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79
XIV/1/2023
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Wealth or Just Job Seekers: Medieval Skeletal Series
from Kutná Hora-Sedlec (Czech Republic) with a Notable Surplus of Men
Hana Brzobohatá
1*
, Jan Frolík
1
, Filip Velímský
1
1
Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Letenská 4, 118 01 Prague 1, Czech Republic
1. Introduction
Silver-bearing ores of the Kutná Hora ore district were
probably discovered in the 1260s. Their mining began in the
last quarter of the 13
th
century, peaked during the 14
th
century
and still played an important role in the 15
th
century. At that
time, mining continued at depth, following the ore bodies
down, with the deepest part reaching a depth of hundreds of
metres (Jaroš, 1955). By the 16
th
century, mining was then
beyond its zenith, its decline already begun, and the deposits
were entirely exhausted by the end of the 17
th
century (Maur,
2001; Vaněk and Velebil, 2007; Frolík, 2012; Duraj
et al.
,
2019).
Traces of old mining activity are ubiquitous in this area.
They include shaft adits, collapsed shafts, mining residue
dumps, gallery entrances in stream and river valleys, slag
heaps, traces of the continual changes and overturning of
ground layers, and fndings of items of ceramic technology,
or lighting instruments, and include the St George mining
gallery which is accessible to the public (Valentová,
1999; Bartoš, 2008; Absolon, 2018). Another old mine,
its accessibility strictly limited to experts, is situated in
a large depression at the top of a nearby hill (Pechočová,
1992; Tomášek, 1999). Old subterraneous workings are
subject to ongoing underground prospection, investigation
and documentation – both by amateurs and experts of local
mining history (Velímský, 2017). Despite the obvious
symbiosis of mining and metallurgical activities during the
Middle and Early Modern ages, the fndings of smelting
workshops or places of probable smelting trials are very rare
(Valentová, 1993; 1999; Frolík, 2014). It is estimated that the
local deposits have yielded over 1700–2500 tons of silver;
however, the upper limit of this range has been estimated on
the basis of highly indirect entries, such as data on the size
of the royal urbura – the monarch’s share of the proft – and
various royal payments (Kořan, 1950; Vaněk and Velebil,
2007; Holub, 2015).
We have to face even much higher uncertainty when
it comes to population estimates of this historical area.
Any estimates of the size of medieval cities remain highly
speculative, but we cannot avoid them. According to some
assessments, at the end of the 14
th
century, Kutná Hora had
about 8,000 inhabitants (Maur, 1998, p.49); however, other
studies present (for around 1500 CE) that the population of
Volume XIV ● Issue 1/2023 ● Pages 79–92
*Corresponding author. E-mail: brzobohata@arup.cas.cz
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received: 11
th
July 2022
Accepted: 3
rd
November 2022
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24916/iansa.2023.1.6
Key words:
bioarchaeology
mass burials
demographic crises
sex ratio
Middle Ages
mining
ABSTRACT
Kutná Hora entered the 14
th
century as a rich, prosperous, and densely-populated city producing tons
of silver. Such an amount of precious metal could not be mined and processed without an infux of
people from other cities and rural areas and without the contribution of skilled specialists from abroad.
Despite the apparent wealth of the city, its inhabitants (either settled or newly arrived) experienced and
died during mortality crises. Evidence of such events was discovered in the Kutná Hora suburbs, where
the medieval burial ground, including a signifcant component of mass burials, has been unearthed.
In the data derived from pooled catastrophic and non-catastrophic burials (n=1785 individuals),
a notable surplus of males has been identifed with a striking imbalanced adult sex ratio of 149. After
considering factors potentially infuencing this value, we suggest that the fgure likely mirrors the
original population composition as a consequence of the infow of men migrating to the town for
labour/economic opportunities.
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the city and its suburbs was more than 10,000, and perhaps
even 18,000 (Molenda, 1976; Macek, 1992, p.27). Urban
growth will occur based on natural increases and any net
immigration from nearby or relatively more distant regions
(Betsinger and DeWitte, 2021), and this certainly also
applied to medieval Kutná Hora, whose socio-professional
structure was characterised by an absolute predominance
of professions and crafts related to mining, metallurgy
and minting. The continuing demand for silver afected
the mining system, which was forced into an increasing
specialisation of workers with the gradual penetration into
greater mining depths (Jaroš, 1955).
Thanks to textual as well as pictorial evidence, it is known,
which professions worked here. Namely, the Kutná Hora
Illumination and the picture in the Kutná Hora Gradual depict
the mining and processing of silver in a detailed and almost
documentary manner. In addition to the entire technological
process (ore milling, ore washing, sales to ore merchants,
smelting to produce silver), the illustrations have also
captured its protagonists: miners, mine carpenters, workers
carrying ore or gangue, organisers of mining works, mine
ofcers, unqualifed labourers working on mine ventilation,
ore processing,
etc.
