https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/health/bone-markers-archers Changes to this claim in Matteo Campagna's evidence registry: its status, its year-by-year history, revisions of the page. en-gb https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/health/bone-markers-archersThe question has a single answer in the bibliography, and it comes from anthropology, not from archers measured while shooting. In 2015 a group from the University of Szeged examined by eye the arm and shoulder bones of 81 individuals from a tenth-century Hungarian cemetery: 49 buried with a bow, arrows or quiver, that is 40 adult men and 9 non-adults, and 32 adult men buried without weapons. In the probable archers, enlargements are common at the attachments of the deltoid, pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, brachialis and biceps, together with those of the costoclavicular ligament, trapezius, teres major, the epicondyles of the elbow and the margin between radius and ulna. In their charts the authors see differences between the two groups, but the sites of enlargement are largely the same in the men buried without weapons, and some, such as the biceps and brachialis attachments, are frequent in both: so they conclude that comparing the two groups is not enough to recognise who shot. They leave two explanations open, that there were other archers among those buried without weapons or that some marks are not specific enough, and they still regard the list of typical sites as an aid for future work. The rest of the picture is descriptive: muscular enlargements dominate while osteoarthritis is rare, the non-adults buried with a bow already show signs of work at a few sites, and among the 58 buried with weapons 7 have healed fractures of the upper limb, 5 of them at the collarbone. These are preliminary results, with the frequencies shown only in a chart and no statistical tests, on the bow of tenth-century mounted archers and on people of whom it is not known whether they actually shot: they say nothing about what today's recurve leaves on the bones. This is why the registry does not count them as archers, and the status is transferred.claim:segni-ossei-carico-tiro:revision:2026-09-04:2Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/health/bone-markers-archersclaim:segni-ossei-carico-tiro:new_claim:2026-08-10:trasferitoMon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 GMT