​​​LL11 lived with a visible, lifelong physical impairment. She lived to a considerable age with support from people around her. The archaeological evidence of her burial tells us that this support was not marginalising. On the contrary, she was valued, commemorated, and placed among her community’s honoured dead. 

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LL11’s story speaks directly to anyone whose disability has roots in a childhood condition that has been part of their entire life course. The assumption that a lifelong, childhood-onset physical impairment must have meant exclusion or early death in the Middle Ages is demonstrably false. The question LL11’s story raises is not whether premodern societies could accommodate lifelong disability – they could – but rather what that accommodation looked like, and what we can learn from it.