(see Stöllner, 2008 for a more detailed
description of all possible activities; Štefan, 2013a). The
most complex technological steps were performed by early
smelters, whose skills and knowledge went deep and were
to be admired because they were able to experimentally-
empirically develop highly complicated metallurgical
processes without relying on a basic theoretical knowledge
of chemistry. They were, for example, able to obtain silver
from some poorer and resilient ores of various kinds, as
was the case in Kutná Hora (Vaněk and Velebil, 2007). All
the above-mentioned workers formed very specifc and
artifcial communities working in hostile places, created
against all odds and facing regular and serious threats. They
were subject to the harsh working conditions associated
with mining and smelting: poor ventilation, fooding, mine
or rock collapse, and inhalation of noxious gases (toxic)
released during metallurgical processes. On the other hand,
due to their considerable economic importance, medieval
miners were also ofered distinct social, economic, and legal
advantages over most other physical labourers at that time
(Geltner and Weeda, 2021).
During the exploitation of silver deposits, Kutná Hora had
always lived “beyond its means” compared to the surrounding
territory and the weight of silver could have mitigated
against the consequences of disasters and catastrophes
(Štefan, 2013b). It is documented that an extensive food
supply was necessary to keep early modern Swedish miners
and related workers healthy and able to work, and to keep
mining operations continuous and at the same intensity
(Bäckström
et al.
, 2018). As in Sweden, the Kutná Hora
mining community could also have been provided with basic
commodities during barren years and the city better bufered
from the periodically-occurring famines and disasters.
However, the city never resisted completely in every case and
occasionally had to surrender. Due to the scarcity of detailed
chronicler reports and historical data, little is known about
the local famines and epidemic outbreaks, but the town’s high
population density coupled with its unhygienic conditions
made residents prone to infections (Walter and DeWitte,
2017). However, direct evidence of mortality crises has
been discovered in a Kutná Hora suburb, where a medieval
burial ground that includes a signifcant component of mass
burials has recently been unearthed (Brzobohatá
et al.
, 2019;
Brzobohatá
et al.
, 2021; de Lépinau
et al.
, 2021). These
mass graves have been assigned to catastrophic events of
the second and ffth decade of the 14
th
century, with famine
and mortality that peaked in 1318, and plague mortality that
peaked in 1348–1350 (see below).
The need for both skilled and unskilled workforces that
could run the mines prompted the necessary immigration
of settlers. From the very beginning of the existence
of Czech cities, their proportion of Czech inhabitants
gradually increased with the arrival of rural populations
from surrounding areas (Maur, 1998). In addition to this
predominantly Czech group, the infux of new manpower
from abroad to the newly-opened mines beneftted both
the settlers and the owners of land rich in silver resources.
Similar to other East-Central European medieval mining
cities, typical foreign settlers were Germans – ready-
skilled miners and smelters who migrated here from areas
with long-established mining traditions (Maur, 1998, p.49;
Szende, 2011, p.196; 2019; Štefan, 2013b). The proportion
of Italians, for example the professional tradesmen and
fnanciers involved in organising and fnancing the mining
operations and who carefully selected the commercially-
most-signifcant settlements, was also not negligible
(Szende, 2011, p.196; 2019).
Since the medieval towns provided various employment
opportunities, women may have constituted a signifcant
proportion of the Kutná Hora incomers. But silver-ore mining
and silver metallurgy mainly involved male-dominated jobs
and thus it can be assumed, with high probability, that new
migrants were predominantly men. However, the extent of
this phenomenon is unclear and is not discernible from the
written evidence. The high immigration rate of particular
segments of the population – such as males capable of silver
mining/smelting and those migrating for labour opportunities
– should be something refected in the mortality record
(Grauer, 2002, p.277). The aim of this study is to present
the frst anthropological data from the perspective of the
population’s sex ratio – an index of the sex composition
in demographic and other scholarly analyses that refers
to the total number of males for every 100 females in the
population (Poston and Micken, 2005, p.42). Much of the
contemporary research on sex ratios deals with sex ratios at
birth. Worldwide, today, the sex ratio at birth is not equal
(but remarkably homogeneous) and usually reaches values
about 103–107 boys per 100 girls (Bardsley, 2014; Chao
et al.
, 2019). The child sex ratio, assigned to the period of
infancy and childhood, can be afected by a wide range of
determinants, such as diferential mortality rates, gender-
discriminatory practices or less apparent factors such as
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81
various kinds of patriarchal features (Szołtysek
et al.
, 2022).
In adult populations, its value depends on several factors:
the sex ratio at birth, diferential mortality rates between the
sexes at diferent ages, and losses and gains through migration
(Hesketh and Zhu, 2006). In most countries throughout the
world, the greater mortality rates of males means that the sex
ratio decreases across the age range to a value much closer to
100 in full adulthood. In developed countries there is a further
decline in the sex ratio and women usually predominate in
the older age categories (Coale, 1991; Klufová, 2008, p.41).
Currently this indicator can take various forms, such as the
operational sex ratio, which captures the number of men and
women that are available to potential partners (Filser and
Willführ, 2022).
