| ISSN 1357-4442 | Editor: Simon Denison |
|---|
| FEATURES |
Dissection was illegal until 1832, but it was
done anyway. Andrew Chamberlain explains
It was not until 1832 that doctors were
permitted to dissect, for the sake of
medical research, donated and unclaimed
bodies - such as those of paupers who died
in hospitals and workhouses. Before the
Anatomy Act of that year, practical research
and instruction in human anatomy in Britain had depended on judicial executions as
the sole legitimate source of corpses.
Such was the law. The reality, of
course, was different. The legal provision
ofcadaverswas always insufficient to
meet the demands of medical science, and
with an increasing interest in human anatomy and physiology during the 17th and
18th centuries, an illicit trade in corpses
developed.
The activities of the so-called `bodysnatchers', who dug up freshly-buried
bodies, and sold them to anatomists for the
advancement of science, have been documented in great detail by historians. But
one key source of evidence for the work of
the early anatomists has been largely overlooked - that of the dissected bodies
themselves. This archaeological evidence
suggests that pre-1832 dissections were far
more common than has been thought.
Dissection and autopsy techniques leave
a distinctive signature on human remains,
providing an enduring record of past anatomical procedures. This evidence is important, because widespread public
opposition to the practice of anatomy -
amounting at times to hysteria directed at
the anatomists themselves and riots outside
medical schools - led to a reluctance
among the early anatomists to record their
activities in documentary form.
Recent archaeological excavations on
urban development sites have produced
extensive evidence for 18th and 19th century burials of dissected body parts. Some
of the most striking evidence comes from
the site of the former Newcastle Infirmary,
a `voluntary' hospital founded by philanthropists in 1751 for `The Sick and Lame
Poor of the Counties of Northumberland
and Durham' (see BA, April 1997). It was
an institution where individuals unable to
afford the services of a private doctor could
be treated, and was one of 29 such voluntary hospitals founded in Britain during the
18th century.
In 1997, the site of the Newcastle Infirmary was redeveloped by Tyne and Wear
Development Corporation for a Millennium Project - The International Centre for
Life. Archaeological evaluations in advance
of site clearance demonstrated the survival
of well-preserved human remains in the
former infirmary burial ground, which had
been used from 1753 to 1845 to inter the
unclaimed bodies of patients who had died
at the institution. Subsequent excavations
directed by John Nolan of the (now disbanded) Newcastle City Archaeological
Unit revealed 210 articulated skeletons as
well as charnel deposits containing disarticulated remains from a minimum of 400
further individuals.
The skeletal remains from the burial
ground were studied by osteologists working for ARCUS at the
University of Sheffield, and although evidence for medical intervention was
expected we were still surprised to encounter more than 200 amputated limbs,
predominantly leg bones both above and
below the knee, which had been discarded
as surgical waste.
In about one third of cases, a possible
reason for amputation was evident from
the pathology of the discarded bone. Several bones showed signs of chronic
infection, for example
syphilis and TB. Others
revealed evidence of severe trauma, such as
crushing or compound
fracture, and in one case
the amputated bone was
affected by a cancer.
This would have appeared as a hard lump on
the lower part of the leg,
though in fact the tumour now appears to
have been benign.
We discovered that
the anatomical positions
of the amputation sites
had been carefully selected and standardised
so that the remaining
healthy part of the limb
could function with the
attachment of a prosthesis. A diseased foot, for
example, would not be
amputated at the ankle
but at a standard point
below the knee, allowing the patient to `kneel'
in the cup attachment at the top of a typical wooden leg. We infer
that most of the patients survived these
operations and were eventually discharged
from the infirmary.
But there were also many cases of postmortem medical intervention, including 60
craniotomies, a routine autopsy procedure
that is still performed at most present-day
post-mortems, in which the scalp is retracted and the skull cap sawn across
transversely in order to gain access to the
brain. Other bodies showed evidence of
cuts made to the collar bones and ribs,
again the standard post-mortem procedure
for gaining access to the thoracic organs.
