires that occurred in the city during the 16th and 17th centuries, and can be somewhat accurately dated. However, no extensive work has been carried out regarding the dating of individual burials from the sample, even those attributed to these specific layers.
A previous preliminary analysis of the first excavated sample included sex, age and stature estimation, a brief discussion on contextual variables and grave goods, and some short notes regarding pathological lesions, such as arthritis, dental health, infection and evidence for trauma (Anderson 1986). As this was considered to be a preliminary report, no further detail was provided. Unfortunately, more extensive work was never carried out on the sample. Anderson subsequently only published a small number of articles on these individuals (Anderson et al. 1986, Anderson 1988a, 1988b), and a number of other highly specialised examinations have been conducted since (Beyer-Olsen 1989, Beyer-Olsen and Risnes 1993, Beyer-Olsen, Bang and Sellevold 1994, Beyer-Olsen and Risnes 1994, Beyer- Olsen and Alexandersen 1995, Turner-Walker et al. 2002, Turner–Walker and Syversen 2002, Turner-Walker and Jans 2008), details of which have been discussed in Chapter Two. Sex and age estimation was also conducted on the second sample of 29 individuals and published by Sellevold (1990). Besides these very limited analyses, no other published work has been carried out on the Library site sample, though investigations by the University of Copenhagen into DNA analyses from the bones and dentition are ongoing. Particularly considering the potential impact climate and economic change may have had on the health of Scandinavian populations during this period, further analysis of the Library site sample would provide a unique insight into the health of a population during this tumultuous period.
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