In the current study we have aimed: (1) to investigate
the possible diferences in male and female counts in the
skeletal assemblages derived from the medieval population
of Kutná Hora, and (2), if the assumption of a surplus of men
is confrmed as a given, to explore whether this surplus is
manifested both in years of demographic crises and in non-
catastrophic times, in a consistent way.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1 Archaeological Context and Site Information
The recorded evidence of prehistoric and medieval
colonisation in the Kutná Hora-Sedlec area is very rich owing
to the long-term archaeological research of the site and its
key subject, the famous Cistercian monastery (Velímský,
2009; Charvátová, 2013). The Cemetery Church of All Saints
with Ossuary, originally Gothic but latterly rebuilt in the
Baroque style in the 1700s, is located in the northern part of
the monastery complex on a very gentle, north-rising slope
that forms part of the southern foot of Kaňk Hill (Figure 1).
The cemetery neighbouring the church building is still
a functional burial ground for the local population, which is
the reason why no archaeological excavation had been carried
out there until 2013. The cemetery has been reported as being
in this position since the end of the 13
th
century, when it was
to be newly founded as a lay cemetery for the monastery’s
subjects (tributaries) and the newly-arrived population of
upper settlements in the expanding town of Kutná Hora.
The frst mention of Sedlec cemetery
(Scedlicensi cimiterio)
Figure 1.
Plan of Kutná Hora and Sedlec suburb with the range of high medieval settlements (indicated in light-red colour and bordered by dashed lines);
high medieval church buildings (red ground plans, cemetery areas in pink); the location of the Kutná Hora-Sedlec Cemetery Church of All Saints with
Ossuary (upper dagger), and Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady (lower dagger).
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itself is in the Zbraslav Chronicle of Petr Žitavský, dating
from before 1305 (FRB IV., p.51).
The Cemetery Church of All Saints with Ossuary is
estimated to contain the bones of 40,000–60,000 people
arranged in patterns and pyramids. Recent rescue excavation
in the graveyard surrounding the church with ossuary was
necessitated by the planned reconstruction and stabilisation
of this exceptional building. That led to the discovery of
32 complete and incomplete mass burials in its vicinity,
giving a total of around nine hundred skeletons and
878 individual graves, uniquely demonstrating the large-scale
mass mortality that had occurred during well-defned periods
(dataset CCHURCH TOTAL; the fgures refer to primary
burials in anatomical contexts; Frolík, 2017a; Frolík, 2017b;
Frolík, 2018; Figure 2). The chronology of the mass graves
at the ossuary is based on an investigation of the stratigraphic
confguration: with two levels of pits corresponding to the
two catastrophes. The younger stratigraphic level indicates
damage by the ossuary walls. The younger graves are
assigned to the fatalities of the 1348–1350 plague epidemic,
based on coin excavations from two of the graves, namely,
Prague groschen-type coins of the Czech King John of
Luxembourg who reigned from 1310 to 1346. These include
the last mintage dated 1346. Dates connected with later plague
outbreaks are excluded because the ossuary was constructed
prior to 1400 (Poche, 1980, p.302; Chadraba, 1984, p.200).
The older level is linked to the famine and burial of victims
at the front of the gates of Sedlec in Kutná Hora based on
the 1318 report of the Zbraslav Chronicle (FRB IV., p.248).
During both aforementioned crises, with the initial mortality
probably only rising gradually, the frst dead could still have
been buried in the usual manner, and the mass graves would
only have become necessary when the situation had already
become unbearable. When the critical moment arrived,
corpses were laid out without cofns in a supine position
within rectangular pits (ca. 2 m × 2 m, depth ca. 2.5 m) in
several cross-stacked layers. Meanwhile, grave diggers
would try to save room by placing child cadavers in the pit
corners of the ‘tomb’. Except for exceptional circumstances,
the bodies were not thrown into the pit, but were carefully laid
down and separated by layers of soil. The rest of the graves,
i.e.
, single inhumations, are archaeologically dated to the
13–14
th
centuries, and to the 14–16
th
centuries, respectively
(Brzobohatá
et al.
, 2019). Material artifacts recovered from
the site consisted primarily of buckles, rings, pottery sherds
and coins (Frolík, 2017b; 2018).
The second skeletal assemblage under study comes
from rescue research before the installation of a drainage
system surrounding the foundation of the nearby cathedral
(conducted by F. Velímský).
Behind the presbytery of the
Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady (a UNESCO-
listed site), a section of a multiple-stage medieval cemetery,
with 284 individuals in total, was discovered in 2007. The
cathedral was a monastery church of the oldest former
Cistercian abbey in Bohemia. It was built between 1290
and 1320 in the period of the biggest economic growth of
the Cistercian monastic order. The adjacent burial ground
(Figure 3) was probably in use throughout the medieval
Figure 2.
Map showing the site area of the Kutná Hora-Sedlec Cemetery Church of All Saints with Ossuary and the location of mass graves within the
excavated area (mass graves are bordered by a black line, the colour of the flling indicates assignment to a catastrophic event: blue, plague-related burials;
yellow, famine-related burials; pink, not yet assigned).
