Ancestors: A prehistory of Britain in seven burials

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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. Roberts first appeared on television in the Time Team Live 2001 episode, [31] [32] working on Anglo-Saxon burials at Breamore, Hampshire. She served as a bone specialist and general presenter in many episodes, including the spin-off series Extreme Archaeology. In August 2006, a Time Team special episode Big Royal Dig investigated archaeology of Britain's royal palaces; Roberts was one of the main presenters. Roberts took her baby daughter with her when touring for the six-month filming of the first series of Digging for Britain in 2010. [39] Publications [ edit ] 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?

Roberts and Aoife McLysaght co-presented the 2018 Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution in London. She is president of the British Science Association; her term started in September 2019. In January 2021 Roberts presented a ten-part narrative history series about the human body entitled Bodies on BBC Radio 4. TV Shows It’s an even more recent breakthrough that particularly fascinates her: ancient genomics. The science of reading ancient DNA. Yeah, there's something I noticed in your book a lot, actually, is just the importance of narrative. And yeah, the way that that brings the science to life for a non-scientist. But as you say, also does seem quite integral to it. 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? Historic England staff with team members from ULAS/University of Leicester during the excavations of a mosaic pavement at the Rutland Villa Project (Image: BBC/Rare TV/Historic England Archive)

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Indeed the grave itself contained nearly a hundred items – including copper knives, gold objects, boars’ tusks and a shale ring – making it the most richly furnished grave from the period that had ever been discovered in Britain. The grave goods and the broken remains of five distinctive pottery beakers with a characteristic upside-down bell shape revealed it to be a Beaker burial. As Alice Roberts writes, the number of items and the care with which the grave had been created shows that “the Archer was a Very, Very Important Person”. From 2009 to 2016 Roberts was Director of Anatomy at the NHS Severn Deanery School of Surgery [11] and also an honorary fellow at Hull York Medical School. [19] [20]

In March and April 2023, Roberts presented the four-part Channel 4 series Fortress Britain with Alice Roberts. [61]

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On 12 February 2021, Roberts presented a one-hour BBC Two documentary, Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed, [56] about Mike Parker Pearson's five-year-long quest that filled in a 400-year historical gap in the provenance of the bluestones of Stonehenge and Waun Mawn. [57] [58] [59] Yeah, you really got that sense of excitement from Alice of just applying this, you know, what she called a disruptive technology, to these really old ancient myths and these different forms of knowledge colliding. And I also found it interesting that she was talking about the act of burial and what we can learn about that being qs much to do with life, as it is to do with death, but also that it might say something very distinctive about our species, because I didn't realise that animals didn't bury their dead. I sort of had a notion of the elephant graveyard. And obviously, as Alice says, chimpanzees mourn. Elephants mourn. But they don't actually bury their dead. Isotopic analysis of the Amesbury Archer’s teeth reveals that he may have grown up near the Alps. Studies of DNA from other Beaker graves in Germany show ancestry from the Eurasian steppe and migration clearly played a major role in establishing Beaker culture. Indeed, in Britain genomes are dramatically different after 2500BC: “Neolithic ancestry is almost completely replaced, in the copper age, by genomes that share ancestry with central Europeans associated with the Beaker complex.”