The application of medical scanning technologies to archaeological skeletons provides novel insights into the history and potential causes of osteoporosis. The present study investigated bone mineral density (BMD) in medieval skeletons from England and Norway. Comparisons between the two adult populations found no statistically significant differences. This compares with a modern fracture incidence for the femoral neck in women from Norway that is almost three times that in the UK. The pattern of age-related bone loss in medieval men was similar to that seen in men today. In contrast, the pattern in medieval women differed from that of modern young women. On average, medieval women experienced a decrease in BMD at the femoral neck of approximately 23 per cent between the ages of 22 and 35. These losses were partially recovered by age 45, after which BMD values show a decline consistent with post-menopausal bone loss in modern western women. A possible explanation of the rapid decline in BMD in young medieval women is bone loss in connection with pregnancy and lactation in circumstances of insufficient nutrition.

Bone responds to the stresses placed on it by remodeling its structure, which includes shape, trabecular distribution and density distribution. We studied 49 pairs of cadaveric human 1st metatarsal bones in an attempt to establish the pattern of density distribution and to correlate it with the biomechanical function of the bone. We found that the head is denser than the base, the dorsal portion of the whole metatarsal is denser than the plantar portion and the lateral portion of the whole metatarsal is denser than the medial aspect. The same pattern of density with respect to dorsal vs plantar and lateral vs medial was also seen in the head when it was examined alone. When we compared the 4 portions of the head with the same portion of the metatarsal as a whole we found that only the medial portion of the head was less dense than its respective portion of the whole metatarsal. All of these patterns of density distribution are consistent with respect to age, sex and laterality. We have also hypothesised as to the relationship between density distribution seen both in the whole metatarsal and in the metatarsal head and their biomechanical function in the gait cycle.