THE ROMAN MASSACRE THAT NEVER HAPPENED

New research debunks the theory of a slaughter at Maiden Castle

- Dixe Wills

There's nothing quite like a good horror story from the distant past to put a shiver down the spine. And one of Britain's most horrifying episodes from the Roman era was revealed in Dorset in 1936 with the discovery of the Maiden Castle “war cemetery”. Archaeologists Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler unearthed a large number of adult skeletons by the hillfort’s east gate, an unusually high proportion of them showing unmistakable marks of violence to the head and upper body.

It seemed clear to Mortimer Wheeler that they had been killed in a bloody battle defending the fort from Roman attackers sometime in the mid-first century CE. “The dead had met a violent, sometimes savagely violent end,” Wheeler declared.