Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain

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IT’S THROUGH a mix of new science and some good old-fashioned anatomy that Alice Roberts opens up secrets of the grave. How can DNA help? She meets a team working on an archaeological genetic project. They are hoping to sequence a thousand ancient genomes. There’s a Greek called Pytheas who sailed up past Britain, which he calls Britannica -the first recorded use of the word - who gives us a bit of a glimpse. This is in the 4th Century BCE. He says he sails even further north and gets to somewhere the sun never sets.’

The word "archaeology" can mean two things -- it can refer to the things that archaeologists are interested in or the things that archaeologists do. Typically when someone says, "I'm interested in archaeology" you would assume they meant the former: that they are interested in early humans, particularly as reflected in their material remains. But if that person was a sociologist speaking in her professional capacity, you might instead think she means the second thing: the activities and interactions of archaeologists. I will refer to the first subject by the shorthand "human prehistory" and the second "archaeologistology". Well, thank you, Alice. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Alice Roberts there, talking about her new book Ancestors. Prof. Roberts maintains a firm hold at all times over what is often highly disputed results and conclusions - and offers her own thoughts regarding the often misused and misunderstood term of what we mean by ' Anglo - Saxon 'Roberts’ journey as an esteemed archaeologist takes us into the vivid world of bones and grave goods: an indication of people’s wealth, status and religious beliefs. Roberts explores various excavations which have unearthed the dark ages and before that, Roman Britain. From plagues to ancient artefacts left behind by migrating people. More and more we are moving ever closer to our past and heritage, rather than moving further from it.

I actually thought it was lazily written, had the air of being rushed, poorly organised, repetitive, and actually in places quite boring. I am no slouch when it comes to difficult books but this seemed often wide of the mark for a popular historian. The first chapter, a long and pointless trudge through the history of archaeology and a deadly parade of forgotten Victorian archaeologists, of little relevance to what I expected to be the point of the book. Constant repetition - she needed a good editor. And stylistically dire - I found the constant and pointless use of hyphenated sub-clauses - like this - really annoying. I've just proved the point. The book is full of them. 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. Alice Roberts is brilliant on bones and archaeology in general. 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. Her understanding of the genetic research enables her to come to a more nuanced viewpoint, which is well worth reading. 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.

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Poorly structured, when it could have been so simple. And no photographs or illustrations. Where did it go so wrong? But it's, you know, it's very, it's very difficult. I mean, there have been times in the pandemic, where we've got this great massive group of scientists advising the government, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, and, you know, there'll be some times when I don't necessarily agree with the analysis, the kind of the solutions that perhaps they're suggesting, but I respect them immensely. But the awful thing that's happened is that they have become, I suppose the fall guys, you know. If there's an unpopular government policy, which draws on the science and the science as it's presented to the government by SAGE, then SAGE members become targeted for abuse online. Yeah. I mean, I guess we probably won't be seeing a return to carving cups out of each other's skulls, or I hope not. But that's a really fascinating point about our current burial practices. I sort of wondered what you think that archaeologists of the future might be able to learn from studying our remains and the way that we commemorate the dead? Alice first trained as a doctor before specialising in the crossover between human anatomy and archaeology and history. And she's published numerous books as well as presenting popular TV and radio shows about science. She's also a Professor of Public Engagement with Science at the University of Birmingham. And she has been vocal about her atheism. She's currently the president of Humanists UK. So her research combines biology and anatomy with archaeology and anthropology to shed new light on ancient history.