The osteological analysis of Conquest Man’s remains, the physical examination of his bones, built a portrait of someone who had lived a physically demanding life and survived it.

He was stocky and muscular.

He stood just over five feet tall, which would have been roughly average for an adult male of his era.

Eleventh-century English men were not dramatically shorter than modern people, that myth has been comprehensively disproven by skeletal studies, but they were working with nutrition and healthcare so limited by modern standards that reaching fifty or sixty years old in good enough condition to leave a recognizable skeletal record was already something.

The age estimate, fifty to sixty years old at death, comes from examining specific markers in the skeleton.