The issue at Wisby was that most of the dead were the peasants and townsmen trying to protect their city from the invaders - they weren't rich knights in the latest metal armour. After the battle the bodies were left lying around for 3 days, and when it came time to bury them, nobody wanted to strip the (stinking) bodies, so they got buried in their stuff.
The famous wound drawing in the Wisby book only shows limb cuts because they would usually leave a mark on the bone, and thus could be categorised. A lot of the torso wounds might well be fatal without leaving tell-tale marks on the bones, so they didn't bother categorising them. That said, there appeared to be a few people take a limb hit, followed up by a killing strike to the head (Including one unfortunate who had both legs shopped off at the shin by one hit, with a followup to the jaw).
There appeared to be a fair bit of abdominal coats of plates (the classic "Wisby coat of plates" even) but not that much in the way of limb protection. There was some mail, but a mail coif does not appear to stop an axe crushing your skull. There were a few really neat gauntlets (119 pieces of metal in one gauntlet!).
I have the book sitting on my bookshelf, so I'm happy to discuss it if people want.
Stephen
-- Stephen Rennell steve_at_... Wellington, New Zealand GPG fingerprint - CD0F 78C6 1AAE 8726 803A F1D0 F123 8486 062F 0317
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