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83
period (12
th
–15
th
century); nevertheless, without strong
confrmation in the archaeological material, burials there
ended presumably with the Hussite wars when (in 1421)
the Hussite troops attacked and destroyed the Cistercian
monastery (including the cathedral), which was burnt down.
The temple remained ruined for another 279 years, until its
reconstruction in the beginning of the 18
th
century in the
Baroque Gothic style. At this particular necropolis, no mass
synchronous deposition of corpses has been found (Velímský
et al.
, 2008). Another comparative medieval – post-medieval
skeletal series was selected to meet the criteria of comparable
size, geographical and chronological closeness with the
aforementioned skeletal assemblages, and the availability
of an anthropological report or published demographic data
(Živný, 2010).
Skeletal remains from Kutná Hora-Sedlec are deposited
in the depository of the National Museum in Prague-Horní
Počernice (material from Cemetery Church of All Saints with
Ossuary), and in the detached department of the Institute of
Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Kutná
Hora (bones excavated at the Cathedral of the Assumption
of Our Lady).
2.2 Methods
The skeletons unearthed at the Cemetery Church of All
Saints with Ossuary (CCHURCH TOTAL) were divided
into subgroups according to the funeral context. Skeletons
from catastrophic graves, both famine-supposed and plague-
supposed mass burials, constituted a dataset abbreviated as
CCHURCH MASS. Skeletons that came from normative
individual burials, pre- and post-dating catastrophic burials,
were assigned to the dataset abbreviated as CCHURCH IND.
The last sample under study consists of individuals buried
around the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady (dataset
CATHEDRAL). Details of the samples are given in Table 1.
Once cleaned and restored, the bones were analysed using
traditional anthropological methods to determine sex, age at
death, and body size. The age at death of adult individuals
(˃18 years) was estimated based on the degree of dental
attrition, and the metamorphosis of sternal rib ends and the
articular facets of the ilium (Todd, 1920; Iscan
et al.
, 1984;
Lovejoy, 1985; Schmitt, 2005). The sex was determined
by the presence of masculine cranial and pelvic features
with an emphasis on the latter (Phenice, 1969; Ferembach
et al.
, 1980; Brůžek, 2002; Murail
et al.
, 2005). The fnal
subsamples of sexed individuals consist only of skeletons
that had the relevant and adequately-preserved skeletal
elements needed for sex determination (Table 1).
Postcranial adult bones from the CCHURCH TOTAL
and CATHEDRAL dataset were measured more thoroughly,
the set of dimensions thus obtained allowing us to apply
the principles of primary and secondary sex diagnosis.
Figure 3.
Map of the site area at the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady in Kutná Hora-Sedlec showing the extent of archaeological rescue excavation
of a cemetery (in yellow).
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This approach has been recommended by Murail and
co-authors and consists in using those individuals whose
pelvic sex could be determined as a reference sample for the
extrapelvic sex estimation of individuals without a preserved
pelvis (Murail
et al.
, 1999). To create a reference sample, a
total of 16 postcranial measurements of selected right bones
(Martin and Saller, 1957) were taken from 413 (CCHURCH
TOTAL) and 83 (CATHEDRAL) measurable and sexed
individuals (Table 3). The same measurements were
taken from the bones of non-sexed measurable adults. All
extrapelvic osteometric data were subjected to secondary sex
diagnosis performed using the
rdss
package developed and
introduced by F. Santos (2021) for the R statistical software
(R Core Team, 2020) (
dss
abbreviation is derived from the
French
diagnose sexuelle secondaire
). Of the four possible
statistical tools for sex estimation implemented in the
rdss
package, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was chosen
with the classifcation threshold for sex allocation set at 0.95.
Table 1.
Characteristics of the studied samples by age and sex (NAD, non-adults; M, males; F, females; IND, indeterminate adults).
Dataset
Recovered individuals
NADADMFINDTotal Sex ratio
CCHURCH70710783962664161785148,9
CCHURCH MASS322 585232168185 907138,1
CCHURCH IND
385 493164 98231 878167,3
CATHEDRAL
54 230106 31 93 284341,9
Table 2.
Characteristics of the studied samples including individuals sexed using the DSS approach (NAD, non-adults; M, males; F, females; IND,
indeterminate adults).
Dataset
Recovered individuals
NADADMFINDTotal Sex ratio
CCHURCH DSS
70710784773342671785142,8
CCHURCH MASS DSS
322585275199111 907138,2
CCHURCH IND DSS
385493202135156 878149,6
CATHEDRAL DSS
54230130 49 51 284265,3
Table 3.
List of extrapelvic variables. The upper and lower limb bone
measurements (according to Martin and Saller, 1957) selected for the
secondary sex diagnosis of individuals not preserving the pelvis.
VariableMeasurements
H1Humeral maximul length
H4Humeral distal epiphyseal breadth
H7aHumeral midshaft circumference
H10Humeral head maximum sagittal diameter
R1Radial maximum length
U1Ulnar maximum length
F1Femoral maximum length
F8Femoral midshaft circumference
F18Femoral head vertical diameter
F21Femoral distal epiphyseal breadth
T1aTibial maximum length
T3Tibial proximal epiphyseal breadth
T6Tibial distal epiphyseal breadth
T10Tibial midshaft circumference
Ta1Talar length
Ta2Talar breadth
The datasets which included those males and females that
were newly assigned using secondary sex diagnosis were
labelled CCHURCH TOTAL DSS and CATHEDRAL DSS.
