Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain

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And then the following year, I said just “no I can't do this, I'm not, I'm not believing this.” So maybe it was the process of going through confirmation. But I think you do, you do examine your faith. And unfortunately, it took a little bit longer for the penny to drop for me. But it did, it was a process of questioning. And I think I was doing a lot of science at school as well. And so that kind of questioning and critical thinking extended to my personal beliefs and my thoughts about the world itself. And I realised that even if I were to take most of the Bible (so I was brought up as an Anglican in the Church of England), even if I was to take most of the Bible with a pinch of salt, there are kind of some fundamental things that you do have to believe in, one of these being the existence of God. If you don't believe in the existence of God, you're out of the club, really. So I suppose I became an atheist age 15. 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? Chapter 8 looks at how archaeological DNA analysis (aDNA) is allowing archaeologists to ask and sometimes answer questions that couldn’t previously have been answered with such certainty: An archaeology that – as technology advances almost into the realms of sci-fi – increasingly doesn’t need words inscribed on wax tablets to tell the stories of humans who lived thousands of years BCE.

Great. And so you say he's a pioneer. And there's obviously, as we spoke about at the outset, these huge developments in this field. Where do you think is left to go for the collaboration between genetics and archaeology? But you've asked another question, which is about how scientists get information across to people and whether that's been done particularly well over the course of the pandemic. And I think it's very difficult because what we've seen over the last 18 months is that it's become incredibly political. And it's actually very difficult to tease apart the politics from the science and of course, every individual scientist – scientists aren’t apolitical, but I think the important thing is that they know that that they know, in their professional life, they strive for objectivity. And I think that's, you know, what we really need in a time of pandemic is those scientists that, you know, bring that objectivity of their professional discipline to bear on the evidence that we can see in front of us. And so there's something there about collective memory, but also something about what it means for the living. I mean, tombs are all about the living really, they're not about the dead. And if you're a relative of somebody who's buried in that tomb, which is prominent in the landscape, then perhaps there's something about your land rights, and your right to live in that in that landscape and your own authority as well. 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. The reduction of history to simple dualities - Romans versus indigenous Britons, civilisation versus barbarism - does no-one any favours. The past was more complicated than that, and the political choices we face in the present are, too. Missing from many of these oversimplified debates is any discussion of economies - as important in the Roman Empire as it is in modern Europe - and the distribution of power. The Roman administration brought benefits for some in Britain, threatened others and for some, made very little difference at all. For certain people, in certain areas of Roman Britannia, at particular times, it may have felt like living under an oppressive regime enforced by a military occupation. Others may have seen their horizons, their lifestyles and their incomes expanding. For others again, it may have been almost an irrelevance in the context of daily life. And so often, we either forget or gloss over the reality that slavery was the fuel which kept the cogs of the Imperial machine turning - and, indeed, powered Iron Age societies beyond the Empire. Of course, that didn't stop as we enter the medieval period, either. Moving onto the steamy heat of the industrial revolution, fossil fuels drove an economic boom for some nations, though slavery remained integral to the production of high-value foods and minerals. Longevity and quality of life have improved on average, around the world, in the last century and a half. Scientific and technological advances can be thanked for that improvement. But still, it's very unequal. I think all of us that write and read books know very well that there are people who, still, will never - can never - read our words.Indeed, Alice Roberts was up at Uley Camp just the other weekend. ‘What a fantastic hillfort – the views are absolutely stunning! 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.’ It’s an even more recent breakthrough that particularly fascinates her: ancient genomics. The science of reading ancient DNA.

