A COLLECTION of 900-year-old bones is helping to shed new light on the struggle for life in medieval England.

Twelfth-century attitudes to death have been revealed with evidence of the struggle to save an unborn infant.

Experts from English Heritage have analysed the remains of a rare burial unearthed at Wharram Percy, England's best preserved medieval village, near Malton, North Yorkshire.

The site was the location for the longest running excavation in British archaeology - from 1950 to 1990. During that time, 687 skeletons were recovered which have since been used to open a window on village life around the time of the first millennia.

One of the most perplexing graves was that of a woman who died from tuberculosis (TB) sometime between the age of 25 and 35.

She died during pregnancy, but her baby, which was ten weeks short of full-term, was found carefully placed between her thighs with the head pointing west in Christian fashion.

And English Heritage skeletal biologist Simon Mays now believes that points to an attempted Caesarean operation.

"The most likely explanation for this double burial is that the pregnant woman died of TB and the foetus was cut free from the womb in the hope it might survive," he said.

"Caesareans don't seem to have been carried out on living women at this time, probably because it was far too dangerous.

"However, physicians and priests did recommend that midwives should try and extract the baby from the womb if the mother died.

"It is probable the foetus was found to be dead, or died soon afterwards, and so was buried with its mother.

"Few burials in the UK have been found offering evidence of such a scenario."

About 15 per cent of Wharram's graves contained children under one year old, but there was only one burial of a mother and infant.

Infant survival rates were surprisingly good at the time due to the beneficial effects of breast milk, but once weaned, children became less healthy, with malnutrition and disease kicking in.

"We tend to think medieval people somehow got used to death because life could be so nasty, brutish and short," said Mr Mays.

"But this burial tends to rebut this and suggests life was every bit as precious, leading to drastic acts to preserve it."