For determining the sex composition of a population, we
used a standard demographic indicator – the sex ratio,
i.e.
,
the number of men for every 100 women, which has been
calculated from the number of males divided by the number
of females and multiplied by 100: (N
m
/N
f
)*100 (Kalibová,
2005, p.17). In the analyses of the CCHURCH MASS
dataset, we intentionally omitted marginally disturbed mass
graves with one or two incomplete skeletons (mass grave
Nos. 19, 31 and 32).
3. Results
In total, the burial ground at the Kutná Hora-Sedlec
Cemetery Church (sample CCHURCH TOTAL, pooling
both catastrophic and non-catastrophic medieval burials)
contained the remains of a minimum of 1,785 individuals
(prime burials, skeletons in their original burial position),
with 707 nonadults (<18 years old) and 1,078 adults. The
osteological series CATHEDRAL was comprised of the
remains of a minimum of 284 individuals, with 54 nonadults
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and 230 adults. Substantial numbers of adult skeletons were
not assigned a sex because they were either too fragmentary
or were lacking important diagnostic elements, a pelvis or
skull. The percentage of these sex-undetermined skeletons
reached the values of 31.6% for CCHURCH MASS, 46.9%
for CCHURCH IND, and 40.4% for CATHEDRAL dataset
(Table 1, Figure 4).
The data assembled from all series showed that the sex
ratio varied considerably (reaching values from 138.1
in CCHURCH MASS to 341.9 in CATHEDRAL group,
Table 1) but it always exhibited a predominance of men.
The sex ratio computed from single interments adjacent to
the cemetery church (CCHURCH IND) is higher than the
sex ratio obtained from the mortality crises assemblage
(CCHURCH MASS), but the number of men does not
exceed twice the number of women. The value yielded from
the CATHEDRAL dataset showed a more than triple surplus
of men (Table 1). This ratio was later changed after including
adults additionally sexed using the DSS approach (Table 2).
The overall sex ratio of the CCHURCH MASS skeletal
group was 138.1 (and 138.2 after DSS) and a closer look at
the specifc mass graves data revealed that sex distribution
more frequently showed a majority of men to women: out of
27 mass burials analysed, a total of 22 exhibited a surplus of
males, in four cases a surplus of women was recorded, and
in only one case was an equilibrium of both sexes registered.
In three mass graves, a comparison could not be performed
due to the absence of either sex being determined. In the
three mass graves labelled 20, 23 and 26, the category of
sex-undetermined adults was very strongly represented and
their number exceeded the number of sex-determined adult
skeletons (Figure 5).
The question as to how many men and women could
have been hidden in this undetermined category obviously
occurred and we thus performed the secondary sex diagnosis
in the CATHEDRAL skeletal series. What is apparent from
Table 3 and Figure 4 is the substantial and benefcial efect
of this method and the noticeably larger proportion of sexed
adults. When using combined variables obtained from upper
and lower limb bones and LDA analyses tailor-made for this
particular population, we were able to estimate the sex in
a further 24 males and 18 females making up about one ffth
(18.3%) of all adult individuals. Another 51 (22.2%) adult
individuals remained indeterminate because they had not
reached the classifcation threshold for sex allocation (set at
0.95). After we had included both the original and the newly-
identifed men and women in the calculation of sex ratio,
its value decreased considerably: from the original 341.9 to
265.3. The male bias found across this specifc necropolis
still remains high, but far lower than when not using
extrapelvic osteometric data and secondary sex diagnosis.
In the CCHURCH TOTAL dataset, the complementary
DSS method increased the number of sexed subjects by 149
(81 males and 68 females) and caused a slight decrease in
sex ratio (Table 2).
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Based on evidence from the written records that mentioned
a movement of people to the medieval Kutná Hora, we
expected a certain surplus of men in the skeletal series from
the site, but we were in no way sure of its magnitude. The
results of the study confrmed the pronounced predominance
Figure 4.
Sex distribution in adult groups within Kutná Hora-Sedlec datasets and efect of secondary sex diagnosis (in DSS samples; ad., adults).
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of men, both in the individual datasets under study and on
an overall site level.
One of the studied datasets for which we can present
a highly probable explanation of the skewed sex ratio is
the burial ground enclosing the walls of the Cathedral
of the Assumption of Our Lady (Table 1). The dataset
CATHEDRAL consists of individuals interred within the area
of the Cistercian monastery and thus the noticeable surplus
of men could be merely a refection of the composition of
the group that used this particular burial ground. Although
archaeological research did not reveal any conspicuous
location that could have included only the remains of
members of the Cistercian order (Velímský
et al.
, 2008),
both friars and laymen could have been buried at the site.
Figure 5.
