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+--- Thread: Iron Age War Grave (/showthread.php?tid=15302)
Iron Age War Grave - Ross Cowan - 06-12-2009
I'm not sure if this has been posted in another thread - a mass war grave in Dorset:
[url:y3ly37f4]http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090611/tuk-olympic-builders-unearth-iron-age-wa-45dbed5.html[/url]
[url:y3ly37f4]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1192353/Mass-war-grave-50-headless-bodies-Olympics-site.html[/url]
R!
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Robert Vermaat - 06-12-2009
Gruesome! Thanks for that link Ross!
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Gaius Julius Caesar - 06-12-2009
Interesting news. I guess it could be anything really, execution of prisoners, the macabre results of ferocious resistance, or auxilliary troops on the rampage. :?
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Conal - 06-13-2009
Why are the Romans getting the blame?? .... did they take heads? We know the Celts did.
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Iagoba - 06-13-2009
Apart from dating, would be interesting to know if the remains have more wounds :?: If such is the case, this may be a battlefield grave.
That reminds me of a water reservoir in the city of Iruña-Veleia, where some animal and human heads were found in a corner. Those are late Roman, and seems the "recollection" was post-mortem, due to the ausence of cervical bones:
![[Image: 2173364.jpg]](http://www.noticiasdealava.com/ediciones/2006/06/11/sociedad/alava/fotos/2173364.jpg)
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Lucius Aurelius Lurco - 06-14-2009
I was thinking this sounds a lot more like Celt than Roman. I thought Romans went in for either strangling/hanging or crucifixion as a method of execution.
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Medicus matt - 06-15-2009
Quote:I was thinking this sounds a lot more like Celt than Roman. I thought Romans went in for either strangling/hanging or crucifixion as a method of execution.
I'm talking to people on the team, trying to get more info. The photos I've seen show that some of the bodies have been sliced in half above the pelvis (the easiest place to slice through a torso) as well as having the heads cut off. That's either a particularly horrific execution or evidence of very unusual post-mortem mutilation...neither of which I've come across before in an Imperial context.
And the bodies were stripped before deposition....no dating evidence so everything at the moment is supposition.
Looking forward to more details.
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Ross Cowan - 07-19-2009
It seems that the bodies are not from an Iron Age /Roman conflict, but 9th-early 11th cents AD:
[url:1c1gjjww]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/8145252.stm[/url]
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Gaius Julius Caesar - 07-19-2009
That is pretty gruesome!
hock:
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Marcus Iulius Chattus - 07-19-2009
Oh Gott, da hat aber jemand reinen Tisch gemacht :?
It makes no difference if those young men were killed by romans, saxons or dans, because no human should die in such a horrible way.
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Ingvar Sigurdson - 07-20-2009
The remains have now been dated to the late saxon period.
Ingvar
Dave Huggins
Ulfhednar England
Re: Iron Age War Grave - marka - 07-23-2009
this act sounds very personal to me if this was done on living people (rather than post mortem)-people who rebelled against the king perhaps.
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Gaius Julius Caesar - 07-23-2009
Victims of a Viking raid?
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Arminius Primus - 07-23-2009
Ave Fratres,
Maybe this is the precedent for the medieval Drawn and Quartered style of execution. I believe that nasty process was reserved for acts of high treason.
I was finding it hard to believe the initial reports that it was some sort of Roman reprisal. Sort of went against the grain,...carving folks up and then throwing them in a pit. Anything that gruesome from a Roman perspective required publicity for the edification of the locals and the masses. ...and I believe the report said that the bodies were all male. Terrible waste of manpower, they would have provided extra workers in the mines etc. and someone would have made a profit.
Regards from a sunny and hot Balkans, Arminius Primus aka Al
Re: Iron Age War Grave - Medicus matt - 07-23-2009
Quote:Victims of a Viking raid?
Other way around I reckon. I don't think raiders/invaders in that particular part of the country would have taken the time to dismember them (either before or after beheading), let alone dig a big pit for them. More likely that they'd have just left the bodies and then their relatives would have given them a Christian burial.
If, however, it was a raiding party that had been caught then I can quite believe that their bodies might have been mutilated by the english after execution and then the remains just thrown into pits.
Awaiting the results of the isotope tests with interest.