ARCHAEOLOGY
Buried: An Alternative History of the First Millennium in Britain
by Alice Roberts
Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, £20
Professor Alice Roberts opens her warm and illustrative history of Britain's first millennium AD with an enigma. The enigma is, of course, made of bones, because Roberts is a broadcaster and author who has shared many of the best stories of British archaeology in the last 20 years by using the tools of her academic trade - most especially, her up-close and personal knowledge of the anatomy of death. Roberts' experience in parsing the complex scientific research behind the work of digging up the dead stands her in good stead here, as she takes the reader hundreds of years into the distant past.
The chapters flow through the centuries, occasionally eddying back and forth, but always taking in the vast number of ways to dispose of the dead in Britain. From a cremation at Caerleon 1,800 years ago, she takes us to the difficult world of death in infancy, exposing a tragic story told in tiny remains found at Yewden Roman villa. After that we visit the site of Great Whelnetham, where Roberts draws a line between decapitation burials, the brutalized bodies of slaves and the fear of the evil dead.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2022-Ausgabe von BBC History Magazine.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2022-Ausgabe von BBC History Magazine.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
"It had been a tiny triumph, but it had been a British triumph"
MAX HASTINGS talks to Rob Attar about a daring airborne raid that provided a much-needed boost to Britain's morale in the darkest days of the Second World War
Dancing with the Devil
ROGER MOORHOUSE is impressed by a book that traces the fortunes of the diplomats charged with managing the west's wartime alliance with Josef Stalin
Victorian cucumber ice cream
ELEANOR BARNETT samples the delights of an unusual and refreshing version of one of the world's favourite summer treats
Anne Boleyn, ‘princess' of France
JOANNE PAUL is impressed by an account of how the Tudor queen's continental connections shaped her meteoric rise and dramatic fall
FIVE THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT...Roman Britain
Rob Collins, who is teaching our new HistoryExtra Academy course, shares five surprising facts about life in Britain during the Roman occupation
War and pieces
Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business
Gulbadan Begum The Mughal Jane Austen
Gulbadan Begum was meant to live a quiet life in the confines of a Mughal harem. Instead she made her mark on history twice: first, embarking on a pioneering pilgrimage to Islam’s holy cities; second, writing a remarkable history of her dynasty. RUBY LAL tells her story
Succession 1603
The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change. But, writes Susan Doran, it wasn't long before tensions began to rise between the incoming king and his new subjects
Horror in France
On the morning of 10 June 1944, the residents of Oradour-sur-Glane were going about their lives as normally as was possible in occupied France: cooking, washing, shopping, playing. Little did they know that they were about to become the victims of one of the most infamous massacres of the Second World War.
"IT'S TIME TO WRITE WOMEN BACK INTO THESE WORLD-CHANGING ANCIENT EVENTS"
Daisy Dunn tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the deeds of the extraordinary female figures who shaped them