Proportion of males and females in adult groups derived from specifc mass graves (n = 27), Kutná Hora-Sedlec, Cemetery Church of All Saints
with Ossuary (mgrave = mass grave; ad. = adults). Males and females were sexed using primary and secondary sex diagnosis.
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with a Notable Surplus of Men
87
A similar surplus of men has been recorded in the monastic
cemeteries of medieval Czech lands (Drozdová, 1998;
Kubálek, 2009; Nováček and Dobisíková, 2010) and the
rest of Europe (Waldron, 1985; Halpin and Buckley, 1995;
Knüsel
et al.
, 1997; Mays, 2006, p.182; Hart and Holbrook,
2011; Torino
et al.
, 2015; Krakowka, 2017; Sundman, 2018).
The archaeological context of the other two datasets
(CCHURCH MASS and CCHURCH IND) is quite diferent
and short of readily explicable circumstances. If taken
globally, the abundance of males in the archaeological skeletal
series is a relatively common phenomenon. Only a few
authors have concentrated on this topic systematically, and
those who have done only focus on certain chronologically
(or otherwise) defned populations (Barbiera, 2012; Cintas-
Peña and Herrero Corral, 2020). A systematic bias of 12%
towards men was already demonstrated in the classic
study of Weiss (1972) and it is generally assumed that this
phenomenon is partly related to a methodological bias,
i.e.
,
that a series will show an excess of males because of the
nature of the sexing criteria themselves.
An obvious lack of women in medieval written sources
can be easily explained, these records being selectively
created and selectively maintained by men, making women
seemingly invisible in most documentary sources (Grauer,
2002, p.267; Bardsley, 2014). However, the scarcity of
women found across some medieval skeletal series is much
more difcult to explain. For example, Barbiera (2012) noted
missing adult females from early medieval Italian cemeteries
and explained the surplus of men as follows: adult women
may have been absent due to a higher mortality of female
children and adolescent girls. Similarly, Kowaleski (2013)
paid attention to the scarcity of women found in her review
of European cemeteries (11
th
– 15
th
centuries, yielding sex
ratios of about 112 to 122); she hypothesised a high female
infant mortality as a result of diferential behaviour towards
girls, as, for example, the access to food during hard times.
However, both authors fnally stated that no discrimination
against girls could be demonstrated, either from written
sources or from markers of stress that were readable on adult
skeletons, and there was no solid proof of such inferior care
compared to males.
Given the nature of the unearthed cemetery containing
a substantial portion of mass burials, the frst factor that
should be inspected in a discussion of recorded results is sex-
selective mortality. In general, selective mortality indicates
individual-level heterogeneity in the risk of death (Milner
et al.
, 2008, p.586). With regard to gender, it could have
led to shifts in the frequency of male or female deaths, for
example, during an epidemic or famine-epidemic events.
Such a shift has also been documented in the recent past,
during the COVID-19 pandemic, with male mortality from
COVID-19 infection higher than in women (Vahidy
et al.
,
2021). In past populations, male-female diferences during
large-scale mortality crises were analysed both using death
records (Alfani and Bonetti, 2019; Lazzari
et al.
, 2020) and
osteological approaches (Bramanti
et al.
, 2018). Studies
focusing on medieval or post-medieval plague mortality
observed an inhomogeneous distribution of females and
males in diferent European sites and thus suggest that deaths
by plague were not signifcantly afected by gender (DeWitte,
2009; Alfani and Bonetti, 2019; Lazzari
et al.
, 2020).
A diferent picture could be occurring for victims of
famine or famine-epidemic events. Signifcant amounts of
research have suggested that women have a greater capacity
to survive famine than do men and that the fundamental
cause is their superior ability to deal with periods of severe
undernutrition or malnutrition (Grayson, 1996; MacIntyre,
2002; Zarulli
et al.
, 2018; Van Bavel
et al.
, 2020, p.126). It is
also known that females generate a more vigorous immune
response after an encounter with an infectious agent (most
kinds of bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi) and thus could
better resist the famine-accompanying diseases which killed
starving people rather than outright starvation (Scrimshaw,
1987; Lotter and Altfeld, 2019; Van Bavel
et al.
, 2020,
p.126). In our study, mass graves Nos. 2, 10, 13 and 24 are
now assigned to the period of the presumed famine of 1318,
yielding a high sex ratio (328 males to 100 females) that
could actually imply a higher resistance of women against
the catastrophic event that has not yet been specifed (but
falls into the second decade of the 14
th
century corresponding
to famine). From the summary of all mass graves, it is clear
that men predominate in 18 (of 27) and women only in 5 (in
one case, the gender ratio is balanced). When we calculated
the sex ratio of the mortality crises assemblage (CCHURCH
MASS, 138.1), it emerged that this number was lower than
the same ratio obtained from single (non-catastrophic)
interments (CCHURCH IND) (167.3).
One explanation that seems more credible is that the
skewed sex ratio was not the result of an excess death of
males, but rather it was caused by the gain in migration
and simply mirrors the original – and gender-unbalanced –
population composition. Graves neighbouring the Cemetery
Church are dated back to the years of Kutná Hora’s prosperity.
