A woman was tortured for days, killed and then put on display at the side of the river Thames in central London around 1200 years ago. The case is thought to be one of the only examples of a judicial execution of a woman in medieval England in the archaeological record.
鈥淭his isn鈥檛 the story of one blow, and it鈥檚 not clandestine,鈥� says at the University of Toronto in Canada. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the story of purposeful violence, and possibly keeping somebody in an injured and painful condition alive for a certain period of time, and then displaying the body on the foreshore.鈥�
While working on her PhD at the London Museum in 2014, Mant came across thousands of old remains from skeletons that had been uncovered during urban development and stored at the museum. Among those, she found one body particularly intriguing: a woman鈥檚 skeleton that had been pulled from the Thames, just next to Southwark Bridge, in 1991.
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杏吧原创s had already and carbon-dated the moss, reeds and bark surrounding her, describing the case as an execution in the early Middle Ages.
Mant wondered if modern technology could tell more of the woman鈥檚 story. Over the next decade, she and her colleagues re-examined the skeleton鈥檚 trauma patterns in detail with a high-powered microscope and carried out chemical analysis of her teeth.
Partially healed fractures on the woman鈥檚 shoulder blades suggest she endured beating or flogging about two weeks before receiving fatal blows to her jaw and skull. Her body was left on the muddy sediment surface and surrounded by tall wooden posts for all to see 鈥� even at high tide.
The time gap between the beatings and death was particularly shocking, says Mant. 鈥淚t was cruel, and it was unusual, and it was meant to be witnessed,鈥� she says.
Analysis of the types of chemical elements in her teeth revealed that the woman had lived in London long-term. 鈥淭his wasn鈥檛 a xenophobia problem,鈥� says Mant.
Why the woman received such treatment remains a mystery, however. While laws at the time allowed for capital punishment for serious crimes like major theft and murder 鈥� including murder by witchcraft 鈥� most of the people executed were men, usually by beheading, and their remains haven鈥檛 shown evidence of extended suffering or repeated assaults. Those criminals were generally buried in criminals鈥� cemeteries outside the city.
at the University of the Highlands and Islands, UK, says the findings strongly support the idea of a judicial execution. 鈥淭his woman鈥檚 death may have been intended as a warning to others,鈥� she says.
She might even have been left to drown under the rising tide following the blow to the head as a ritual of 鈥渕ultiple death鈥�, she says. While the case shouldn鈥檛 be confused with later witch trials, it is also possible that she was considered a witch.
For Mant, the findings point especially toward gendered violence 鈥� and the importance of unravelling women鈥檚 stories through modern bioarchaeology.
鈥淕ender violence through time is often so private and hidden,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hese women lie in wait for hundreds of years to be found again, and talked about. And now we can keep them alive by studying them and speaking about them. That evidence is really important, because it gives us a little bit more history of violence against women 鈥� no matter what they did.鈥�
World Archaeology