Then a new branch of science comes along, with some seriously disruptive technology, and says: we may be able to provide an Answer to this Question. The priests of Archaeology stroke their beards (some of them really do have beards, even quite long ones – while many don’t) and express doubts as to whether a geneticist could even begin to understand the Question. But the geneticists go ahead and drill the bones, extract the ancient DNA, retreat to their labs, do some fancy statistics, and – like some kind of alchemist cooking up a dull lump of lead into gold – they come up with an Answer. They present it to the priests: ‘We think this is what you’ve been looking for.’ But the priests narrow their eyes, sigh and fold their hands in their laps. It's just Fools Gold', they say, "Iron pyrites. You can make fire with it. But it is not the Answer. It isn't the Answer because it doesn't agree with the sacred texts of Post-Processualism"." Interestingly, people only started to be buried in churchyards from the sixth century CE - again, a consequence of the development of Christian doctrine. Prior to that, almost all burials took place outside settlements. Well, thank you, Alice. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Alice Roberts there, talking about her new book Ancestors. Roberts explains, clearly and without jargon, the intricacies of determining gender and biological sex from burials, and how it's important not to project modern cultural concepts onto the dead. Early archaeologists had a tendency to assign sex and gender based on grave goods (brooches for women, swords for men) but osteoarchaeology shows that there isn't a definite correlation between the biological sex of a skeleton -- where it can be determined: the majority can't -- and the goods in their grave. Roberts mentions a number of theories: heirloom jewellery in a man's grave; jewellery worn by men and women alike; individuals biologically male living as female, and vice versa.

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There are some 25 known chariot burials in Britain, 11 of which have been sexed. Of these, three are female – nearly a third. 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. The Amesbury Archer is preserved in Salisbury Museum and, according to Roberts, “our visits to museums, to gaze on such human remains, are a form of ancestor worship”. In her book, Roberts takes seven different prehistoric burials and explores who they may have been and what they reveal about their communities. It requires imagination, as well as scientific expertise, to read the “stories written in stone, pottery, metal and bone”. A popular archeology book about bones found in the ground and what they tell us, using old and new techniques, about the people who’ve inhabited Britain from the Stone Ages onwards. 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.

Funerary rituals show us what people thought about mortality; how they felt about loss; what they believed came next. From Roman cremations and graveside feasts, to deviant burials with heads rearranged, from richly furnished Anglo Saxon graves to the first Christian burial grounds in Wales, Buried provides an alternative history of the first millennium in Britain. I also formed the impression that this was not the polished book that Roberts might have hoped to complete, as some of the genome research has been delayed by prioritising Covid-19 work, and reports for other excavations have not yet been completed. However, this does not detract from the book, and makes one appreciate all the more that archaeology is a developing subject and not static. This is the archaeological culture war: in one corner, culture-history, massive migrations and population replacement; in the other, cultural diffusion, a dissemination of ideas while the population stays put. Like any culture war, it's much too polarised and too clearly defined. History - people - are much messier than that. The answers are much more likely to lie somewhere in the middle. They sure as hell won't be simple - and each 'event' would also have been different and unique. And we're only just starting to get the data we need to understand these transitions. Roberts presents evidence both for and against this theory, in a very readable way for even the reader who has no previous knowledge of British history from the Iron Age to 1066. Absolutely. And some of that, I guess, is about how it's communicated. And how these, you know, quite complicated scientific developments are put across to the public, which I guess is something that you think about, both in your books and your broadcasting. And I know you're, you're a Professor of Public Engagement with Science as well. One thing I wondered about, I think we hear a lot about the failings of the media, in reporting on science, you know, that this idea of crushing nuance or not fully understanding the peer review process, and so on. But I wondered what scientists can get wrong in communicating with the media. So what’s the kind of flipside of that?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. But Roberts' frustration here is not one-sided. The implications of migrations being associated with the spread of the Beaker culture she puts into perspective, including the deep-seated fear of a return to processualism, which was part of a view of human development used to justify colonialism and genocide. Roberts is not afraid to talk about the politics behind scientific debate, nor to call on scientists to move through, not away, these discussions. 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". 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. The topics she covers are diverse and interesting, from infant burials to the birth of churchyards.

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.’

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Please be aware that the delivery time frame may vary according to the area of delivery - the approximate delivery time is usually between 1-2 business days. And also, the other thing for me is that I feel very much that it's rather like that idea that you should travel and you should experience other cultures, because that makes you look at yourself in an objective way. And it makes you look at your own culture in an objective way. And it also makes you realise that you have this commonality with humans the world over, you know, that we're all very, very similar.