For as devastating as a direct hit from a trebuchet seems like it would be, archaeological evidence has never provided much proof that any one person was killed by one. Logic dictates that somebody must have been. We just never had much direct evidence…until now.
As reported by Science and presented by University of Bradford bioarchaeologist Jo Buckberry at the 25th European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association in Berlin, Skeleton 150 may be the first definitive archaeological evidence of a person killed by a trebuchet. And the poor guy was obliterated. His top half, at least.
The skeleton was discovered beneath Stirling Castle’s medieval chapel in 1997. It belonged to a man roughly 22 to 34 years old. His remains were absolutely wrecked: more than 160 fractures, including 61 breaks in the skull and extensive damage to his ribs, right shoulder and leg.
How Archaeologists Determined Skeleton 150 Was Hit by a trebuchet
Using X-rays, microscopy and micro-CT scans, Buckberry’s team determined that the injuries happened around the time of death and were caused by one gigantic, high-speed impact. These were not sword wounds, nor did they come off as the result of a trampling or a fall from a castle wall. Buckberry says that the closest modern comparisons she found were people hit by trains or involved in severe car crashes. Sounds to me like he’d been hit by a Dodge Ram going 60 mph. Since Dodge Rams have been absent from the historical record until fairly recently, we can assume it was medieval siege weaponry.
Skeleton 150 appears to have died during the Wars of Scottish Independence, probably during Edward I’s 1304 siege of Stirling Castle. English armies used trebuchets during the three-month assault, including a real Death Star laser cannon of a trebuchet called the War Wolf, a siege weapon capable of throwing massive stones through castle walls.
Could skeleton 150 have been killed by War Wolf itself? Maybe, maybe not. Impossible to prove. It only fired at the end of the siege, after all the other siege weapons had been pummeling the castle walls for months.
The evidence of this one guy getting absolutely obliterated by a trebuchet is convincing, and if it’s saying what Joe Buckberry thinks it’s saying, it might have taken several centuries for us to finally have documented proof that these things crushed more than walls.
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