Human Sacrifice in Ancient Britain

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1:00Edward Jones, member SIPC. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over four million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90% off-carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for Certified Mail, Registered Mail, and Packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. Losing weight can feel like a roller coaster, full of ups, downs, and being thrown for loops, like when someone brings donuts into the office, or your kids' dino nuggets start giving you that look again. That's why there's noom. They combine GLP ones to quiet the food noise with healthy habits that help you keep it quiet, even if you get off the meds. Their program is designed to make weight loss a smooth ride, helping you understand what drives you, so you can build better habits to not just lose weight, but keep it off.

2:02Noom. Lose for keeps. Get started at noom.com. Not all customers will clinically qualify for medications. Individual results may vary. Sacrificing animals to the gods was a common feature of ancient cultures. Classical writers claim the Celtic peoples of Western Europe went further that they sacrificed humans. But the religious rights of ancient Britain remain a mystery. Without written evidence from the Britons themselves, we don't know exactly what they thought their sacred duties were, and what value they placed on human life. Our theology can help to fill gaps in the written record. And today, I'm joined by my good old friend, Dr. Miles Russell, from Bournemouth University, to take on a contentious question. Did the people of Iron Age Britain and Ireland really sacrifice humans to their gods? Or have our ancestors been horribly misrepresented? Miles, always great to see you.

3:06Welcome to the show. Thank you. First, I've got to say, you've just come off your latest dig, loving the beard, very much an archaeology vibe I'm getting straight away. More sort of bobbins and cruises though, I think. But you're sure you also mentioned your t-shirt. I've got to do a trick, guys. Do you have a trick, guys? So what is that? I'm officially branded, yes. Yeah. So our do-a-treaters project over the last 17 years, I've been looking at the understanding of the Iron Age tribe, just prior to the Romans arriving. So the do-a-treaters have got a distinctive cultural impact with their burial, also their settlement types. So we're just trying to understand what happens when the Romans arrive, and how Roman did they become when the archers are not at all. And also, Rome, so no doubt we're going to be covering them in our chat today about human sacrifice. Yes. Because this is the thing now. It's so difficult sometimes to see something that's clearly human sacrifice in the surviving archaeological record.

4:07But you get those interesting insights into what may well have been human sacrifice in the Iron Age from Britain. You do. I mean, lots of Roman writers describe the Britons as performing lots of acts of human sacrifice and a lot of the time, I guess. We've looked at those classical sources and thought they are just demonizing an enemy. They're this kind of negative propaganda that anyone puts out. You don't want your opponents to sound like nice guys. So they commit acts of human sacrifice as well as painting themselves blue and cannibalism and stuff like that. Cannibalism, marrying their sisters and sticking horses you in in the hill, all this kind of stuff that the Britons, we're told do, that it makes some alien, outlandish and odd and clearly sort of barbaric. So there's lots of description, Julia Season, particularly when he's describing the goals of Northern France and the Britons talks about human sacrifice and the fact that this shows that the barbarians, their religions are so primitive and crude. And that's what the Romans need to stamp out.

5:09They need to bring their idea of civilisation to his poor benign natives who are committing all kinds of atrocities upon themselves. But finding archaeological evidence for that is very difficult. Is this also where we get the idea of a wickerman from? Yeah, I mean, that's really thanks to Caesar. I mean, he describes, I think one particular tribe as the way of getting rid of criminals is having a mass sacrifice where they pack men and women into this sort of big wicker work figure and they're ignited and just burn people alive. So we don't know whether this is something that Caesar saw or whether he heard of or whether it even happened. But it's one of those sort of big mass sacrifice activities that the Romans, I mean, I think partly is to titillate their own audience. You know, they entertain a Roman always thinking, oh, you know, this is the kind of wanton atrocities that these barbarians commit. So we don't know whether that's true. There's certainly no archaeological evidence that's been discovered yet of a wicker man. But it's one of those deep-seated things that we think of when we hear about human sacrifice.

6:09And the Romans really like that idea. And there are several writers. Caesar's just the first who mentions kind of infers that they had these great kind of wooden things that they insensetalyze with people within. Yes. And that fact that it's the druids. It's some kind of priestly class within the goals of the Germans, even the Spaniards are to be told that have human sacrifice to every different tribe as its own curious way, whether it's burning or whether it's stabbing somebody in the throat and then watching the limbs contort or whether it's hanging or drowning. But there are all these various different ways in which I mean, it's usually some aspect of cutting open and what look at the entrails. And what I find particularly wonderful, but what I find really interesting is that the Romans are very keen to say this is horrific. Killing people for religion is bad. But the Romans of course commit mass atrocities for entertainment. You know, you think of gladiators. You think of the kind of people being ripped to alive by panthers or being burned alive. Crucifixion, you know, thinks of the tens of thousands that the Romans regularly crucify.

7:14As a public statement as warning, they would view that as execution. Well, they're not doing it to the gods. And I think that's the key thing is that their feeling is killing somebody to appease gods is wrong. That's the wrong kind of god. That's the wrong kind of activity. But killing people for entertainment, that's fine. Yes, human sacrifice versus public execution, you know, midday during an event at the amphitheater, the arena in the Roman world, what's good, what's right and what's not. I mean, yeah, as a matter of scale, I don't want to defend human sacrifice. But if you are killing one person in an event to the gods, surely that's preferable than killing thousands in front of a bang mob. But the Romans don't see it that way. They've got their own sort of curious of cultural blindness as far as that's concerned. They think that killing for religion is something that should be outlawed, should be stamped on and removed. Going on to the archaeology to figure out whether there actually was any human sacrifice or not in Britain, whether it's an invention by the Romans to smear them.

8:16Are ecologically how difficult is it to look at human remains and to say clearly, you know, this is evidence of human sacrifice? It, what complicates it in Britain is the fact there's actually relatively few individuals make it into the burial record. So there are some areas like the Jewish regas of Dorset, there are areas in eastern Yorkshire where you get large inhumation burials as we will recognize how skeletons complete and you can look at injuries sustained on that person. But for the vast part of late Iron Age Britain, we don't get that quantity of skeletal remains. So you'd say about 99% of the population are not appearing in the archaeological records. So perhaps they're being cremated, perhaps this can one of exposure burial, perhaps they've been placed in rivers or bogs or somewhere where archaeologists can't recover those remains. So straight away we're not getting anything like a complete burial record. So finding people who have been sacrificed is very different. We do find individuals who have sustained injuries and sometimes these are put down to war cemeteries or battle graves.

