Actually it is as much about what one can’t tell, or thinks one can tell, from burials as what one can. Trading Address (Warehouse) Unit E, Vulcan Business Complex, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EB. They found a large collection of what they believe to be men buried with weapons - they don’t know why. In her book, Roberts takes seven different prehistoric burials and explores who they may have been and what they reveal about their communities. New techniques like genome and isotope analysis in this field have enabled archaeologists to find out a great deal more about bodies, and sometimes surprised them in the process.

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. This an interesting book, where the author, Alice Roberts, looks at the history of England and Wales from Roman times through the Anglo Saxon and early Viking periods. She has lots of thoughts about this ground-breaking discovery, that maybe the cultural and linguistic exchange between Norse and Old English might have been more extensive than previously thought.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. These books are readable and informative, and cover a multitude of supposed genders, ages and cultures. Roberts' enthusiasm and scholarship easily deserve four stars, but this was very much a three-star listening experience for me. History becomes very personal – as we learn about people who lived in this land all those centuries before us.

Roberts concludes the book by examining British archaeological findings within a greater historical context and wider region (i. Also the name of the Greek historian Pausanias is spelled incorrectly both in the text and the index (though this could be an editing issue). They found quite a few graves including those of children with their heads chopped off mostly after death - they don’t know why. I love Alice Roberts, her enthusiasm, the depth and breadth of her knowledge and expertise, and the gift she has for bringing the past to life. A tithe map from 1840 suggests that they should have known what to expect – the circular feature was labelled ‘amphitheatre’.

And then in the seventies of the first century, they were dispatched to south Wales, to sort out the Silures and build their fortress on the Usk. First of all, it’s very biased – it was necessarily produced by literate individuals, who were elite Romanophiles. The first three case studies are properly enthralling, covering pipe burials, evidence of infanticide, and decapitated burials, but after this I found it very hard to maintain my concentration. Just two years later, when Titus died of a fever, Vespasian’s younger son, Domitian, succeeded him, and would reign for fifteen years. Tuuli knows there’s a bigger world out there, and when she spots a strange boy lurking outside their camp, she realises that he might hold the adventure she is looking for.

This could be seen as a direct sequel to 'Ancestors' - it picks up, time-wise, where Ancestors left off, taking us from the prehistoric and iron age burials that were the focus of that into the romano-british landscape and into the early middle ages.

It’s an exciting time, but when new technologies burst onto the scene like this, they can also be disruptive. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.