Silver began to be extracted in massive quantities and the
mining operations required a large number of workers who
could occupy the newly emerging jobs (Knapp and Pigott,
1997; Craddock, 2014). This could and would have driven
the migration: a structured and well-studied aspect of human
behaviour, typically performed by a defned subgroup with
specifc aims, targeted at a known destination – and equally
as important as birth and death in determining the structure
of the population,
i.e.
, the very last way for individuals to
enter or leave a defned system (Anthony, 1990; Morgan,
2013). At the same time, it is a factor infuencing the
proportional representation of men and women (primarily
a migration of labour) (Kalibová, 2005, p.17). Sex-selective
labour migration can be identifed across all historic periods
up to the most recent times (Tumbe, 2015; Leibert, 2016);
however, there is scarcely any comparative work on the
gendered dimension of migration during the Middle Ages
(Kowaleski, 2013).
Likewise, there is only a limited number of studies of
European cemeteries directly associated with mining sites
(irrespective of the raw material mined). But a gender
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Hana Brzobohatá, Jan Frolík, Filip Velímský: Wealth or Just Job Seekers: Medieval Skeletal Series from Kutná Hora-Sedlec (Czech Republic)
with a Notable Surplus of Men
88
imbalance in favour of men (analogous to our results) is
discernible from the earliest prehistoric times to the early
modern period: almost double the surplus of men in the
Early Iron age Hallstatt cemetery in Austria (Pany-Kucera
et al.
, 2019) and double the surplus of men in the 16
th
century
cemetery in the Swedish Sala (Bäckström and Price, 2016).
In the absence of censuses and other statistical sources for the
entire medieval period, only indirect evidence is available on
immigrating individuals or on settlers as a group (Szende,
2019). Nevertheless, according to one of the estimates, there
may have been upwards of 100,000 miners across Europe
in the early 16
th
century and these would have been spread
quite thinly from English Durham to Tuscany and from the
French Alps to Kutná Hora (Nef, 1964, p.43; cf. Geltner
and Weeda, 2021). Some individuals may have arrived to
Kutná Hora from neighbouring rural districts, but foreign
specialists must have come from more remote regions where
they had already developed advanced techniques of building
shafts and galleries (mostly from Germany). During the
European mining boom, after one area had been exploited,
miners and experts would most likely have moved to another
mining centre and brought their practical knowledge with
them (Štefánik, 2010, p.176; Szende, 2011, p.195; Boron
and Rozmus, 2014; Krzewińska
et al.
, 2018; Asmussen
and Long, 2020). The possible scenario of women leaving
medieval Kutná Hora (for example, in feeing from the
plague-stricken area) should also be considered, but it is
difcult to estimate if it would have happened to any large
extent.
As with the majority of other bioarchaeological research,
our current study is subject to limitations. The line between
catastrophic and non-catastrophic datasets is not as clear as
it might seem. As crises came and then gradually came to
an end, some of the catastrophic victims, the frst and the last
ones, can also be “hidden” among the individual interments.
It has been shown recently in the study of Cessford
et al.
(2021), who studied medieval Cambridgeshire burial
grounds and identifed bodies as positive for the plague
bacterium yet interred in a normative way. The uncertainty
of the character of some mortality crises may be mentioned
as a second limitation. Older and younger stratigraphic
levels of catastrophic graves are assigned to particular
events (the famine in 1318 and plague in 1348–1350) based
on their chronological coincidence with these pan-European
disasters. Demographic crises had two basic causes,
which were very often combined: epidemics and famine
(Steinbachová, 2001). This reason alone makes it very
difcult to verify the true cause of mass dying resulting in
the construction of chronologically-older (probably famine?)
mass burials in Kutná Hora-Sedlec. A pilot anthropological
and palaeopathological study of 68 individuals recovered
from three mass graves assigned to famine revealed that the
general pattern of non-adult mortality, the value of certain
demographic indices, and the pattern of skeletal lesions
align more closely with the reference data for mortality
caused by plague (de Lepinau
et al.
, 2021). However, such
data will be signifcantly enlarged in the future and the fnal
results may difer after the inclusion of all chronologically-
older, famine-assigned skeletons. Regarding the second,
chronologically-younger, mortality crisis, as yet no genetic
analyses have been performed (although planned), and we
lack archaeogenetic verifcation of the specifc causative
agent (plague bacterium).
Another question that can be asked is whether the studied
samples are sufciently representative of the original
undisturbed cemeteries that spread over a much larger area.
As many other medieval, urban burial grounds, Kutná Hora-
Sedlec cemeteries have been excavated only in part and
more skeletons lie buried in an inaccessible area, or have
been damaged by early modern and modern graves (some of
them have probably been lifted and arranged in the charnel
house). The possibility that a strongly higher proportion of
women may have been interred in a non-excavated area is
not very likely since usually there are no distinct gender-
based clusters found in non-clerical, medieval burial areas
(Sullivan, 2004).
