Archery traces on Hungarian skeletons: Tihanyi 2015

A group of anthropologists from the University of Szeged looked for the traces left by bow use on the skeletons of the cemetery at Sárrétudvari-Hízóföld, in eastern Hungary, dating from the 10th century, when mounted archers formed the core of the Hungarian army. They examined by eye the shoulder blades, collarbones, upper arm bones and forearm bones of 81 individuals: 49 buried with a bow, arrows or a quiver (40 adult men and 9 non-adults) and 32 adult men buried without weapons.

Among the 'archers', enlarged muscle attachment sites are common: on the collarbone, the costoclavicular ligament, deltoid and trapezius; on the upper arm bone, teres major, pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, deltoid and the forearm flexors and extensors that attach at the elbow; on the radius, the biceps and the membrane between the two forearm bones; on the ulna, brachialis. The changes appear on both arms, with slight asymmetry, and osteoarthritis is rare. The authors see some differences between the two groups in their chart, but the sites of enlargement are mostly the same in the men buried without weapons, and some, such as the biceps and brachialis attachments, are common in both: they found no marker that singles out those who shot. They conclude that bones and grave goods point the same way: the men buried with bows were strong and well trained, probably through heavy, regular physical work connected with archery.

The cemetery, excavated between 1983 and 1985, holds 262 graves from the 10th century containing 263 individuals. Weapons were found in 58 graves, each containing at least one archery item (bone plates from composite bows, arrowheads, remains of quivers), in three cases alongside a sabre or an axe. The authors chose this cemetery because it was fully excavated, already published and rich in male graves and archery finds. Of the 58 armed graves, 49 held skeletons well enough preserved to study; a woman buried with three arrowheads was left out, because the marks activity leaves on bone also depend on sex. Age and sex come from earlier work on the same series.

The examination is macroscopic: for each skeleton the authors recorded enlargement or other changes at 25 sites, nearly all of them muscle or ligament attachments (4 on the shoulder blade, 4 on the collarbone, 9 on the upper arm bone, 5 on the ulna, 3 on the radius), together with fractures and other lesions. The comparison between 'archers' and unarmed men is shown as percentages in a chart, with no statistical analysis, which the authors leave to later work.

These are preliminary results, as the title says. The percentages for individual markers are not given as figures, no comparison is tested statistically, and the shoulder blades were too poorly preserved to say anything. Being buried with a bow does not mean a man shot one, and a man buried without weapons may have been an archer: grave goods were chosen by family and community. Enlarged attachment sites also depend on age, build and heavy work of every kind, and here they appeared at mostly the same sites in both groups, so they are not specific to archery.

The markers are judged by eye, with no measurements or standard scoring system, and nothing suggests the assessors were unaware of which grave each skeleton came from. These men shot 10th-century composite horse bows, with draw weights and a shooting style we do not know and that have little in common with those of a modern archer.

For a modern archer the study does not change training: it describes another age, another bow and another way of life. It is of interest for two observations. The first is that the markers appear on both arms, which the authors see as consistent with modern studies showing that shooting loads both sides of the body, not just the string arm. The second is that even in men who shot war bows the joints rarely show osteoarthritis: the authors note this as useful for estimating how powerful those bows were, not as evidence that archery protects the joints.

Beyond that, the study shows how hard it is to recognise an archer from the skeleton, since the enlargements most common among the 'archers' were common among the other men of the same community as well.