In addition there were the bones from
several prosections, dissections performed
for teaching purposes which involved the
division of selected body segments for
demonstration of particular organs and
structures. Some bones had been divided
longitudinally in order to reveal their internal structure or to study pathological
lesions. We also found skulls sawn vertically through the eye sockets to expose the
structure surrounding the eye.
One individual - nicknamed `The
Magician's Assistant' by the excavators -
had literally been sawn in half. The skeleton was intact only down to the middle of
the fourth lumbar vertebra in the small of
the back. This procedure may have been
done to demonstrate the structure of the
pelvis. The corpse had been buried in a
coffin with a stone slab substituting for the
weight of the missing lower half of the
body, presumably to disguise the fact that
dissection had taken place.
Other skeletons showed multiple unhealed amputations involving several different limbs, which could not have been
performed for clinical reasons and must
indicate that trainee surgeons were practising their amputation techniques on cadavers.
One individual, for example, had standard
unhealed amputations to one arm and both
legs (one above the knee, the other below).
Others displayed `test' amputations in
which the bone was sawn first from one
side, then the other. In a clinical procedure,
the bone would always be sawn through
from one side only, for the sake of speed.
In general the evidence suggests that the
amputations were performed with great
expertise. Striations in the cut bone show
that saws were kept very sharp. Cuts
tended to be clean, with a slight notch
where the bone finally splintered off, indicating that saws were wielded with
considerable pressure to achieve a fast cut.
There is no physical evidence for pain
relief, but we know from documentary
references that tourniquets were applied at
pressure points on the limbs for 20 minutes
before the operation to deaden the nerves,
and it is likely that the amputation was
complete while the patient was still in first
shock.
In total, about one seventh of the individuals in the burial ground at the
Newcastle Infirmary had been subject
to post-mortem examination and/or anatomical dissection, and the skeletons
exhibiting this evidence were concentrated
in the earlier phases of the burial ground
deposits, so were likely to have been buried
prior to the Anatomy Act. The burial
registers for the infirmary make no mention of post-mortems or anatomical
dissection, but in one instance the individual's recorded date of death and date of
burial were separated by seven days, suggesting that an extended opportunity was
available for medical studies of the recently
deceased.
Other sites in Britain have produced
similar evidence, though not on the scale
encountered at Newcastle. At Christ
Church Spitalfields, in East London, seven
autopsied burials were found in graves
dating to between 1729 and 1859, and last
year a surreptitious buried deposit of 18th
century dissected human and animal remains was found at Benjamin Franklin's
House at Craven Street in London, where
the anatomist William Hewson had stayed
as a lodger.
Directly comparable American material
has also been excavated from the site of the
Medical College of Georgia at Augusta,
where prior to 1887 the practice of anatomical dissection was illegal and dissected
cadavers used for medical teaching were
therefore concealed in unmarked graves.
The skeletal remains from the Newcastle Infirmary burial ground and similar
contemporary sites have therefore provided a fascinating insight into surgery,
autopsy and anatomical dissection in an era
when rapid advances were being made in
clinical medicine, pathology and the anatomical sciences - and where documentary
records are few and far between.
Dr Andrew Chamberlain is a Senior Lecturer in
Archaeology at the University of Sheffield
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New excavations have shed new light on
one of Britain's most famous prehistoric
sites, writes Paul Mellars
When the late Sir
Grahame Clark
commenced his
excavations at Star Carr,
close to Scarborough in East
Yorkshire, in 1949, he was
hoping to discover a British
counterpart for the famous early Mesolithic
lake-side settlements such as Mullerup and
Svaerdborg in Denmark and Duvensee in
Germany, with their rich finds of bone,
antler and other organic artefacts.
Prior to the Star Carr excavations,
knowledge of the British Mesolithic had
been based almost entirely on rather
pathetic flint scatters, with only around a
dozen isolated finds of barbed antler and
bone spearheads, mostly dredged up from
rivers or (in one case) the bed of the North
Sea - a poor showing compared to the
impressive discoveries from the continental
sites.