A similar limitation accompanies all bioarchaeological
investigations and we must accept the fact that the funeral
assemblage does not depict a faithful picture of the population
living at that time (Roberts and Grauer, 2001; Brůžek, 2008;
Zazvonilová
et al.
, 2020). One of the possible reasons for
the smaller number of female skeletons is their fragility
and diferential preservation. Diferent components of the
skeleton exhibit various preservation patterns, as they vary
in their hardness and structure (Pinhasi and Bourbou, 2008).
Male bones – including skulls/pelvises – are larger, denser,
and more likely to be better preserved and recovered from
the burial context (Gower
et al.
, 2019). Almost every human
skeletal assemblage contains a high number of non-sexed
adult remains and unknown quantities of men and women
could be hidden here. The fact, that unsexed individuals are
often the majority of the adults, prevents us from seeing
clearly true diferences based on sex (Cintas-Peña and
Herrero Corral, 2020). Therefore, the size of this ambiguous
group needs to be reduced to a minimum – and additional
sex estimates can be based on the dimensions acquired from
well-preserved limb bones. Whenever such a solution is
chosen, consideration of interpopulation variation in skeletal
size and the need of a customised (population-specifc)
procedure is absolutely essential (Wrobel
et al.
, 2002;
Brůžek and Velemínský, 2006; Kotěrová
et al.
, 2017). To
achieve this goal, we performed secondary sex estimation
on the data collected from CATHEDRAL group, and which
resulted in a decrease of the sex ratio from the original 341.9
down to 265.3 (secondary sex estimation performed in the
CCHURCH TOTAL sample resulted in only a slight decrease
in sex ratio). The use of the above-mentioned procedure is
still far from bioarchaeological routine, so it is as yet very
difcult to trace studies documenting a similar change. As
for Bohemia, the study of the medieval-early modern burial
ground adjacent to the church of St. Mary Magdalene in
Pilsen can be mentioned. Based on the primary (pelvic) sex
estimation, a surplus of women had initially been stated here
(with a sex ratio of about 66), but the value changed after
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Hana Brzobohatá, Jan Frolík, Filip Velímský: Wealth or Just Job Seekers: Medieval Skeletal Series from Kutná Hora-Sedlec (Czech Republic)
with a Notable Surplus of Men
89
including newly-sexed individuals to a slight predominance
of men (110.5). In this particular case, using population-
specifc equations and a secondary sex diagnosis caused the
change of the sex ratio in the opposite direction compared to
this study (Galeta
et al.
, 2015, p.240). Either way, it points to
a key limitation of the study: although we were able to reduce
the percentage of unsexed adults, a certain proportion of
adult individuals remain undetermined even after secondary
sex diagnosis (19–31.6%). As was mentioned above, this
subgroup can contain an unknown number of males and
females and the failure to recognise their sex may lead to
a misleading interpretation of the demography of the Kutná
Hora population.
Our datasets date back to the High and Late Middle Ages
and thus, a logical step would be to compare them with
analogous burial grounds from the wider region. A surplus
of men has been observed, for example, in Žatec (sex ratio
131.4) and Prague – Klárov (sex ratio 133.3) (Stránská,
1998; Schmitt
et al.
, 2001). However, the necropolises of
Ducové, Koválov and Prague Týn Church yielded a balanced
sex ratio (Hanáková
et al.
, 1984; Měřínský
et al.
, 1984;
Stránská, 1997). Although there are hundreds of medieval
cemeteries known from the region (see the review in Živný,
2005), the number of comparable skeletal series of a similar
size (hundreds or thousands of skeletons) with relevant
anthropological documentation is very limited (Živný, 2010,
p.63). Furthermore, most of the local medieval skeletal
series show a signifcant overlap with the Early Middle
Ages or the Early Modern Ages. For these reasons, the
most appropriate comparative assemblage appears to be the
skeletal series from the cemetery surrounding the St. James
Church in Brno (Moravia), dated from the 13
th
–16
th
century
and excavated in 2001 and 2003–2004. This cemetery
involved only a small proportion of catastrophic burials, and
the individuals buried in mass graves accounted for only
4.1 % of all corpses buried (n=1046). Similar to the Kutná
Hora datasets, a high proportion of medieval colonists can be
presumed here, especially from German-speaking countries
(Živný, 2010, p.33). The subgroup of adults unearthed at
Brno, St. James Church burial ground, consisted of 299 men
and 243 women and yielded a sex ratio of 123. It is obvious
that men dominated over women here, but the predominance
was not as pronounced as in the datasets derived from the
cemeteries of Kutná Hora.
It should be noted that the bioarchaeological data
presented here can be considered an initial indicator of
the full potential of the Kutná Hora-Sedlec skeletal series.
Nevertheless, the fndings of this study can be understood as
a frst archaeological and anthropological corroboration of
a large-scale sex-selective labour migration, which, so far,
has only been identifable from historical sources. Future
isotope and archaeogenetic investigations are necessary to
validate what proportion of the cemetery population did not
grow up locally and from what distances did these people
come from.
Acknowledgements
This project was funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech
Republic (Project No. 21-09637S).
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