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Medieval arrows caused injuries similar to gunshot wounds, study finds:

The English longbow was a powerful medieval weapon said to be able to pierce an opponent's armor and may have been a decisive factor in several key military victories, most notably the Battle of Agincourt. A recent paper published in the Antiquaries Journal by a team of archaeologists at the University of Exeter in the UK has yielded evidence that longbow arrows created similar wounds to modern-day gunshot wounds and were capable of penetrating through long bones.

Historians continue to debate just how effective the longbow was in battle. There have been numerous re-enactment experiments with replicas, but no medieval-period longbows have survived, although many 16th-century specimens were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose. The University of Exeter's Oliver Creighton, who led the latest study, and his co-authors argue that such experiments are typically done over shorter ranges, so the arrows are not fully stable and spinning in flight. This, in turn, would affect the kinds of injuries combatants sustained. He and his team believe their analysis shows the importance of osteological evidence in helping to resolve such debates.

It's relatively rare to find direct evidence of violent trauma from weapons to skeletal remains in medieval burial sites, with the exception of mass burials from known historical battles. The best-known such sites are associated with the 1361 Battle of Visby in Gotland, Sweden, and the 1461 Battle of Towton in North Yorkshire, England. Per the authors, data from these sites has yielded useful information on "the realities of medieval warfare—how people fought and were killed, which weapons were used and what sorts of injuries these caused, and what armor (if any) was worn." Evidence of trauma specifically caused by arrowheads is even rarer.

The current study examined 22 bone fragments and three teeth, all showing clear signs of trauma. All were collected during the excavation of the burial ground of a medieval Dominican friary in Exeter from 1997 to 2007, to prepare for the construction of the Princesshay shopping district. Established in 1232 and officially consecrated in 1259, the friary's burial grounds likely included wealthy, high-status laypersons, according to the authors.

[...] "These results have profound implications for our understanding of the power of the medieval longbow; for how we recognize arrow trauma in the archaeological record; and for where battle casualties were buried," Creighton told Medievalists.net. "In the medieval world, death caused by an arrow in the eye or the face could have special significance. Clerical writers sometimes saw the injury as a divinely ordained punishment, with the 'arrow in the eye' which may or may not have been sustained by King Harold II on the battlefield of Hastings in 1066 the most famous case in point. Our study brings into focus the horrific reality of such an injury."

DOI: Antiquaries Journal, 2020. 10.1017/S0003581520000116 (About DOIs).

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