Clark's discoveries at Star Carr were
spectacular. The site, a lake in prehistory,
became an area of lowland peat bog until it
was drained for agriculture in the 18th
century. By digging an area of around 300
square metres at the edge of the ancient
lake he eventually discovered over 190
well-preserved barbed antler points (over
ten times the previous total from the whole
of Britain) together with a number of elk
antler `mattock-heads' (possibly used as
digging sticks) and bone scraping tools. He
also found 21 red deer antler `head-dresses'
(either hunting disguises for stalking the
deer, or possibly ceremonial head-gear
used in rituals), a large part of a birch-wood
paddle, at least a dozen perforated stone
beads, and a rich collection of flint tools
ranging from the small `microlithic' tips
and barbs of arrows to larger axe- or adze-like woodworking tools.
The occupation area at Star Carr had
been located on the immediate shore of the
lake, so that the antler, bone and even some
wooden artefacts were well preserved in
the waterlogged peat deposits which evidently acted as a kind of rubbish-disposal
zone immediately in front
of the site.
The discoveries of animal bones were equally
spectacular, and appeared
to show that the bulk of
the meat supply had come
from hunting red deer (represented by parts
of at least 80 carcases) with smaller amounts
from elk, wild oxen (or aurochs), roe deer
and wild boar. Surprisingly, there were
only a few bones of water birds, and no
remains whatever of fish - a surprising
discovery for a lake-side site.
Detailed studies of the antlers of the red
deer showed that most of these had come
from stags which were killed between
November and April, when the antlers
were still firmly attached to the skulls and
before the annual shedding of the antlers in
the early spring.
Finally, Clark discovered what he believed had been a deliberately constructed
`living platform' on the site, composed of a
mass of birch branches and brushwood
thrown down at the edge of the reed-swamp zone to provide a drier and more
solid basis for the human occupation. From the quantities of animal bones represented
on the site and the overall size of the
occupied zone he estimated that the site
could have been occupied by a group of
around 20-25 people (perhaps four to five
families) for around three months of each
year, over a total period of perhaps 25
years.
The whole of this lake-side encampment was dated by the new technique of
radiocarbon dating (which had recently
been invented at the University of Chicago) to around 7500BC - at the very
beginning of the early postglacial period, at
a time when birch forests were just starting
to colonize northern Britain in the wake of
the retreating ice sheets. The low sea levels
at this time (caused by the large amounts of
water still locked up in the melting ice
sheets) would have left large parts of the
North Sea and English Channel as dry land,
and it was natural that the early Mesolithic
groups should have colonized eastern Britain from the adjacent parts of north
Germany and Scandinavia, following the
northwards-moving herds of game.
For almost 40 years Star Carr remained the classic text-book
example of a Mesolithic settlement,
debated in hundreds of undergraduate
essays and examination questions. But
eventually the classic intepretation of the
site began to crumble. In 1978, the Irish
prehistorian Seamus Caulfield suggested
that most of the red deer antlers represented at Star Carr could well have been
deliberately imported into the site as a
source of raw material for manufacturing
the barbed spear heads, and need not derive
from animals hunted from the site itself. If
this was taken into account, the amount of
meat represented by the actual bones of red
deer was reduced to less than a half.
A further direct implication of this was
that one could no longer rely on the
evidence of the deer antlers to indicate the
season of occupation of the site. The archaeologists Tony Legge and Peter
Rowley-Conwy pointed out in 1988 that
if one looked at other sources of seasonal
information (such as the age of the deer, as
indicated by the stage of growth and wear
of the teeth) the main emphasis of the
occupation seemed to shift onto the summer rather than the winter months.
Other authors suggested that Star Carr
might not even represent a `settlement' in
the true sense of the word, but simply a
highly specialized location used for brief
periods either for the lake-side hunting of
deer, or the specialized industrial working
of antler and deer skins.