9:22There's a number of hillforts in the sort of southern part of Britain like Dainbury, Barry Connelly excavated in the 1970s and 80s and made in Castle that Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler excavated in the 1930s and there there are some skeletons that have major cranial trauma but it's difficult to say are these executions, are these people who've died in single combat, are they sacrifices? So it is very very difficult. I think the best evidence that we've got is very limited in Britain but across Ireland into southern Scandinavia is the so-called bog bodies. Right. So where you get very well preserved individuals and it's very clear that these have been killed in a way, it's not simple execution but there's some kind of performative act that's been conducted on these people. Well let's explore the bog bodies first of all and then we'll delve into some particular burials that might also show evidence of sacrifice that you've been working on. And bogs first of all give us a bit of an idea Miles, what area of the world are we talking about

10:25where you see lots of bogs, why are they so prevalent in a place like Britain? Well any prevalent in certain areas where you've sort of got restrictive sort of water flow where you get sort of very boggy deposits. If you think of these as sort of liminal spaces where people aren't essentially living but they are going to perhaps to extract iron or they're extracting peat. But these are I think when we're looking at in the late Iron Age is watery places, is rivers and bogs which form the edge of specific territories and it's in these places that you often find prestigious objects. You think of the river Thames, some of our best examples of late Iron Age metalwork have come from the Thames because they've been effectively sacrificed there. The Iron Age communities have thrown ceremonial shields and swords and helmets. It might be that the waters perceived to be a portal to another world. If you believe your gods inhabit the ground and the waters then by dropping something into the river it's lost is entered the realm of the divine. So I think

11:25straight away there's something special about those kind of environments and it's intriguing when we look at certainly the settlements that we've been digging endorse it. It's very clear that these people don't eat fish. They don't eat anything from the sea or from the rivers. There's not in their diet at all. The Romans love shellfish, the Roman love all kinds of things from marine resources. Iron Age people don't and it might be if you're dropping your dead or your special object if you think your diet is reside in the river you do not eat what comes out of the river. I think bogs also occupy that kind of liminal strange space in which diet is there. You can place things in a bog, it gets swallowed up, it gets lost. The divine that your gods have taken control of that object, be it a person, an animal or some kind of prestigious artifact. It's been claimed. If you leave it on a mountain you can still see it's there but if it goes into the water it's gone. So I think there's that sense that watery spaces are very very special and that's where we find our best

12:27examples of sacrificed objects animals and people. I guess it's always interesting with bogs. The fact I remember talking to Melanie Jarls about this last year. The fact that almost like rivers where you can see the flow, you can see movement happening in the rivers so you get a sense of almost life in this liminal zone. Bogs aren't stationary things. They grow. They take more of the environment as time goes on so people living near a bog will be able to see it grow and bubbles probably the wrong word. It also looks like it's alive as well. It is alive in a way that it's sort of the chalkland or another arable area. It isn't. Crops grow from it but the ground itself is static. You're right, a bog. Sometimes it is in my sense you can see it breathing because it's a real feeling that it is alive. Do we think this is something that stems all the way back from the early Iron Age? Derritate the Bronze Age before that these places have been important. Liminal zones? I think you certainly do get quite a lot of Bronze Age metal work from watery places as well but I think in the Iron Age, you're certainly getting towards the later

13:30Iron Age. The importance of these, it might be that if a river is at the board of a territory by dropping things into it, you are somehow increasing the the spiritual nature of that barrier. You are the protection zone from your own environment. Of course the water is bringing you the actual waters of life and so on but I think there is this feeling that as you go into the late Iron Age, bogs, rivers, even the sea are becoming far more important in a spiritual sense. And the examples we have surviving from bogs of human bodies from the late Iron Age, do we have a lot of examples surviving from Britain and Ireland? Quite as you from Ireland, lots from Denmark and Southern Scandinavia. Of course the most famous one from England is Lindell Mann, covered from Chesia. He's one of a small limited number of bog bodies. Of course, the great thing about a bog deposit as anaerobic conditions, you don't get organics decaying to the same degree as elsewhere. So you do get skin, you get flesh, you get textiles, you get a whole

14:31range of organic preservation that you don't get. So we do get complete, sort of leathery bodies coming out. But most have been recovered through Pete Digging. So they're not being recovered through careful archaeological examination. So a lot of bog bodies recovered, they're incomplete because they've been hit by spades or they've been hit by machinery. So Lindell Mann is a classic example. We're missing his lower half. So we don't know where that's gone. But the upper half is well preserved. Give us a very clear idea of this individual but also the mode in which he was killed. Shall we explore that now? So Lindell Mann is the most famous one and he also might have a link to human sacrifice. So tell us about this figure of Lindell Mann, what we know from his remains. The key thing is we've got an individual who seems to be well looked after, got nicely sort of trim fingernails, he's got nicely looked after hair. He seems to be relatively well fed. He's died violently. This is not a simple case of murder or execution. He's died,

15:33what some discrepers are three or in his case probably a fourfold death in that he's naked. I mean all the bog bodies as recovered across a whole northwestern Europe seem to be naked as they gone into the bog. One or two have got a cap. Some have got a little bit of sort of some kind of fern scarf or something or armoring. But essentially they've been closer been removed from them. They've probably been walked alive into the bog. It's very, very difficult to drag a dead body into a bog to the bog. So they've probably been marched into the bog knowing that they're going to die. Of course we don't know whether they've accepted that or whether they've gone struggling. But then with Lindell Mann he seems someone seems to have struck him violently across the head. So there is skulls been fractured and part of the bone has sort of gone into the into the brain case. He's then had his throat cut and he's been garotted. That seems about overkill but there is a real sort of sense if you're killing somebody and I'll give you ideas Tristan. But if you're killing someone and trying to do it in a theatrical way you want to make the blood spurt further. So he's

