A medieval man's injuries were the work of an English trebuchet

Archaeologists say a skeleton found at Stirling Castle in Scotland is the first known evidence of death by trebuchet — the medieval siege weapon that could hurl stones weighing more than 300 pounds. Smithsonian Magazine reports that the man’s more than 160 fractures, concentrated on his skull and ribs, reminded one researcher of modern car-crash victims before she concluded a flying stone from a siege engine was the likely cause.

Jo Buckberry, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Bradford, presented the analysis at a recent meeting of the Paleopathology Association. The skeleton, one of nine excavated at the castle in 1997, dates to the Wars of Scottish Independence, and unlike typical battlefield remains shows no sword wounds — instead, massive crushing injuries consistent with being struck from behind at great speed.

The likely culprit was Edward I’s ‘War Wolf’, the largest wooden trebuchet ever built, deployed at the 1304 siege of Stirling Castle, the last stronghold of Scotland’s independence movement. The man, aged between 22 and 34, may have been killed when the king insisted the new machine be tested even after the garrison surrendered. The findings have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.