Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain

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I love Prof Alice Roberts tv programs but this audiobook mostly was like listening to someone read a dissertation - full of passion, but hard to wade through.

However, Roberts makes the point that whilst rich in artefacts, hoards have no archaeological context, so she goes on to discuss the review of artefacts found at a large Anglo-Saxon cemetery at the Meads, northwest of Sittingbourne in Kent amongst other sites. It’s not always easy, and how much I can reliably infer depends on the state of preservation of the human remains.

But across the rest of the Roman world, there were several other examples known to Mortimer Wheeler – from western France to Italy and Sicily – some with lead pipes, others with earthenware pipes. And although the grassy banks of ‘King Arthur’s Round Table’ provided a convenient source of dressed stone, ready for use in much less ambitious building projects in the town, much of Roman Caerleon lay undisturbed, underground, forgotten. Those islanders had control of precious resources – grain, cattle, gold, silver and iron – and had also assisted with uprisings in northern Gaul a century before. The lack of evidence always means that there are no simple answers, just a number of hypotheses, or believable stories. In it, he described how some of the British chieftains had pledged allegiance to Rome, and were happily paying duties on exports and imports between Britain and Gaul, managing ‘to make the whole of the island virtually Roman property’.

Marching westwards through southern England, under the leadership of Vespasian, they brought Dorset and Devon – the territories of the Durotriges and Dumnonii – under Roman control. Loved this book - i found the exploration of burial sites a bit more engaging here than in Ancestors, but the overall message was a bit overstated. The archaeological evidence (burial practices and grave goods) suggest not only that older, native British burial rites were wide-spread, but that grave goods suggest a far closer connection to more northern regions of Europe. It is always helpful to hear all sides and I am sure the author would have no wish for anyone to change their entire belief system due to things found in these pages. In this book she takes a long hard look at some historical assumption about the first millennium in Britain, too, in particular the great Anglo-Saxon migration theory.Alice May Roberts is an English anatomist, osteoarchaeologist, physical anthropologist, palaeopathologist, television presenter and author. Chapter 6 discusses skeletons found in a ditch at Llanbedrgoch on Anglesey, were they Welsh defenders of the site, captured Viking raiders, or slaves.

Interestingly, people only started to be buried in churchyards from the sixth century CE - again, a consequence of the development of Christian doctrine.For example: in the chapter on Vikings, Roberts takes five pages to meander through some thoughts she's had about linguistic similarities between English and Scandinavian languages that strike her as too extreme to be explained by Viking raids. He may have ruled that region from a base in Chichester, and perhaps that base was the palace at Fishbourne – the largest Roman palace anyone’s ever found north of the Alps, larger even than Buckingham Palace. Missing from many of these oversimplified debates is any discussion of economies - as important in the Roman Empire as it is in modern Europe - and the distribution of power.

And so we get unending blather that really feels like she got drunk and just rambled on to her bartender about her thoughts and feelings regarding burials in Roman and early Medieval Britain. At Books2Door, we believe that reading is a fundamental skill that every child should have to help improve their vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking skills. Roberts discusses what can be determined of the first millennium British history, culture and migration from bones; grave goods; ancient DNA, isotope studies and other archaeological findings. And the information we can gain is increasing rather than decreasing - not just isotope scans of bone enamel but now genetics to look at the heredity of people.Just two years later, when Titus died of a fever, Vespasian’s younger son, Domitian, succeeded him, and would reign for fifteen years. Detailed archaeology – trowel work – as well as historical imagination are still essential to understanding the past. Funerary ritual and burial itself represent attempts to understand mortality, to make sense of loss, to fix the departed in memory, and to tie them – and us – to a landscape.