ABSTRACT
The skeleton provides an important source of evidence about accidental and violent injury in the past. Sometimes we find healed or unhealed blade injuries from swords or similar weapons. These provide unequivocal evidence of violence, either in society in general or in a battlefield context. However, most injuries we see in skeletons are simply healed fractures. In these instances, it’s difficult to say in individual cases, whether the cause was violence or accident. But, as this chapter shows, carefully study taking into account the type and location of the injury on the skeleton, may reveal, at a population level, whether accident or violence was likely to be the principle cause of different types of injuries.
