Archaeologists reveal life stories of hundreds of people from medieval Cambridge

Examination of remains in hospital grounds uses DNA analysis and other disciplines to build biographies'

Archaeologists at Cambridge University have reconstructed the biographies" of hundreds of the city's ordinary medieval residents by examining their skeletons in detail, using a wealth of scientific data to fill out the life stories of poor or disadvantaged people whose names were never recorded.

By examining the bones of more than 400 adults and children who were buried in the grounds of a medieval hospital between AD1200 and 1500, the researchers have built up a detailed picture of the lives, health and even appearance of those who lived and died in Cambridge in the period.