16:37throats been cut but the actual application of a ligature and a tornake it tightens the neck. It makes the blood spurt further and millions of hours as you mentioned. Now has described very sort of visibly that the way in which that kind of of death excites an audience because it is that sense of you're not seeing somebody die but they're doing it in the most explosive way imaginable the most theatrical way. So someone's tightening this from behind creating this massive area of blood flow. Then he's being placed face down into the bog and he's probably still alive at this stage because they were finding a lot of water in the lung. So the suggestion that not only is he's being concussed he's had his throat cut he's been strangled and then he's finally been drowned. So that might be if you've got four types of death it got might have four people involved in the killing but it's a it's a real over the top way of executing somebody arguably in front of an audience to make it visibly exciting but also to sort of demonstrate that

17:43this person is definitely dead. Gosh and you can imagine as horrific as it is probably ritual meaning behind each stage of that killing you know there's very much a process behind it. It is and also because we don't know who that person was within their community. I mean were they a priest were they a leader were they somebody from a neighboring community who's somehow considered less important. Were they a prisoner? Yes there's been some suggestion in his stomach cakes he's got relatively simple sort of out cakes but there's also traces of mistletoe which there's some suggestions certainly with this Scandinavian bog bodies that they've been fed ergot which is this fungal growth on crops which is creates this kind of psychological imbalance if they psychoactive drug. So these are people who might be and that might be the case with the mistletoe that there's some sense of altering their mind state before they're sacrificed that might be considered a kindness because they're not

18:47wholly controlled their senses they don't quite know where they are. It might be that by altering their mind state you're making you know might be seeing they're making greater contact with their gods because in that altered states they're seeing definitely hallucinating they're seeing so they're entering into that kind of world of the divine but there is a sense that these are people who've been walked into the bog they've been fed drugs and then they're killed in a very overly dramatic way but is that a punishment or is that you know have these people gone willingly to their death? That sounds like an odd thing to say why would you go willingly to that kind of violent death in that kind of exposed liminal space but we don't know what their views about the afterlife was I mean that if they're being sacrificed and we think of obviously early Christian martyrs who willingly went to the most extreme kind of torture and death in the belief that that kind of of violence led them to a glorious afterlife it's the afterlife that they were searching for they wanted to die in a more extreme way than Jesus had done on the cross so I think

19:52we got lots and lots of examples of people who willingly go to death in the belief is a good thing and bloody Mary in there obviously the burnings of course in the church here as well. Yes exactly so in my well-being that these into like Lindar Mann went willing to to his death in the sense that his life giving of his life was good for his people in some way he was appeasing the gods we know don't know it might have been a case of some kind of environmental collapse a failure of a harvest it might even be the arrival of the Romans because he's dying at time that the Romans are starting to possibly be investing in southern Britain but it could be that there was no struggle that he voluntarily gave himself up to this kind of death we just don't know it's it's lots of sort of interesting questions and debates but we shouldn't necessarily assume that these are criminals being punished they might be willingly offering their lives in the hope that this brings a better existence to those people left behind. It's an amazing story though from the surviving archaeological evidence of Lindar Mann as you mentioned Missulto in the stomach

20:56I mean that does make you think is it a druid who organized it because the Romans do associate Missulto with druids if I'm talking about them. They do and Julia sees another sort of a sort of kind to link the Missulto as some kind of special material that the druids grammar the difficulty with the druids is lots of speculation lots of fiction's been writing about them written about them we know that there is a priestly class in one part of central France called the druids and doubtfully there would have been priests and priestesses who were engaged in sacrifice who were making the contact with the gods so it could be I don't want to say you know it's a with Missulto all that definitely proves there's a druid connection this is somebody who it might be a druid himself we don't know obviously someone knows how to kill this person is doing in a certain way they've done it before they've undoubtedly been doing it again but yeah the the Missulto there might be a way of dulling the pain or introducing some kind of mind-altering substance that makes the

21:59death less painful to the individual involved. So now I've got a couple of others on my list before we get to your work at the Duitry Gers the biggest name that I recognize here and I think is he on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Douglas. Old Crochenman. Yes one of those things about human I mean there's another aspect about the human burial is the display element is that there is a sort of feeling that you know should we be putting these figures on display music I have to have to say that they are probably the most exciting things for people to sit. Not everyone's going to be affected the same way and I think you do need some kind of trigger alert if you're showing human remains but you're right with Crochenman we've got an individual there he's missing the head and lower part of his torso because again the way that he was recovered through peak digging but it is another individual that seems to have suffered torture prior to death. And what do we know about this torture do you think it could be evidence of sacrifice? Yeah I mean I think with Old Crochenman indeed a lot of the other burials from central Ireland is that these are individuals who

23:02have been sacrificed. I mean Crochenman seems to had his nipples removed as another element perhaps of torture prior to death so they're instigating pain. Now is that because he is a criminal and you're trying to make him suffer before he's executed or is it all part of this process of introducing different aspects which aren't necessarily fatal but ultimately contribute to the ultimate demise. I think this is also the thing isn't it that because we've got some examples that might suggest human sacrifice for some of these bog bodies we can't then just say that every body you find in the bog isn't a result of a ritualistic killing which may well be human sacrifice. Many other times actually sometimes remember to which many about this they might have just fallen in the bog and not got out. Exactly I mean bogs are dangerous places so we could have a number of individuals who've just fallen in and have drowned and have been lost and there's no way you can recover that body so and it comes later with doing peak digging but I think a lot of the examples

24:03that we're finding archaeologically because they show evidence of trauma on the body I mean things like with Old Crochenman with his nipples being removed with a knife you wouldn't find that if you were just dealing with the skeleton you know you're just looking you'd be looking for trauma on the bone so finding the flesh finding the skin of these individuals you can see if they've been tortured if they've had been forced to be shaved if had ears cut off all these sort of elements we can see if you've got the body preserved as they are within the bog context. I just read out the other two I have on my list because I want to get on but just because they're highlighted as well we've always got galachman between 400 and 200 BC probably strangled. Whitty was found around his neck maybe a garot. This is interesting too wouldn't peg spin them down which is quite interesting. There is that sort of sense when garotting strangulation does seem to be I mean that makes I think the death last longer but less blood in that case. There is less blood in that but if you're yeah I mean

