A traitor's death? The identity of a drawn, hanged and quartered man from Hulton Abbey, Staffordshire

Analysis of a set of bones redeposited in a medieval abbey graveyard showed that the individual had been beheaded and chopped up, and this in turn suggested one of England's more gruesome I execution practices. Since quartering was generally reserved for the infamous, the author attempts to track down the victim and proposes him to be Hugh Despenser, the lover of King Edward II

Geographies of Power: The Tunisian Civic Order, Jurisdictional Politics, and Imperial Rivalry in the Mediterranean, 1881-1935

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Work and the adolescent in medieval England (AD 900-1550): the osteological evidence

What was it like to be a teenager in medieval England? Despite the fact that medieval society often singled young apprentices and workers out for comment, their study has been largely neglected in medieval archaeology. The skeletal remains of 4940 adolescents (6.6-25 years) from 151 sites in medieval England was compiled from a combination of primary data collection and secondary data from published and unpublished skeletal reports and on-line databases. The aim was to explore whether apprentices could be identified in the archaeological record and if so, at what age they started work and what impact occupation had on their health. The data were divided into urban and rural groups, dating from before and after the Black Death of AD 1348-9, and before the Industrial Revolution. A shift in the demographic pattern of urban and rural adolescents was identified after the Black Death, with a greater number of young females residing in the urban contexts after 14 years. The average age of males increased from 12 years to 14 years after the plague years, contrary to what we might expect from the documentary sources. There were higher rates of spinal and joint disease in the urban adolescents and their injuries were more widespread than their rural counterparts. Domestic service was the potential cause of the greater strain on the knees and backs of the urban females, with interpersonal violence evident in the young urban males. Overall, it was the urban females that carried the burden of respiratory and infectious diseases suggesting they may have been the most vulnerable group. This study has demonstrated the value of adolescent skeletal remains in revealing information about their health and working life, before and after the Black Death

Fetal paleopathology: an impossible discipline?

This chapter introduces the concept of fetal paleopathology in archaeological material, highlighting the limitations and potential of such research to inform us about the lives of mothers and their babies in the past. Problems with terminology, aging methods, preservation and recognizing lesions in skeletal remains are discussed, before potential new sources of research are highlighted

630-mV open circuit voltage, 12% efficient n-Si liquid junction

We report the first experimental observation of a semiconductor/liquid junction whose open circuit voltage Voc is controlled by bulk diffusion/recombination processes. Variation in temperature, minority-carrier diffusion length, and/or in majority-carrier concentration produces changes in the Voc of the n-Si/CH3OH interface in accord with bulk recombination/diffusion theory. Under AM2 irradiation conditions, the extrapolated intercept at 0 K of Voc vs T plots yields activation energies for the dominant recombination process of 1.1–1.2 eV, in accord with the 1.12-eV band gap of Si. A crucial factor in achieving optimum performance of the n-Si/CH3OH interface is assigned to photoelectrochemical oxide formation, which passivates surface recombination sites at the n-Si/CH3OH interface and minimizes deleterious effects of pinning of the Fermi level at the Si/CH3OH junction. Controlled Si oxide growth, combined with optimization of bulk crystal parameters in accord with diffusion theory, is found to yield improved photoelectrode output parameters, with 12.0±1.5% AM2 efficiencies and AM1 Voc values of 632–640 mV for 0.2-Ω cm Si materials

Children of the golden minster: St. Oswald's Priory and the impact of industrialisation on child health.

This study explores the disease experience of children buried within the cemetery of St. Oswald’s Priory, Gloucester from AD1153 to 1857. Evidence for ages-at-death, infant mortality, and the prevalence of stress indicators, trauma, and pathology were compared between the early and postmedieval periods. The skeletal remains of these children provide evidence for child health spanning the economic expansion of Gloucester at St. Oswald’s, from a mostly rural parish to a graveyard catering for families from the poorer northern part of the town and the workhouse. Results showed that the children from the postmedieval period in Gloucester suffered higher rates of dental caries (38%) and congenital conditions (17.3%) than their counterparts from the early and later medieval period. This paper serves to highlight the value of nonadult skeletal material in the interpretation of past human health in transitional societies and illustrates the wide variety of pathological conditions that can be observed in nonadult skeletons