So when the prospect of new excavations at Star Carr emerged in the
mid-1980s, there was no shortage of questions in mind. The new work was carried
out as part of a much wider project aimed
at the investigation of the early Mesolithic
settlement in the Vale of Pickering lake
basin as a whole, initiated by Tim Schadla-Hall and supported by the Vale of
Pickering Research Trust and the Cambridge University-based McDonald
Insitute for Archaeological Research. Two
seasons of excavation took place, in 1985
and 1989, and the post-excavation analysis
was completed last year.
The main results came from a long
trench excavated 25 metres east of Clark's
original excavations. In many ways the
most significant results came from the detailed pollen and sedimentary analyses
carried out by Petra Dark (now of the
University of Reading) at several points
along this trench. A critical discovery was
that throughout the period of the human
occupation of the site the associated lake-edge deposits contained a dense
concentration of charcoal particles, many
of which could be identified using high-power scanning-electron-microscope
techniques as deriving from the stems and
leaves of Phragmites reeds.
The high density of this charcoal can only
be convincingly explained by the repeated
burning of the reedswamp over a long
period of time, and the coincidence with
the distribution of early Mesolithic artefacts
through the deposits can hardly be coincidental. The evidence seems inescapable
that for one reason or another the human
occupants were deliberately setting fire to
the reedswamp immediately in front of the
site (probably in the late spring or early
summer months when the reeds were fully
dried out and highly inflammable) either to
improve access to the lake, or possibly to
attract animals to graze on the new year's
growth of young reeds which started to
shoot up in the early summer.
In either case this provides probably the
clearest evidence so far recorded for the
deliberate burning, and perhaps even
`management', of the local vegetation by
Mesolithic communities in Britain - an
issue which has remained a lively point of
debate in studies of human/environment
relationships in the British Mesolithic for
the past 20 years.
The evidence of the charcoal distribution through the deposits also
led to a radical new interpretation
of the entire chronology of the Star Carr
occupation. By carefully picking out fragments of charcoal from closely-spaced
levels throughout the peat deposits it was
possible to obtain a stratified seqence of 12
radiocarbon dates, dated by the small-sample radiocarbon-accelerator unit at Oxford.
When the dates were plotted against
their depth in the deposit, the results
showed a striking pattern, or `wiggle', in
the age/depth correlation curve, which
could be matched almost exactly with
closely similar wiggles recorded in radiocarbon-dated tree-ring sequences from
southern German sites. As the tree-ring
sequences can be precisely dated, this immediately provided a way of
converting from `raw' radiocarbon dates to true,
`calendrical' dates, and led to
the surprising revelation that
the whole of the Star Carr
occupation is around 1,000
years older than previously
thought, dating originally
from around 8700BC rather
than 7500BC as Clark had
believed.
Another major discovery
was that the total period of
occupation at Star Carr must
have spanned at least 250-300
years of repeated visits to the
site, compared to the 25 years
or so which Clark had originally envisaged. Quite clearly,
Star Carr must have been a
major and repeated meeting
place for early Mesolithic
groups over many successsive
generations.
But in many ways the
most dramatic discovery of
the recent excavations was
the evidence for an extraordinary level of carpentry
skills in northern Britain almost 11,000 years ago.
Right at the base of the lake-edge occupation levels we
encountered a series of large
timbers, all laid at the same level in the peat
deposits in a more or less parallel fashion,
and evidently representing a short length of
wooden platform or trackway laid down
across the waterlogged zone between the
occupation area itself and the open waters
of the lake.
This was totally unlike the disorganized
birch `brushwood platform' encountered in
Clark's excavations only 30 metres or so to
the west, and probably ranks as the earliest
evidence of a deliberately-constructed (if
very short) wooden trackway so far recorded in Europe.
Detailed studies of the individual timbers by Maisie Taylor of the Flag Fen
Project revealed that many of these had
been carefully split from large trunks of
either poplar or aspen, in some cases up to
3 metres in length and with a thickness of
only 3 cm or so. The highly controlled
splitting of these long, plank-like timbers
must have been done with a combination
of flint axes and either antler or wooden
wedges, and suggests a hitherto unsuspected level of carpentry skills at this early
period of European prehistory.