25:03that particular example there doesn't seem to be in a throat cut but it's the cutting of the throat and the strangulation that seems to be a fairly common feature certainly in the Denmark burial. And this last one this is of a woman. Ballymachum's more woman from about 343 BC to one ADC around that time. Her remains she was decapitated at the bog and her head was taken away but that all almost sounds like once again she was led into the bog alive. Yes. But in that case maybe different tradition is so we don't know the context around it but then her head is taken away and the rest is kept in the bog. The removal of the head I mean that's an interesting story in its own way because you see a lot of in in early medieval Christianity certainly in Wales there's lots of martyrs and saints who have their head removed and that's the origin of the sacred spring. So it might be going back to that idea of head hunting we know again from Roman writers that the taking up the head that a sense of our own identity as a kind of as a prestigious object is

26:04very relatively common so it could be there it's less of a sense of a sacrifice but again we don't know whether this is a punishment but the head being retained and taken somewhere else. But it is another good example of someone being led into the bog knowing for well what the fate that is reserved for. At Edward Jones we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning that's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts let's find your rich Edward Jones member SIPC. Losing weight can feel like a roller coaster full of ups downs and being thrown for loops like when someone brings donuts into the office or your kids dino nuggets start giving you that look that's why there's noom they combine GLP ones to quiet the food noise with healthy habits that help you keep it quiet even if you get off the meds their program is designed to make weight loss

27:05a smooth ride helping you understand what drives you so you can build better habits to not just lose weight but keep it off noom lose for keeps get started at noom.com not all customers will clinically qualify for medications individual results may vary still waiting in line again that's time you'll never get back save time and money with stamps.com over four million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now print postage for certified mail register mail and packages in seconds then schedule a pickup right from your home or office for a limited time go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift taxes and fees apply. Hi it's Mark Bittman from the podcast food with Mark Bittman and the website the Bittman project one of the things that makes Whole Foods market different is their commitment to quality standards more than 500 ingredients or bands store wide to give us

28:06peace of mind whether we're browsing through the store or shopping online and it's been this way since 1980 their selectivity makes your shopping easier. Shop Whole Foods market in store her online thank you so so there's a few examples from Peatbugs in Britain and Ireland but I mean that's only kind of so it's one of it's the northern part of Britain and Ireland where you have the Peatbugs it's less so in southern Britain but there is still potential evidence of human sacrifice in remains discovered in southern Britain as well and these are from both Hillfords and everyday settlements do you think? Yeah I mean it does get very difficult when you're dealing certainly with areas where you don't normally get a huge number of skeletal evidence but you can often tell when you're getting as

29:09the actual bones whether an individual has suffered a particular trauma usually to the skull you can see there's definite blow there or to the shoulders of the arms whether these are defensive injuries someone's face their attacker or whether these are somebody who has been executed and then the actual subsequent treatment so somewhere like Dainbury and there's a number of Hillfords across the central southern Britain there are pits with heads in sometimes with the still the the jaw and a few vertibre suggesting forcible you know actual decapitation as a cause of death rather than the head being removed in a post mortem sense and curated later you get individuals who've died violently who've been thrown in a pit you sometimes get evidence of sort of sort of sort of sort of spear blows to the head it does get difficult to be sure in those kind of circumstances whether you are looking at individuals who've died fighting this might be an honored ancestor or someone who has died an heroic death facing an enemy competent and therefore has been treated with ceremonial burial rather than somebody who's been dragged there and then sacrificed and then killed

30:15so a lot of the times we can say this person has died with violence but we can't say what the cause of that violence is with a bog we can say they've been taken a long way from there is settlement and then they've been done to death so this is a premeditated theatrical execution but if you're dealing with a skeleton in a grave in a Hillfort and they've died violently it's difficult to know whether that is they've died in the circumstances or normal life or whether they've been executed or sacrificed or whatever so usually it's the kind of context that that body is found if that's unusual that in turn might suggest a deserves. Well let's go to us what's the context of these these skeletons discovered at Danebury Hillfort so should we be imagining where they found within the confines of the ramparts or where they found outside the Hillfort. Give us a sense of that. So a lot of the burial remains they are found in what appears to be disused storage pits so if we think of a big cylindrical pit cut down into the chalk which may have been used as a grain silo it may have been used as a cold storage for food when that's gone out of use what you often find is

31:21that animal remains so sacrificed animals animal body parts have been thrown into the pit and in some cases we get skulls with cranial trauma sometimes you get bits of jaws some does he get complete individuals that are thrown in and it's that sense of this is not formal burial as we understand it if somebody laid sort of lovingly within a grave with grave goods there's a feeling that the actual throwing into the pit or the dismemberment of the body that suggests this is an execution or this is a sacrifice is not a grieving family looking after the remains or sending the remains of a loved one off into the afterlife this is the disposal of somebody in a very dramatic and violent way and are there any particular examples from Dainbury that people have thought this is more likely than any others to be potentially a result of human sacrifice? I mean there are I mean the promise is there's no single pattern to everything so you get some pits where you've got a selection of skulls in sometimes you get individuals who've been as I say sort of sharing a grave or sharing a pit and it's like they've been thrown in so are these people who are

32:26are captured enemies who've been executed are they people who have died defending the site? Are they criminals? There are you know there's lots of different speculation but we can say that violence and the treatment of the body afterwards suggests that this is not a normal burial that these are not honored respected ancestors that they've died for a particular reason and then they've been disposed or perhaps in a storage pit rather in a grave because it's the sacrifice to the gods. I think that's all we can say. Yes, that's all we can say. But let's go on to a site where you have done a lot of work and we can focus on a few particular discoveries made and the evidence supporting that these figures were were sacrificed. So let us introduce the site of duroperlis. Now Miles would you care to take it away? I sometimes I regret using five minutes for this by the way. In 2017 these are five minutes. It's it's a big iron age, late iron age settlement with some

