American Journal of Physical Anthropology doi:10.1002/ajpa.21152
The harsh life on the 15th century Croatia-Ottoman Empire
military border: Analyzing and identifying the reasons for the
massacre in epin Mario laus et al. Excavation of the historic
period cemetery in epin, Croatia revealed the presence of a
large number of perimortem injuries distributed among males,
females, and subadults. Archaeological and historical data
suggest these individuals were victims of a raid carried out by
Turkish akinji light cavalry in 1441. Comparisons with the
frequencies of perimortem trauma in 12 other, temporally
congruent skeletal series from the Balkans (n = 2,123 skeletons)
support this assumption. The role of the akinji in the Ottoman
army was twofold: to supply war captives, and to terrorize and
disperse local populations before the advance of regular troops.
This article tests the hypothesis that the purpose of the 1441
raid was the latter. To accomplish this, perimortem trauma in
the series were analyzed by sex, ag