average heights query

[burntcopper]

so very crap at google-fu.

trying to find out average heights (or at least ranges) of people in Roman Britain, post-empire, saxons and vikings. Also likely heights of Romans (the italian ones, not the gauls/hispanics/everyone else in the empire) (random bunnies will hopefully SHUT UP if I provide them with random data). Anyone got any links to papers/studies? Or can pull the facts off the top of their heads?

Comments

[bedlamsbard]

I don't have the height in inches, but we talked about this last semester in my Vikings class -- the average Roman male was probably around 5'2" to 5'4", I believe, while Gauls, Saxons, Vikings and the like were closer to the height of the modern average man. (Too tall to be normal! So around six feet, maybe?)

(I think this may actually be mentioned in Tacitus, but I already packed my copy up to ship home.)

[ineptshieldmaid]

I would go for archaeological evidence and look for heights of doorways, perhaps? Your average person is just a bit shorter than their doorway, after all.

[cunobaros]

Er... no. What doorways remain from that era are in churches, so not representative. It was often the case, too, that doorways were made too small to enter comfortably, as a defensive measure.