33:29evidence of Roman activity coming in as well which has been investigating at Winterborne Kingston in Dorset. It's part of the duotrigeous project looking at the way in which the late iron age tribe of the duotrigeous do they become Roman what actually happens when the Romans arrive. So we've had roundhouses, we've had storage pits, we've had cemeteries, we've had a whole range of evidence coming up. I mean the key interest that we've had is the cemeteries because these are people who are bearing they're dead in a particular way with grave goods and so we're getting quite a a nice percentage of the population we can study things like age at death disease, health, what they're eating and so on. However within that context we've also found at least five individuals who aren't buried in that very safe, respectable usual way as if they're being placed in the ground for their journey to the afterlife. These are people who are found at the bottom of storage pits usually face down as if they've been thrown in and it's these individuals who we are suspecting our human sacrifices. And before we delve into that I mean explain just how special it

34:34is to have a cemetery surviving with multiple human burials surviving from late iron age Britain. Yeah I mean it sounds odd to say there's cemeteries all over the country but within iron age Britain it is actually relatively rare to get a large cemetery whereby you're getting men and women and children buried. In Dorset in eastern Yorkshire there are cultural groups who for whatever reason decide that they are going to dispose their dead in individual graves in larger cemeteries. The rest of the country they might be commiting their dead they're doing something unusual with human remains and we don't get the skeletal evidence. So we're very very restricted in those sort of areas where we can actually study the human population and Dorset is one such stone. So we've over the last 17 years we've excavated at least six cemeteries of late iron age date which men and women in equal numbers are being buried and they've got grave goods. They've got joints of

35:35meat, they've got pots containing drinks so that we don't know much about the gods that they worship but there's a clear sense there's life after death and they're being given the necessary prerequisites for that journey, food and drink to sustain them on that journey to another world. So that's great but that really relates to the elite, the wealthy, the well off, the the generally successful farmers but finding individuals face down in storage pits tells us a completely different aspect to that that lifestyle. That's really interesting and how many do you say potentially? So five individuals four look like they've been thrown in so arms and legs all disjointed as they've been faced down. One is face down but appears to be the legs are drawn up under the body they might have been bound up and then thrown in but four definite five possible. Shall we go through them one by one and kind of explore what we know from the archaeology? The first one I've got is the Winterborne Woman. Yes I mean that's the one we've managed to publish it.

36:37It's where we found in 2010 it's one of the first storage pit burials that we recovered and to that date we'd had one cemetery with all these sort of individuals buried carefully and just respectfully with grave goods. This was a storage pit now every other one of the storage pits that we found we excavate because pretty much everyone has got some kind of placed deposit. There's this feeling I guess that in the Iron Age you dig a pit you put your food stuffs in it. The next agricultural cycle that pit gets abandoned but you put an offering. Sometimes that offering you feel someone in there. Well not every time I think it was a way of getting through your population quite quickly if you did that but sometimes it's an inverted pot. Sometimes it's a dog burial we've got a few of those. Sometimes we get bits of animals which are cut up so we get bits of horse bits of cow in the bottom of the pit so there's a feeling that animals are being sacrificed and they're not being eaten but the meat's been consigned to the bottom of the pit as an offering. But in 2010 we found going down into one of these pits there was an adult female she was lying

37:40face down so it's completely unlike the other graves that we've had which are encrouched or fetal positions lying on one side with her legs drawn up in a shallow grave. She was face down as she's been thrown into the pit and she was lying on what we thought at the time as a bed of meat it was sort of like a mass of horse cow pig bones, very weathered bones so these weren't freshly killed animals. This was bone relating to animals that had been killed some time ago the bone was very weathered. Creating a platform at the bottom and she was lying face down on top of that so it's straight away we knew that was odd. We hadn't found anything like that before and there's something deeply suspicious about the nature of that deposit of nature of those remains. It wasn't till we excavated and removed her did we see looking at the at the remains that there was a series of injuries on the body. The one of a violent break across her rib so just before a couple of weeks before she died she'd had a significant blow to the chest which should crack one rib which was starting to heal and it bruised other ones. She had an injury to the head but most critically of

38:45all she had a massive cut to one of the neck vertebrae. So what and what actually looked like is the only way that could have happened if someone was holding her from behind and run a sort of a blade a deep incision across the neck and effectively cut her arteries in the neck. So just like with the bog bodies here or somebody who had their throat cut we can't obviously tell whether she had a ligature applied as we lend our man to make a more theatrical blood spurt. There was three or four kind of levels to the case. Yes, but here is someone and what the intriguing thing is because having had that throat cut which would have introduced a lot of blood into the pit she's then thrown face first onto this white platform of bone of animals that had long since died so it might be a sense of the transfer of the life essence of the human into the animal bone or the her life essence as a sort of the blood draining out into the ground. If you believe your gods are in the ground and they control the fertility of your crops then the

39:48giving of a life in that very public and theatrical way into the bottom of the pit is probably the best way from that perspective of appeasing your gods. So it could be an agricultural lead link to kind of reassure the family. It could be, I mean we don't know enough about the actual time that she was killed but it could be if there is crop failure or there's some kind of of I don't catastrophe with far as food procurement you think the gods are angry you give the life of a human it's in extreme sacrifice we know they're sacrificing animals all the time you know we're getting pits and pretty much every single cut that we excavate has got animal body parts in so they're killing animals to eat but they're also giving offerings to the ground all the time but every so often presumably something extreme is needed to keep the gods on board and I think this is an instance of that. Do we have any idea has there been studies of the bones themselves to find out more about who this woman was? Yeah I mean the sense we've done lots of DNA analysis of all the stomachs all the burrows we've got this individual is not connected to any of the other burials that

40:51we've got she's not family as far as that means she might be connected to somebody in a nearby farmstead but they don't appear to be killing one of their own looking at the sort of mobility isotopes looking at the whole range of stuff evidence in the teeth and so on it looks like she didn't grow up on the chalk we're digging primarily on the chalk so she's not connected to the family it lived there she's probably not growing up in a geological environment that's close to the settlement so effectively I think she's an outsider and it's not making it better but I think she could be a captive she could be a prisoner she's certainly very maltreated you know she's quite malnourished she's got a series of injuries and said the most recent one being the the rib damage before she's then killed at the pit so she somebody might be the lower end of the socio-economic scale she might in some way be thought to be more disposable which is a terrible thing to say about anyone but within the community they might have felt if we were going to sacrifice somebody she's the one we're going to sacrifice she's also got when we look at her her vertebrae they're very very compressed