One technical innovation in the
recent work was to lift an intact,
one-cubic-metre block of the
lake-edge occupation levels for fine-scale
excavation in the laboratory - something
which has rarely been attempted on this
scale in earlier excavations. A specially
constructed steel sampling chamber was
driven horizontally into the peat deposits
exposed in the face of the long trench
(using builders' `acrow-jacks' to apply pressure) and then lifted by block and tackle.
Back in Cambridge the block sample was
carefully excavated, using small spatulae
and illuminated magnifying lenses, under
fully controlled laboratory conditions.
The experiment failed to confirm our
hopes that there might be small fish bones
or other micro-faunal material lurking in
the sediments, but it did provide a wealth
of information on the detailed structure
and composition of the lake-edge occupation deposits. There is no doubt that
high-resolution `laboratory excavation'
techniques of this kind have great potential
for the future of archaeological fieldwork -
but they are rather expensive in terms of
the time and labour involved.
The new investigations at Star Carr
provide a striking illustration of how a
combination of new theoretical approaches
and new analytical techniques can shed
entirely new light on what had often been
perceived as a totally excavated and fully
documented site. No doubt it provides a
sobre warning as to how the interpretation
of other so-called `classic' sites may change
as new generations of archaeological scientists come to work on the sites.
In the case of Star Carr we have the
advantage of being able to place the finds
into a much wider archaeological context
provided by the continuing research of the
Vale of Pickering Trust into the early
postglacial settlement of the Vale of Pickering as a whole. It is now clear, for
example, that Star Carr was only one of a
series of at least a dozen major activity areas
distributed around the shores and islands of
the ancient lake - though interestingly no
other site has yet produced more than a
small fraction of the wealth of bone and
antler finds recovered from Star Carr itself.
Maybe the economic and other attractions of the lake provided a rallying point
for early Mesolithic hunters from a large
part of north-eastern England at specific
seasons of the year. By analogy with the
behaviour of recent hunter-gatherer
groups in similar environments, the lake
could well have formed a major social
centre for both ritual and ceremonial, as
well as economic activities.
It is already clear that at certain seasons
of the year the groups from the Vale of
Pickering dispersed into the adjacent uplands of the North York Moors, and
probably the Central Pennines, probably to
hunt the migrating herds of red deer, as
Grahame Clark suggested in his own reassessemnt of the site almost 30 years ago
(Star Carr: a case study in Bioarchaeology, Addison Wesley modular publications, 1972).
But above all it is the evidence for the
dynamic attempt at controlling and manipulating the local vegetation revealed by
the evidence for the repeated burning of
the reedswamp adjacent to Star Carr which
stands out as the most significant contribution of the recent work. To describe this as
an early example `firestick farming' may be
pushing the evidence too far, but it does
suggest a much more enterprising and positive approach to the management of the
environment than most of the classic images of the European Mesolithic have
allowed.
Combined with the evidence for the
large-scale and surprisingly sophisticated
carpentry on the site, the Yorkshire Post's
claim that there were `nowt so clever as
Stone Age Yorkshire folk' may have at least
some element of truth.
Paul Mellars is Professor of Prehistory & Human Evolution at Cambridge University, and
President of Corpus Christi College. His book,
jointly written with Petra Dark, Star Carr in
Context, was published last year and is available from Oxbow Books.
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(A Gest, verse 3)
In Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne,
Robin states:
(verse 35)
Barnsdale, originally Beornsdale, is situated in Yorkshire between Doncaster and
Wentbridge, a village south of Pontefract.
The name was probably first applied to the
valley of the Skell, a very minor tributary
of the Don. However, by the time A Gest was compiled, it had apparently come to
mean the whole area from Wentbridge
south towards the Skell and Doncaster.
Indeed, in the ballads it is used at times to
mean Wentbridge itself.
The name is perpetuated by Barnsdale
Bar, actually the junction of the A639 with
the A1(M) south of Wentbridge. Within
living memory this was a pleasant spot,
with the turnpike tollhouse nestling
amongst trees. A few miles south, the
Wakefield-Doncaster road, the A638,
crosses the A1. Before Doncaster was bypassed it simply joined it. This whole area
was therefore an ideal spot to practice
highway robbery, with the Great North
Road, Britain's chief highway, forming the
vertical link, and two important side roads
feeding it.
