FINISHED READING - Buried by Alice Roberts

 

Sometimes its not advisable to read two books by the same author consecutively. When you read a book you become tuned in to the writers style, mode of expression and themes. Alice Roberts previous book Ancestors is a great read. Buried if taken on its own merits is good too. But one can't fail to make comparisons if you read one after the other. Themes overlap, some of the background is repeated. It can feel a lesser book simply because it appears to offer you more of the same, however good that is. What is new in it can feel less engaging.

Taking all of that into consideration, Buried had for me a less satisfying overall structure. Its based of a series of objects found in burials and what that told you about who the dead were, where they came from and changes in funerary practices. There are, however, a couple of really excellent chapters. One was on burials where heads have been decapitated and placed at the skeletons feet or on the stomach. Apparently this a quite common occurrence in Roman Britain. There are a few elsewhere in Europe but most examples are found here. Understanding why that was is still a matter of huge conjecture. Why decapitate them? It maybe a execution, but for what reason. To stop the dead from wandering? Does that mean they were considered witches or demoniacally posssesed. Were they slaves, was it racially motivated, did they come from all come from another country? Was the decapitation seen as a punishment by society, or is all this just 21st century archeology making incorrect judgements as to why anyone would do such a thing?

The second engaging chapter explores the contentious issue of whether there ever was an Anglo Saxon invasion. The story originates from Gildas a contemporary chronicler. He says that the Anglo Saxons were invited here as mercenaries to help in repelling persistent raiders, and once that job was done they stayed and basically took over England by force. Venerable Bede and The Anglo Saxon Chronicles took Gildas's version as true and repeated it almost unquestioningly. And the Anglo Saxon invasion has been treated as gospel pretty much ever since.

However, archeological evidence across the length and breadth of England has unearthed pretty much zilch to support the idea of there ever having been an invasion. Hence, Gildas is now viewed as the dispenser of fake history, and unreliable as a historian. But, because there were certainly Anglo Saxon influences abroad across the length and breadth of the country, something was happening not only culturally, but also linguistically. Because out of this cross fertilisation emerges the first forms of Old English. So what happened, did everyone just intermarry and become absorbed into what was left of the tribes of England? 

A recent theory is that even during the Roman occupation, the existing tribal relations and connections with the Angles, Jutes etc in Europe continued. So when the Romans left those older allegiances carried on and were reinforced. But it wasn't an invasion more of a constant drip drip drip of significant Anglo Saxon influences and individuals arriving. Until everyone pretty much forgot they were once not Anglo Saxon. Essentially they are saying the time frame of the Anglo Saxons increasing presence in England may not just span the post Roman period, but the three centuries of Roman occupation and before. It had been going on for a very long time. 

There is some good explorations of the issues surrounding interpretation and provenance. And the increasing value of aDNA and genome research in providing evidence of migration and origins,

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8