41:57so she's carrying lots of heavy weights through a lot of her life so I think all these things together suggest that she's probably a slave she might well be a prisoner of war but for whatever reason or whatever time they've decided we are going to kill someone make a human off our sacrifice she's the one to kill I guess it's also very interesting when you explore the wider context of new research that has come out from your site in the past year or so I remember going down there last year we did a documentary on this very topic the fact that it seems that the men are moving in to the settlement they're moving in with their wives and it seems that their matrile local societies in which it's easier for women to well lands being passed down their side of the family so I guess to say it's horrific as it is to say it makes sense that they're not sacrificing one of their own women because that they're one of the landowners of the society they hold quite a bit of power so they're not one of the ones being sacrificed and then thrown in the pit yeah no exactly I mean it obviously the study's still in its early days but it does as you say

43:00with Lara Cassidy and our colleagues at W University looking at the DNA it does look as if we've got individuals of certainly women who are staying on the land the multiple generations of women being born grown up and died and being buried there the men seem to be further distant and less connected to the women the women have more grave goods with them so those are real sense of it being a matrophocal a matrilineal society land ownership passing down the female line and a lot of the times you look at the roundhouses that are living in you look at the settlements they've got you can landscape you think this is some kind of utopia this is some it's a fantastic lifestyle we recognize a lot of their hopes and dreams and so kind of and many you see something like this human sacrifice and you think actually now they're very different there are certain aspects of their life their attitude to life their outlook on on existence that is totally different for us and they think it's perfectly acceptable in certain conditions to kill somebody and throw them in the pit and that's fine but as you say if she's not one of them so I don't know whether

44:03that's good or not they're not killing their own but they certainly deem it perfectly acceptable to kill someone who's considered to be an outsider yeah I don't think we need to see whether it's good or not no that's a question you shouldn't but I think it's interesting to theorize in that society whether one of those women landowners you know had power could have also been a spiritual leader you know a druid we know it was men and women who could have then been overseeing this ritual of this ceremony that might be an example of sacrificing that case exactly I mean it's one of those things certainly with the bog bodies we never know whether the individuals who are buried are they one of the communities being killed or is it a prisoner war some distant with these skeletons we can say that this is somebody who's not part of that community but who's doing the killing whether it's part of the you know the women who are in control there who's killing somebody perhaps not to pollute their own kind of genetic makeup we don't know but it's a way and people said well can you say it's a sacrifice it's definitely an execution but I think the fact that

45:03this is someone who has been killed it in this obviously theatrical over the top way but there's a lot of thought has gone into actually creating that bone platform when you look at the bones she was thrown down on top of it's not a random scatter they've at one end of the pit they've got the sort the skulls of horse and cow then you got the vertebra and ribs and pelvis there's some kind of order that's been created so a lot of thought has been gone to how we're going to create the theatre within which this individual will be killed so in that sense I think it's probably one of the best examples we've got out of a wetland context of obvious human sacrifice. Losing weight can feel like a roller coaster full of ups, downs and being thrown for loops like when someone brings donuts into the office or your kids dino nuggets start giving you that look again that's why there's noom they combine GLP ones to quiet the food noise with healthy habits

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47:12and are the other four potential examples of human sacrifice at duopolis at the site are they very similar in how they're laid out in the burials they are in the sense of being phoned to the pit we had one three years ago now an adult male who very clearly have been phoned him because one of his legs was up against the side wall of the pit and the foot was at the top and he was lying with his arms as you could imagine they almost see where he'd been killed and where he'd been thrown into so you would have found the foot first when you were digging down exactly so they found the upper levels of the feet going to work down and to find him and so I mean that's one of these other things that sort of brings you up short because well as archaeologists we're finally skeletons all the time but these are people who've died somewhere have just been taken somewhere else and have been buried and you should get a sense of care and decency here we're actually dealing with a murder victim and we can identify the place where they were murdered you can see they were obviously killed here at the top of the pit

48:14and thrown in and that does bring a whole new perspective and it does make you feel quite quite you know you're dealing with a crime scene effective you're never going to work out who the perpetrator was but you can see the victim and you can see how they were killed and you can see where they were killed but hit that particular man he was thrown in there were a few animal bones underneath him but nothing like the platform the other the first lady there was no obvious trauma that we could see on the skeleton but the fact that he was lying face down suggested their violent death and to be honest again it's a lot the bog bodies the way they've had their throats cuts and they've been strangled it doesn't leave an impact on the bone so there's plenty of ways he could have been killed without it then impacting on his skeleton and that's in contrast to the bog bodies where you have that skin surviving so you can see the evidence of the grotting and stuff yeah I mean if you've been corroded and you said with the bog bodies often they're found with the noose still with the tollons man yes is a very not a good example if he'd been strangled that

49:16would have decayed in the chalky dry soils as well so we wouldn't have the evidence but it's the fact that the it's the nature of that throwing into the pit that's very disrespectful given that everyone else is buried in in nice shallow graves with grave goods and as an order to it the fact that he's thrown in suggests a disregard for the individual and I suspect that he probably died on on the surface and he had one last year again this was an adult female who also was thrown in and the body was the limbs are tangled so I think she is another good example of a of a sacrifice but interesting that of those five it is men and women clearly it's almost like there's no kind of gender focus on the these yeah yeah yeah so it doesn't seem to be neither does it seem to be an age focus I mean we're we're doing at the moment obviously the one we had in 2010 was quite early on in our studies the other four that we've recovered we're also now doing the DNA analysis of those to see again are these outsiders are they connected to each other is there anything we can say about their lives because all of our lives of dietary choices and injuries are written in

