Many are looking forward to the fall because of the cooler nights, pumpkin-spice everything, and the changing leaves: here’s a Medieval skeleton to enhance the mood. This chap, known to archaeologists as T US 380, lived between the 6th and 8th centuries among the Longobard peoples in Italy. He had had a hard life, dying between 40 and 50 years old.
His age upon death wasn’t why his life had been challenging — rather, it was because he had lost his hand. Archaeologists were able to see that the stump had been worn. They also were able to figure out that a knife lying in the man’s grave had been a prothesis for the missing body part. The arm might have looked extremely intimidating with a cap-and-knife fashioned upon it, but the old injury was written on his body in other ways. For instance, one side of his mouth showed extremely worn-down teeth: that had probably happened because he was using his teeth to cinch leather straps on the prothesis tighter.
Sources: “Survival to amputation in pre-antibiotic era: a case study from a Longobard necropolis (6th-8th centuries AD), Ileana Micarelli et al _Journal of Anthropological Sciences_ vol 96 (2018), pp 1-16. Smithsonian Magazine, “This medieval man used a knife as a prosthetic limb,” Brigit Katz, April 20, 2018
