shoes&pattens7

Sizes and wear patterns: social inferences

107

144 Wear and distortion caused by normal walking (cf. Fig. 143). Wear can be seen at the heel on the outer (lateral) side, across the fuli width of the tread and at the tip of the toe; the upper has been pushed inwards at the heel. Late 14th-century.

also explains why the ąuarters often bulge out slightly on the inner (medial) side (Fig. 144).

Conversely, when the sole is most heavily worn on the inner side of the heel, it indicates that the owner’s feet pointed inwards, rather than out-wards, as he walked - the condition popularly known as ‘pigeon-toed’. A particularly elear example of this is a shoe worn by a very smali child (Fig. 145; for reconstruction, see above, Fig. 47). The ąuarters and the sole are both severely damaged and, because the shoe was distorted inwards even morę than usual, it seems that the ąuarters began to split, were cut and restitched together. A morę serious abnormality is signified by soles whose tread, under the metatarsal heads, is particularly heavily worn and whose heel is rela-tively untouched. This pattem suggests that the wearer shuffled along or, in extreme cases, walked entirely on his toes. Such a manner of walking is most often caused by weakness of the Achilles tendon, the ankle or the calf muscles, which restricts the movement of the foot and prevents it rocking easily from heel to toe. The result is that the foot is almost fiat when it strikes the ground. The condition is ąuite common today, but the use of stacked heels on nearly all walking shoes makes it less noticeable.