Is Abdomen hit location too easy to hit?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

A " implying it's largely the shield that's driving where the defender winds up being injured.

"Dead" rather than "injured". People who survived their wounds don't get counted in these studies.

Shallow slashing wounds to the Torso aren't very likely theoretically. They are the easiest things to armor against but as long as they don't open the abdominal or thoracic cavities they are also disproportionately survivable.

Always be wary of sample bias.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

"Dead" rather than "injured". People who survived their wounds don't get counted in these studies.

Shallow slashing wounds to the Torso aren't very likely theoretically. They are the easiest things to armor against but as long as they don't open the abdominal or thoracic cavities they are also disproportionately survivable.

Always be wary of sample bias.

True, but it seems like, if there were a large number of individuals being struck in the torso, pelvis, and thighs but surviving, there would be some representation of this amongst the dead, if only because someone who suffers a non-life-threatening wound may continue to fight and wind up slain by a later wound - even if they immediately drop and play dead for the rest of the battle, there's always the risk their foe will opt to finish the job or just that they'll wind up trampled. Then again, it sounds like the corpses are pretty much skeletons at this point, so such shallow wounds probably wouldn't show up anyway, outside of perhaps damage to the armor.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Varyon

A quick lookup of that on Wikipedia notes they were using both round and heater shields; the size of the former isn't noted, but I believe the latter were typically what GURPS calls Medium (DB 2), which LT notes typically covers from chin to thighs; I'd expect comparable coverage from the round shields, but may be wrong. And that looks a lot like "the wounds are everywhere the shield typically isn't covering," implying it's largely the shield that's driving where the defender winds up being injured rather than armor (we'd expect a high prevalence of thigh wounds with how difficult those are to armor, but here we see none).

The vast majority of weapons in that battle were two handed so there were hardly any shields at all.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Varyon

True, but it seems like, if there were a large number of individuals being struck in the torso, pelvis, and thighs but surviving, there would be some representation of this amongst the dead, if only because someone who suffers a non-life-threatening wound may continue to fight and wind up slain by a later wound - even if they immediately drop and play dead for the rest of the battle, there's always the risk their foe will opt to finish the job or just that they'll wind up trampled. Then again, it sounds like the corpses are pretty much skeletons at this point, so such shallow wounds probably wouldn't show up anyway, outside of perhaps damage to the armor.

Shallow cuts to the thigh won't show on bones, and are survivable, in and of themselves.

Also, torso wounds that kill often do so slowly, so those bodies wouldn't have been in the Wisby mass burials.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Shallow cuts to the thigh won't show on bones, and are survivable, in and of themselves.

Also, torso wounds that kill often do so slowly, so those bodies wouldn't have been in the Wisby mass burials.

Depends on whether the wounded were executed.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Thordeman's analysis of the injuries on the bodies from the Battle of Wisby (1361).

Thanks for the detailed summary. Thordeman was one of the books I was thinking of, along with some Wars of the Roses forensic studies (Battle of Barnet?).

Keep in mind that many skeletons recovered from a medieval battlefield contact showed multiple, massive wounds. Likely "mechanism of death" was one crippling wound sufficient to cause Knockdown or Unconsciousness followed by lots of follow-up attacks, possibly by multiple attackers, to make sure that the wounded victim stayed down.

It's not unreasonable to assume that some of the victims suffered soft tissue abdominal injuries from thrusting attacks which didn't penetrate deeply enough to leave marks on the spine.

FWIW, Thordeman's analysis of the finds from the Battle of Wisby was published in the 1930s or 1940s. There are still possibly burial pits from the battle that haven't been excavated, that would probably yield much more detailed results if subjected to 21st century forensic analysis.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

FWIW, Thordeman's analysis of the finds from the Battle of Wisby was published in the 1930s or 1940s. There are still possibly burial pits from the battle that haven't been excavated, that would probably yield much more detailed results if subjected to 21st century forensic analysis.

Actually identified mass burial sites are pretty rare. One fairly recently analyzed one I found is https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0256517 but it's far fewer examples.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

It's not unreasonable to assume that some of the victims suffered soft tissue abdominal injuries from thrusting attacks which didn't penetrate deeply enough to leave marks on the spine.

It is very unreasonable to assume that ALL of the abdomenal wounds were soft tissue injuries. One would expect to see damage to the ribs, pelvis, and spine. Personally I would conclude that the number of abdomenal wounds were too low to have any effect on the outcome of the battle.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

It is very unreasonable to assume that ALL of the abdomenal wounds were soft tissue injuries. One would expect to see damage to the ribs, pelvis, and spine. Personally I would conclude that the number of abdomenal wounds were too low to have any effect on the outcome of the battle.

I agree, but since there were remains found at Wisby with obvious arrow wounds (including a skull with multiple arrowheads stuck in it) and other signs of impaling weapon attacks, it is highly likely that there were at least some torso wounds but we're just not seeing them.

As evidence, there is at least one wadded up mail hauberk that has was looks like a major rip in it from something that happened to it before or soon after it was buried.

It's easy to image that minor damage to the ribs or vertebrae could have been missed using TL6 technology or just due to the context of burial and archeological methods used to excavate the remains. I retract my objection if somebody has carefully reexamined the Wisby casualties in the past 30 or so years.

The potential scenarios are that the fallen Wisby defenders did a really good job of protecting their torsos at the expense of their other body parts, their torso armor was amazingly good, or the number of torso wounds was greater than zero but they were missed during Thordeman's investigation.

The first option isn't unreasonable, since untrained melee fighters tend to instinctively guard their torsos, leaving their limbs and heads wide open. Since the Wisby defenders were mostly untrained civilians who got massacred by an army of professional mercenaries, it would make sense.

The second option is just silly, since there's nothing particularly special about the armor recovered from the Wisby battlefield except for the fact that there's a lot of it and it survived to modern times. (I also suspect that it represents armor that wasn't worth looting immediately, so older, lower quality or just too damaged to be worth repairing. Or just really gross because there was a messy corpse inside it.)

The third option is just as likely as the first, since arrows go everywhere during a battle and at least some of them would have had to hit the defenders' torsos.