Ancestors: A prehistory of Britain in seven burials

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In April 2012, Alice Roberts presented Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice on BBC Two. From 22 to 24 October 2012, she appeared, with co-presenter Dr George McGavin, in the BBC series Prehistoric Autopsy, which discussed the remains of early hominins such as Neanderthals, Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis. In May and June 2013 she presented the BBC Two series Ice Age Giants. In September 2014, she was a presenter on the Horizon programme Is Your Brain Male or Female?.

On the surface, this is a book about a few selected burials in the area that is now the UK. The burials are described in detail, as is the history of their discovery, excavation and the theories around them. There are very few pictures in the book -- really just a few paintings by Alice Roberts herself. This is a good thing, because it means she has to paint word pictures of the burials, and her writing is beautiful. In August 2010, she presented a one-hour documentary on BBC Four, Wild Swimming, inspired by Roger Deakin's book Waterlog. [36] Roberts presented a four-part BBC Two series on archaeology in August–September 2010, Digging for Britain. [37] [38] Roberts explained, "We're taking a fresh approach by showing British archaeology as it's happening out in the field, from the excitement of artefacts as they come out of the ground, through to analysing them in the lab and working out what they tell us about human history." [39] The series returned in 2011 and again (on BBC Four) in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. [40] Whereas actually, I think what we're saying here is, it's far from anonymous, at least in those tombs, where we've got this evidence of relatives buried in the same place. And perhaps what we are seeing is, is kind of family plots, you know, which we're obviously familiar with, later on, and up until quite recently. And it may be that these are essentially family tombs for the elite. Because we are entering a period of time where we're seeing a more kind of hierarchical structure of society. And they're making their mark in the landscape. It’s a fascinating time, because this Neolithic period is the first time we get people really stamping their identity on the landscape. And, you know, creating big monumental architecture in the landscape, from stones circles, to these amazing chamber tombs.

So there's a possibility that that has then, you know, passed into legend, as it were, and then gone through time. But I think that the Neolithic tombs are more broadly interesting in that way, it has a lot to do with collective memory. And it's a lot to do with, you know, we're seeing quite a lot of these tombs containing relatives, for instance, not necessarily in one person – as in this man who was a product of incest – but we're seeing …. Primrose Grange was a father and a daughter, there was a father and a son buried in two separate but fairly close tombs in Ireland as well. And then an instance of brothers buried in a tomb in Trumpington Meadows in Cambridgeshire. So this is fascinating, because we just haven't been able to get that information before genetics came along. We've wondered about what these Neolithic chambered tombs are, we've known for a long time that they’re communal burials, that there's a lot of human remains in some of them, and then wondered about what that means. The human remains are quite often fairly mixed up. So there's been one hypothesis that perhaps, once you die, you kind of enter this realm of the dead as a sort of communal entity, you'd lose your own individual identity, which would be subsumed into that communal identity, and it's somehow anonymizing. Yeah, there's something I noticed in your book a lot, actually, is just the importance of narrative. And yeah, the way that that brings the science to life for a non-scientist. But as you say, also does seem quite integral to it. Gallagher, Paul (30 August 2014). "Alice Roberts: She's done pretty well, for a boffin without a beard". The Independent on Sunday. Archived from the original on 31 August 2014 . Retrieved 16 October 2017. This is a detailed and richly imagined account of the deep history of the British landscape, which brings alive those “who have walked here before us”, and speaks powerfully of a sense of connectedness to place that is rooted in common humanity: “we are just the latest human beings to occupy this landscape”. Although Roberts does draw on genomic evidence to show the migration of peoples in prehistory, what is so fascinating about this book is the way it weaves together scientific and cultural interpretation. Detailed archaeology – trowel work – as well as historical imagination are still essential to understanding the past.

In March and April 2023, Roberts presented the four-part Channel 4 series Fortress Britain with Alice Roberts. [61]Alice May Roberts FRSB (born 19 May 1973) [2] is an English academic, TV presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. She was president of the charity Humanists UK between January 2019 and May 2022. [3] She is now a vice president of the organisation. [4] Early life and education [ edit ] Alice Roberts: Boys' and girls' brains aren't so different". Radio Times . Retrieved 17 October 2015. But there's some really profound bigger picture stuff as well. It's quite a disruptive technology at the moment, because it's coming along and providing answers that we didn't even know were possible 10 years ago. But I think it will get to the point where it becomes an almost standard thing to do when you're analysing human remains, in the same way that we use radiocarbon dating to work out the date of any organic remains. I think that we'll be seeing genomes used much more frequently and much more widely.

Indeed the grave itself contained nearly a hundred items – including copper knives, gold objects, boars’ tusks and a shale ring – making it the most richly furnished grave from the period that had ever been discovered in Britain. The grave goods and the broken remains of five distinctive pottery beakers with a characteristic upside-down bell shape revealed it to be a Beaker burial. As Alice Roberts writes, the number of items and the care with which the grave had been created shows that “the Archer was a Very, Very Important Person”. This is a terrific, timely and transporting book - taking us heart, body and mind beyond history, to the fascinating truth of the prehistoric past and the present' Bettany Hughes Roberts studied medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine (now part of Cardiff University) and graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB BCh) degree, having gained an intercalated Bachelor of Science degree in Anatomy. [7] [10] [11] Research and career [ edit ] Roberts giving a public lecture for the opening of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath in 2018 And so it goes. Roberts takes us through her seven burials, using them to describe two centuries of British archaeology, its advances and controversies. She does occasionally touch on human prehistory -- this typically happens when she quotes some actual archaeologist whom she interviewed. (Roberts, it should be said, is at this point in her career more of a television personality than a practicing archaeologist. Nothing wrong with that, especially as she knows her stuff, especially when it comes to bones.) It is completely clear that the archaeologists Roberts talked to are much more interested in human prehistory than in archaeologistology. You know,’ Alice Roberts says, ‘we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of years of human history – all around the world… What we really see, when we start looking properly, is the incredible diversity of those cultures, through time and through space.’

Alice Roberts hands Humanists UK Presidency to Adam Rutherford". Humanists UK . Retrieved 8 June 2022. Let’s return to that Red Lady skeleton. Just by looking at the carefully preserved bones (which she lays out in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History), Alice can see from the left pelvic bone that – far from being a witch – this was an adult male. Mind-bogglingly, radio-carbon dating carried out in 2006 indicated he lived 34,000 years ago, well before the peak of the last Ice Age. In other words, his is the earliest burial found anywhere in Britain. Copson, Andrew; Roberts, Alice (2020). The Little Book of Humanism: Universal lessons on finding purpose, meaning and joy. Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN 978-0349425467.