As anyone who's spent time in the saddle knows, riding a horse can be hard on your body. But can it change the way your skeleton looks?

The answer, according to archaeologists from the University of Colorado Boulder: It's complicated. In a new study, the team drew on a wide range of evidence—from medical studies of modern equestrians to records of human remains across thousands of years.

The researchers concluded that horseback riding can, in fact, leave a mark on human skeletons, such as by subtly altering the shape of the hip joint. But those sorts of changes on their own can't definitively reveal whether people have ridden horses during their lives. Many other activities, even sitting for long periods of time, can also transform human bones.

"In archaeology, there are vanishingly few instances in which we can tie a particular activity unequivocally to skeletal changes," said Lauren Hosek, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at CU Boulder.

She and her colleagues reported their findings Sept. 20 in the journal Science Advances.

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