Ancestors: A prehistory of Britain in seven burials

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Because the chemical signatures in food and water are different in different locations, archaeologists can make informed guesses about whether the skeletons that they find grew up locally or not - by analysing their teeth enamel. All of which provides an instructive comparison to the Amesbury Archer, also named the King of Stonehenge by the media 4, who was buried over 4,000 years ago in 2,300 BCE in the South of England. THE FUNNY THING IS, as inaccessible as prehistoric peoples might seem today, their culture still defines our landscape. In hillforts; in long barrows. In fact the book feels a bit like it was written as a script for a TV program with interviews replayed word for word, and lots of cheesy “I’m on my way to Salisbury museum to meet...” moments. When Roberts started talking about her sandals (walking through a bog) as if they had feelings I felt strong echoes of the part memoir part travelogue Nomad written by that other well known TV (and radio) presenter Alan Partridge. The first person narrative style of Alan’s book, in which he recounts a journey taken in the footsteps of his father - and occasional tangential musings - is surprisingly similar. And Alan also anthropomorphised his footwear, naming his walking shoes Fernando and Denise respectively, after his two estranged children. The God distraction

We need to be as objective as possible in our approach to history and archaeology while recognising that our interpretations will always be coloured by our own political and cultural perspectives. "One of many fascinations of Alice’s writing is the description of the radiocarbon-dating revolution, first developed in the 40s. Prior to that, archaeologists had to piece together, as well as they could, the ages of artefacts and bones through their relative position in the ground, or by comparing styles. Today, that technology is even more advanced: Alice’s friend and colleague Professor Alistair Pike, based at Southampton University, has now dated cave paintings in Iberia to at least 25,000 years before the arrival of modern humans. In other words, Alice explains, ‘Neanderthals were cave-painting 60,000 years ago. Just unbelievable.’ I liked that this book is written by a professional archaeologist who didn't go out of her way to dumb everything down for the benefit of general public and to please everybody. I loved that she spoke about her personal atheistic views sincerely and unapologetically. It took but a small step to name this skeleton the Red Lady, or – as he romantically preferred – the Witch of Paviland. She might even, he delicately alludes, have been a prostitute, owing to the location of a Roman camp nearby.

From the revered to the reviled: there’s another account of bones found in Cheddar showing definite signs of cannibalism: bodies skinned and gnawed by fellow humans, ‘smashing open long bones to get at the marrow; right down to fingers, which also showed signs of having been chopped off and munched on’. (Though, as Alice cautions, be very careful about drawing conclusions. We don’t know if these corpses were eaten as vengeful victory over enemy tribes; a respectful way of honouring deceased friends and relatives; or even as a result of desperate hunger.) She also avoids too much jargon. My “jargon test” for any book on prehistory is how often the author uses the word “liminal” 6. I’m happy to report that Roberts restrains herself until chapter 8 and then only uses it once.Finally the book seems very up to date, reporting on excavations in the last few years and some still underway. For example I really enjoyed reading about two excavations from 2011 and 2017 where Neolithic long barrows, much to everyone’s surprise, were discovered to be the burial places of deliberately burned great halls, which were only later turned into the more familiar stone lined bone chambers hundreds of years later. The writing style The 'Red Lady of Paviland' skeleton, laid out in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (Image: Ethan Doyle White/Wikimedia/Creative Commons) 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”. 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. In summary, I was disappointed. I read Ancestors in the hope of learning more about prehistoric Britons. In the event, I mostly learned about British archaeologists, who are, in broad outline, pretty similar to American molecular biologists or German physicists, or academics anywhere.

Without being too territorial about it, if you live in a certain place and you go out for walks, you’re communing with the ancestors. Disclaimer: just in case there was any doubt this “ceremony of the breaking of the bow” detail is my own uninformed speculation! ↩︎ But if we’re really going to understand our prehistoric ancestors, archaeology is where it’s at. ‘The physical remains of the ancestors themselves, and all of their amazing culture.’This book was *exactly* what I was looking for: an engaging archaeological history of Britain, with particular focus on skeletons/burials from the Paleo, Meso, and Neolithic. Delighted to find such an on-point book to nourish my anthropology fascination. Our teeth are incredibly durable - we only get one adult set so they need to be. And they are coated with a layer of super hard enamel when the teeth develop. This enamel letter is not replaced during your lifetime, we need to look after it! This also means that the chemical signatures of the food and water you consume when your teeth are forming is detectable in your teeth for as long as your teeth survive. Burial 7: In the modern day - the cremated remains of the pioneer archaeologist Pitt Rivers, from the year 1900. Professor Alice Roberts on the Rutland Roman Villa dig while filming Digging For Britain (Image: BBC/Rare TV) It takes Ancestors a while to warm up, but when it does, it is really fabulous. Roberts takes us through the detailed archaeology/anthropology of burials in Britain, exploring what we know and what we guess about what this means.

Perhaps one of the problems – certainly when it comes to British prehistory - is the paucity of written accounts before the arrival of highly literate Romans on our isle.

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Not a regular interest of mine, but I’ve seen the author present some good BBC TV documentaries which she does very well, and the book was staring at me expectantly in a local bookshop, so I bought it on a curious whim. Burial 5: The Amesbury Archer from 2400-2300 BCE i.e. 4,400 years ago, buried a few miles from Stonehenge. Poorly structured, when it could have been so simple. And no photographs or illustrations. Where did it go so wrong? This is my first book by Roberts, and I had not realised that she was a TV personality (although I had seen her in BBC programmes on the Celts and Stonehenge), so she does play to this expectation in her writing some of the time. This did work for me, as it made the book more personal and engaging, especially her trips to Salisbury Museum and discussion of Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (there is material for another book there!). Ancestors is about an ancient world. But it’s also about 21st-century technology that’s as revealing as if the bodies themselves were to sit up in their graves and talk.