50:18our bone we might for the first time be able to to bring up a sort of a biography of the sacrifice now what is it distinctive about these individuals and their lifestyles that made them different are undergoing a harsher lifestyle a different kind of diet to those who are in control this is something we can do for the first time and that's research you're doing at the moment it is going to reveal soon the results of it yeah right you're teasing us basically ask you back on for a future one but yes I guess we'll now actually one more question before the big why part does it seem like I know because the organic material doesn't survive in those burials but as you say it's a crime scene it seems to be almost you know where they're killed you know where they're thrice the pit should we also be imagining that their hands are tied behind their back almost yeah the um the first burial that we had had her arms underneath her and they were crossed they were the wrists were touching so I suspect her hands were were tied the second

51:20one I described had his arms in front as if he'd been thrown in um and the past was still alive and his arms are gone off in it defensively to protect him in the fall but the other ones had all their hands behind them um and they're again they're crossed so they were tied and I think that also suggests an element of being thought you know being being killed I'd be going to an unwilling death so these aren't people who have been drugged potentially with the bog bodies and know what's in store for them and are going perhaps to their death willingly even though it's violent these individuals do seem to be bound at the point of death so there's less likely that they are happily willingly going towards this fate but this is that's a great example to point there because it shows that for all the times we've compared the examples like Lindowman and the Winterborne woman you need to be careful at the same time because their clear difference is the actual how far we can compare the two environments when exploring human sacrifice in Britain

52:23yes and we can say is that these are individuals who who've died with violence they are sacrifices but the context is very very different so I think in the with the bogs because it feels like it's such a liminal putt space that the gods are physically residing there you're they're being walked there and then killed whereas in the hill forts and the banjering closes and all the other sites we've been looking at the Chalkland these might be killed within the settlement zone so there's a very different element to the death even though we can say that they are being killed for whatever reason to appease the gods some us we've covered all these different potential examples of human sacrifice in bogs, hill forts in everyday settlements I want to ask again in kind of this more focused question of why what are the theories behind why people in late-année british would want to sacrifice people i mean the difficulty is of course they didn't write anything down so we can't see into their minds as to what is going on here and we have to rely to some extent on

53:25Roman writers that Julius Caesar when he's describing the executions of criminals he talks about people who are being put to death for various immoral aspects you know judging by Julius Caesar it seems bizarre because everything he does is pretty immoral but it it you know he doesn't give us none of the Roman writers give us any reason as to why they felt these people were being killed but they do sort of imply there is a criminal aspect to it it's not the taking of a leader or a priest or someone important it is the lower class is it or someone who's who's gone against the wider community so I mean it could be that is an element of it because the Romans are very good with making death a public event as a warning to others so even people dying in the arena it was unfair to attainment but it was also from the point of view of saying these people have transgressed the law or they fought against Rome this is the punishment if you step out of line this will happen to you and crucifixion is part of that I mean it's essentially a mode of death that's reserved for

54:29slaves or people who had some kind of uprising but it's it's you're nailing somebody to a cross and they die and their bodies are left there so it's like the gibbet in medieval Britain is a sense of this body is a continual warning to not step out of line it could be that a lot of the iron age burials that we see certainly the ones in in the pits if they're got their throats cut if it's done in their theatrical way in front of an audience it could be this is a warning this person has broken the laws done something bad we're killing everyone has to watch it and there's a sense if you step out of line this will be you but then is that sacrifice always that rule just just punishment yeah I mean it's sacrifice in the sense that it's it's a theatrical killing in a pre-measured way that they're they're actually doing it and that creation of a other of a platform there's a what stage does an execution become a sacrifice if you're doing it to appease the gods if you're killing somebody as a punishment but also to keep the gods happy yeah then it is a

55:31sacrifice I think it's it's it's the theatrical element it's the overkill element that makes something a sacrifice right and necessarily a punishment execution but it is a they thin line between the two and certainly the Romans have a clear count that all the people they killed it was for punishment rather than as a way of making the gods happy what about the context in which they are killed because from what you've been saying it seems it's a bog is a more prestigious place to be executed to be sacrificed than thrown in quite frankly thrown in headfirst in a storage pit yes yes I mean I guess if you think your gods reside in the bog if the bog is a living space then perhaps I don't know would anyone be happily go to the death in that way but if you feel that the gods inhabit that space then you are going immediately to join them yes so however severe the mode of death it's going to be painful but it will be relatively quick if you're drugged with Ergot or

56:31mistletoe then perhaps elements of that pain will be minimized but you're being placed in an environment where the gods reside so you're joining them instantly so there might be that sense that you are much like the you know pretty early about the Christian martyrs you feel that the man or their death makes them go instantly into their afterlife you don't yes you might be worried about the pain element but once that's done you've proved yourself and you know your afterlife is secure whereas with this storage pit you're being thrown in with the remains of animals decaying animals right which feels less that does seem less respectful I mean it seems as artists are respectful ways of killing somebody but there is a sense of the the ultimate disposal you're in a storage pit and yes okay it's going down to the ground whether gods may inhabit but generally speaking those pits are filled with rubbish so there there there is a sense within the bog you are being claimed by the divine whereas in the pit you're just being thrown in with the rubbish so there might be a sense that that is a far less respectful which again might possibly tie into the fact that these individuals

57:37had their wrists bound because they did not want to go happily into that world yes compared to the ones we have from the bog bodies where to our knowledge there's no evidence of wrists being not as far as I'm aware of no so there there is a sense that I mean it might be that they were so drugged up they didn't realize what was happening to them but it could easily be that yeah they were there that feeling that you are joining your deities straight we got that instant link with the afterlife with the other with the other world which you don't have in the chocolate storage pits and we talked about bogs and hillforts and and assessments I guess this is theory as well if we don't have the evidence of Ivan but could we imagine similar activities happening on the sides of rivers or on the coastline but that evidence just doesn't survive no it doesn't I mean that's the trouble once the body's been ascertained to a river it will break down there's been quite a lot of skulls brought out from the Thames and from the Walbrook which may be from bodies that have been buried but have been disturbed by the water but it's quite possible that what we're looking at are individuals who've been killed and have been thrown into that watery space so there

