That’s one way to settle an argument Museum of London

And you thought Game of Thrones was rough. Lower-class young men in medieval London were subjected to extreme levels of violence, far worse than other parts of medieval England.

“It appears that violence in medieval London may have been largely tied to sex and social status,” says archaeologist Kathryn Krakowka at the University of Oxford.

Krakowka analyzed 399 skulls from six London cemeteries dating from AD 1050 to 1550. Some were monastic cemeteries, which would have cost money and were more often used by the upper classes. Others were free parish cemeteries used by the lower classes.


She found that 6.8 per cent of all skulls examined showed some kind of violence-related trauma. Males from 26 to 35 years old were particularly affected. About 25 per cent of the skull injuries occurred near the time of death, suggesting the people died from blows to their heads.

High levels of violence are evident in cemeteries from other parts of medieval Europe such as Croatia, Krakowka says, which in one study showed a whopping 20.1 per cent of individuals had cranial fractures. But the London cemeteries she dug into had a violence rate roughly double that elsewhere in England. In a pair of cemeteries in York – also a major city at this time – only 2.4 and 3.6 per cent of skulls had fractures, respectively.

Only one way to settle this

What’s more, Krakowka found an effect that seemed to be associated with class. A much higher percentage of skulls in the lower-class parish cemeteries had signs of trauma compared with those in the monastic cemeteries.

She suggests that the upper classes had access to the developing legal system of the time, but the poor did not – and had to find a more informal way of resolving disputes.

Coroners’ rolls from the time show that a disproportionate amount of homicides occurred on Sunday night, when many working-class males would have been relaxing at the tavern, and on Monday morning. Most followed an argument.

“This, in combination with my results, possibly suggests that those of lower status resolved conflict through informal fights that may or may not have been fueled by drunkenness,” Krakowka says.

“People of low status don’t have resort to the rule of law,” says anthropologist Luke Glowacki at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France. Unable to hire a barrister to represent them, “they resort to violence as a means to resolve conflict.”

In contrast, the upper classes would only have fought in a more formal duel system, perhaps involving swords, horses or jousting lances, in which the opponents would have had armour to protect their heads.

Journal reference: American Journal of Physical Anthropology, DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23288