Within the area, a number of surviving monuments named after
Robin Hood have early origins - although none has escaped restoration or rebuilding in the last two centuries.
Robin Hood's Well gives its name to
the hamlet, once a staging post for the
Royal Mail stagecoaches and now a lay-by
off the south-bound carriageway of the
A1(M). The well itself was first mentioned
by local antiquary Roger Dodsworth in
1622, and had a Robin Hood's Stone close
by, first mentioned in a deed of 1422
lodged at Monk Bretton Priory at Barnsley.
The stone has since disappeared, but the
well stands isolated on the lay-by, removed
from its spring of water because it stood in
the way of the modern dual carriageway.
Hidden in woodland alongside the A638 at Hampole is Little John's Well. First
recorded in 1838, this may mark the spread
of the legend rather than a genuine association, although it is in the right area for an
early derivation. Like Robin Hood's Well
not far away, this spring no longer carries
water, turned dry in recent times as a result
of quarrying behind it. The vertical stone
marking the spring shows signs of antiquity, and could possibly be a Roman
gravestone, whilst the collecting basin,
badly damaged by vehicles, is 18th century.
Robin Hood's legendary first meeting
with Little John took place at a tiny footbridge over a stream, wide enough for only
one person to pass at a time. Each man's
refusal to let the other pass led to a duel
with quarterstaffs in which Robin was
beaten. The original association of
Barnsdale with the valley of the Skell raises
the interesting possibility that the duel took
place on a bridge over the Skell between
Skelbrooke and the Great North Road.
The traces of any such footbridge still await
discovery by archaeology.
In verse 21 of A Gest of Robyn Hode,
Little John, Much the Miller's Son and
Will Scarlet `looked into' Barnsdale, which
in this case is assumed to mean the village
of Wentbridge:
Teaching surgery and breaking the law
Revising the Mesolithic at Star Carr
`My dwelling is in the wood,' sayes Robin:
`By thee I set right nought:
My name is Robin Hood of Barnesdale,
A ffellow thou has long sought. But as they loked into Bernysdale,
Bi a derne [straight] strete,
Then came a knyght ridinghe,
Full sone they gan hym mete.
The village has a picturesque stone bridge over the Went which carried all the A1 traffic until bypassed in 1965. This is also mentioned in the ballads:
`Y mete hem bot [but] at Went breg [bridge],' s[e]yde Lyttyl John
(Robin Hood and the Potter, verse 6)
The present bridge is largely 18th century, but almost certainly encloses an earlier bridge. A surviving remnant of the original medieval highway, on which Robin Hood may have practised his brigandage, climbs through the woods out of the valley to the north. Signed as a public bridle-way, this track was the only route until the adjacent cutting was blasted through the rocks to provide a safer road for the mail coaches.
Wentbridge Church is a Victorian foundation, so where is the chapel Robin boasts of building in A Gest of Robyn Hood?
`I made a chapell in Bernysdale, that semely is to se,
It is of Mary Magdaleyne,
And thereto wolde I be.'(verse 440)
Skelbrooke Church, close to Wentbridge, was medieval but was demolished and rebuilt in the last century. Fragments only survive of 12th century work and the dedication is now different. Historical rather than archaeological research may eventually suggest the connection with Robin's chapel.
This brief survey has not been intended as an attack on the Nottinghamshire tourist industry. Their Robin Hood is largely a product of the last two centuries. In contrast, the locations described here still retain something of the atmosphere of the medieval highway, in spite of the thunder of the nearby motorway and the trunk routes which feed it. This heavy traffic, despite the passing of the centuries, shows that Robin Hood chose his business premises wisely.
Eric Houlder is Chairman and Field Director of the Pontefract & District Archaeological Society. He is also a freelance photographer specialising in excavation and palaeopathological close-up pictures.
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