58:41shield sword spears which thrown in will get recovered and will go well this is a votive ritual object clearly but human remains bodies thrown in will break down and will very unlikely to be recovered so there could be a large numbers of people more than in the bogs who are being killed and have been placed directly in the river and therefore being seen to be claimed by the river gods but we will never recover them archaeologically no so that's the frustration that we've already highlighted with the surviving evidence we have and overarchingly can we see any emerging pattern as to the types of figures that seem to have been like it seems plausible that they were sacrificed whether it was in a place like duropless or in a peat bog I mean as far as we can see in the peat bogs the bodies because they're far well better preserved there is a sense that these to some extent are individuals who aren't engaged in hard labor so with Linda Mann and some of the

59:42Irish examples as to being explained they got really nice looked after fingernails they doesn't appear to have done any kind of hard labor their hands are uncalished so it could be what we're seeing there are the sense of a priestly elite or perhaps a ruling elite there's been a suggestion that in some of the Irish ones these might be kings it might be the idea when you come to the end of your all you are sacrificed for the greater good right whereas the individuals that we've been looking at from the storage pits in the in the in Dorset seem to be at the lower end of the scale these are people who are engaged in hard labor who are considered to be more disposable so the sacrifice there it might just be the giving of a human life and it's better from their perspective to kill someone who is of less significance whereas in the bogs we're seeing people who are great significance who are conspient consigned to the bogs that might be different levels of society different forms of death different forms of sacrifice it's interesting theory I mean with the people in the bogs whether they are you know reach an old age and they almost kind of

1:00:45passing the torch on to the next generation and rather than living out their days they have this end I mean do we have any idea whether many of these peat bog burials they're old old people they they well they seem I mean to find old in the i-nage I mean they seem to be within that sort of age of late 20s to perhaps early 40s isn't thinking that but given the life expectancy of the time that might be considered quite good you you are sort of you're you're sort of cutting the rows in full bloom rather than letting somebody degenerate into later life so there might be a sense of you're in your prime that's the good time to go rather than wait for for later period but whether it has been a suggestion that these are perhaps members of of i-nage royalty and that's part of the deal you rule but in the knowledge that you are later going to join the gods in that I've got violent dramatic way so you can't have one sense without the other you can't have the power without the sign off at the end. Well it's been so fascinating I think I'm running out of questions

1:01:46to ask because we've covered quite a lot I think I'm going to leave it with one last thing I have in front of me which is a couple of views on human sacrifice from Roman authors not actually in Britain but but it'd be good to get your thoughts in this as well as whether we can apply to the British context so this is first of all an extract from Julius Caesar talking about the ghouls an extract from his the Gallic Wars in the mid 1st century BC and he says the ghouls believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the act of theft or robbery or some crime is more pleasing to the immortal gods but when the supply of such fails they resort to the execution of the innocent so that's interesting but first and in the second one is from Tassitus in his Germania so to about in Germany it's punishments vary in Germany according to the nature of the crime traitors and deserters are hung upon trees cowards dastards and those guilty of unnatural practices are suffocated in mud under a wicker fence this difference of punishment has in view the principle that a villainy should be exposed while it is punished but to perpetuate

1:02:52concealed the difficulty as all things with with individual like Caesar is that he's not like in the modern anthropologist the first one he's the first yeah yeah with all those accounts in the sense of all-round right they're not modern anthropologist sort of living with a community understanding them trying to understand their practices so I think there's a lot of things like that the face down in the bogs the you know that kind of stuff they these are actual accounts of things that have happened but the reasons for which they are happening aren't necessarily the right ones right so I think the the punishment idea that is certainly something that we you know could is it's eminently plausible but we don't know how much of a Roman spin has been added to that to try and explain it because Caesar and otherwise that Tassitus and so on they're not overly concerned we're getting their facts right they present evidence but essentially they're writing to a Roman audience they're entertaining that audience they're trying to remind their Roman colleagues how barbaric and odd these people are so the practices like they you know we said

1:03:53earlier about season the wicker man or the execution of criminals and then in essence and then placed down in the in the bog they're explaining these or describing them but they're not really giving you the full set of evidence because they weren't aware of it they're not really care that much but that's all we've got so it would you know it would be more interesting to think if if all human sacrifices at the time were punishments but they don't always seem to be the bog bodies are being a case in point that we've got people there who seem to be at the upper end of society so what are they doing that's considered worthy of punishment big question but so the whole thing is the giving of a life that it's not something that happens all the time we're not dealing with industrial levels of human killing they're very good at killing animals and giving those kind of life but every so often and what the key point is what is it in society what is it in the natural word environment that means the giving of the light human life is the important thing it doesn't

1:04:53happen all the time but it does happen and we're trying to understand by looking at the the skeleton the body remains there's person involved the person at the end of that being sacrificed does that explain the nature of the killing itself why is it being done what is the need for it that's something we're still a long way from answering but we're getting closer do you think we ever will answer that question I think given the more examples of sacrifice that we get given the battery of scientific analysis that we can now do on the bodies looking at ancestry looking at connections looking at dietary evidence all these sort of things give us a better picture of the sacrifice so the building up on that database I think in a couple years time we'll have enough we just have a better idea of the kinds of people who are being killed the ways in which they're being killed and that might help us to understand better that aspect of our nature society well we'll get you back on the show and that happens my friend to to learn more about this and but in the meantime this has been so interesting and it just goes me to say thank you so much for taking the time

1:05:54to come on the show thank you for having me thanks so much for joining us on the ancients today I hope you enjoyed the episode and if you are loving the ancients then why not become a history hit subscriber as a subscriber you will have access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week plus early access and add free podcasts you can sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe see you in the next episode the GLP1 pill you've been waiting for is now on row yep it's finally here with the same clinically proven ingredient now in a pill and now on row it's the first FDA approved GLP1 pill for weight loss at the lowest price available that's one daily GLP1 pill for big results now on row go to row.coast listen to see if you qualify rx only go to row.coast last safety for serious side effects and box

1:06:58warning associated with GLP1's at Edward Jones we believe rich isn't about having life all figured out it's opening yourself to all the possibilities that's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be so no matter where you're starting from you can move forward with confidence the key to being rich is knowing what counts let's find your rich Edward Jones member sIPC