The hospital could bury members and servants of the hospital, and people who were being looked after there and eventually died. People who gave lots of money to the hospital and senior members of staff were probably buried in the chapel, so we are unlikely to find their remains in this part of cemetery. It is most probable that the skeletons excavated by Cambridge Archaeological Unit were the sick and poor people of medieval Cambridge.

Archaeologists usually estimate sex rather than gender as they can only look at the biology of the individual. For most of the medieval period, people were probably gendered the same as their biological sex.

Osteologists (people who study bones) can help to identify whether a skeleton is male, female, or ambiguous. They focus on the pelvis and skull. This method is not completely reliable as there is lots of variation between men and women, and it is almost impossible to identify the sex of children from the skeleton alone. Sex can also be determined from ancient DNA, which can sometimes be extracted from skeletons.

This is easier to estimate if the skeleton belonged to someone who was a child or teenager. As you get older, your bones grow and develop significantly. There are also major changes to teeth. Your baby teeth develop and erupt throughout childhood, making way for permanent adult teeth. This process takes place within reasonably set timescales, although some people are late or early developers.

You can also estimate age from bones. As people get older, the growing ends of some bones fuse to short pieces called epiphyses. Although this happens at different ages, most are complete by the age of 30.

As people get older, their skeleton starts to show signs of wear and tear. Teeth wear down and the front of the pelvis or the ends of the ribs can change and be used to give a rough estimate of someone’s age at death.

Some diseases leave evidence on the skeleton. As people get older their skeleton can change, showing signs of age. For example, osteoarthritis occurs when cartilage wears away, polishing the bone and sometimes generating new bone growth. 62 skeletons (out of 404 examined) from the cemetery of the Hospital of St. John had signs of osteoarthritis. Some of the skeletons showed evidence of lesions on the spine: these people may have suffered from tuberculosis (TB), a serious and often fatal infectious disease. Most people in medieval Cambridge would have been exposed to TB at some point in their life. People who had it would have had problems breathing, they would cough, sometimes coughing up blood, and they might have had chest pain.

Broken bones can also be identified, as can evidence of any healing that might have taken place. This can give archaeologists an idea of whether a person survived a fracture. 20 of the skeletons examined from the cemetery of the Hospital of St John had at least one fracture, most of which had healed. The majority of these injuries were compression fractures in the spine, which can happen if they have osteoporosis or when people fall and land on their feet or bottom.

Archaeologists can use various sources to determine the diet of people in the past. Plant or pollen remains might indicate what food is growing in the area where people live. Teeth might be worn down, for example because people were accidentally chewing on grit which made its way into food when wheat was ground into flour. Tooth cavities might show an increase in sweet or sugary foods.

It is possible to find out the diet of an individual by analysing two elements in their skeleton. The proportions of carbon and nitrogen isotopes can indicate what that person had been eating. This can tell archaeologists the types of plants people were eating in the past and also whether they were consuming animal products, fish or shellfish.

Famine and starvation happened throughout the medieval period. Sometimes this can be seen in human remains as well. Enamel hypoplasias are marks on teeth, seen as grooves, lines or little pits. These are all signs of teeth not developing properly during a person's childhood, perhaps through poor diet or ill health.

By putting together the evidence from individual skeletons and the cemetery as a whole, we can start to build up a picture of life in medieval Cambridge. Importantly, the people buried in the cemetery were the poor people of the city: the people who are often missing from written sources of the period. The After the Plague project also looked at other cemeteries from Cambridge. This approach, looking at the whole city, should help us to get a better idea about people’s lives in the past. We can observe how common particular illnesses were, we can track disease across groups, or see how genetically similar people in medieval Cambridge were to each other. By bringing together lots of different types of information we can understand the topic much better than by focussing on one method of analysis.

By looking at the size and shape of the graves, archaeologists thought that most of the people buried there had not been put in a coffin. No archaeological evidence for coffins was found, but it is likely that the bodies had been wrapped in a shroud (a large piece of fabric) before they were put in the ground.

Medieval Christian burials usually did not include many objects in the grave with the dead person. Although about 400 skeletons were excavated at St. John's Hospital, only a few had objects with them. These may have been deliberately put with the bodies, but they might also have been left from earlier use of the site, or were even rubbish. There were only two items which the archaeologists could definitely conclude were grave goods and a third which was possibly from a grave.

The possible grave good was a cross-shaped pendant made of copper alloy metal. This was found with a small group of bones that had been wrapped in cloth. The cloth had been tied with a cord, and the pendant was discovered with that cord.

The two definite grave-goods were a metal brooch and a jet crucifix. The brooch was also made of copper alloy, and was found with the skeleton of a woman between the ages of 27 and 35 who was buried in the 15^th century (1400s)

Documents tell us that the Hospital would not admit particular groups of people, among them pregnant women, people who had leprosy, people with wounds or who were crippled. The people that were buried in the hospital cemetery were probably mostly poor.

Later in the Hospital’s lifetime, they accepted more people called ‘corrodians’. These were basically pensioners: older people who paid to stay in the hospital until they died.

There are very few documentary sources that archaeologists can read to understand who these individuals were. Records from the hospital no longer exist. The only way to find out about many of these people is by using archaeological techniques.

By comparing the archaeological evidence and written records of the time, we can begin to see how the average person may have lived, how they were treated when they were ill, and how they were looked after when they died (burial rites).

Medieval hospitals, like St. John's, did care for people, but in a spiritual sense rather than medical.

To write a biography, usually historians consult written documents: letter, wills, tax records. For these skeletons, the After the Plague project built a picture of that person’s life through their bones: an osteobiography (osteo- means relating to bones). Here we will show how the project put together one osteobiography.

Like a lot of children in the medieval period, there were a couple of times that his growth was interrupted - probably between birth up until he was 6 years old. This could have been due to illness, or not having enough to eat, but he had been strong enough to recover. Unlike half the population born at the same time as him, he survived his childhood. He grew up to be a tall man, one of tallest in whole cemetery (177.5cm). This was above average height for the time.

By studying his DNA, we discovered that his ancestors were probably from England. Analysis of his DNA shows that he is not closely related to anyone else buried in the cemetery.

By looking at his bone chemistry, we can tell that his diet contained quite a few animal products, possibly fish. He would also have eaten an assortment of vegetables and grains, like most people in medieval Cambridge.

It is likely that he wasn’t in the hospital for a long time. Everyone in the hospital would have eaten the same diet and this probably didn’t include much meat.

Does this mean that he had a bit more money?

Was his job good enough for him to support himself (and his family, if he had any)?

His teeth were in quite bad condition, although would not have been uncommon at the time. He had cavities so would have known the pain of toothache, he also had a tooth abscess.

At some point in his life he had broken a rib and damaged the back of his skull. Both of these injuries had healed before he died.

He had a robust skeleton with strong muscles, showing he was physically active. He had a lot of lesions (areas of damage) on his spine, these may have occurred because his life involved a lot of lifting. It is highly likely that he did a repetitive activity which caused changes to his toes and feet.

We cannot say how he died. Most causes of death leave no trace on bone. He may have had an illness, and with no family to care for him, perhaps he went to the hospital instead. It is also possible that he had worked at or had a link to the hospital and so got buried in its cemetery. It is unlikely that he was a monk or a scholar. What we do know is he was buried in a cemetery for poorer people.

Experts then find themselves asking the following questions:

Why was he buried face down?

Was it a hasty burial?

Or was he buried this way on purpose?

Was his position in the grave accidental?

Unfortunately not all questions can be answered, and the circumstances surrounding his death may never be known.