Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain

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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.”

Alice Roberts is brilliant on bones and archaeology in general. In this book she takes a long hard look at some historical assumption about the first millennium in Britain, too, in particular the great Anglo-Saxon migration theory. Her understanding of the genetic research enables her to come to a more nuanced viewpoint, which is well worth reading. Although Roberts does draw on genomic evidence to show the migration of peoples in prehistory, what is so fascinating about this book is the way it weaves together scientific and cultural interpretation. Detailed archaeology – trowel work – as well as historical imagination are still essential to understanding the past. The word "archaeology" can mean two things -- it can refer to the things that archaeologists are interested in or the things that archaeologists do. Typically when someone says, "I'm interested in archaeology" you would assume they meant the former: that they are interested in early humans, particularly as reflected in their material remains. But if that person was a sociologist speaking in her professional capacity, you might instead think she means the second thing: the activities and interactions of archaeologists. I will refer to the first subject by the shorthand "human prehistory" and the second "archaeologistology".

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The reduction of history to simple dualities - Romans versus indigenous Britons, civilisation versus barbarism - does no-one any favours. The past was more complicated than that, and the political choices we face in the present are, too. Missing from many of these oversimplified debates is any discussion of economies - as important in the Roman Empire as it is in modern Europe - and the distribution of power. The Roman administration brought benefits for some in Britain, threatened others and for some, made very little difference at all. For certain people, in certain areas of Roman Britannia, at particular times, it may have felt like living under an oppressive regime enforced by a military occupation. Others may have seen their horizons, their lifestyles and their incomes expanding. For others again, it may have been almost an irrelevance in the context of daily life. And so often, we either forget or gloss over the reality that slavery was the fuel which kept the cogs of the Imperial machine turning - and, indeed, powered Iron Age societies beyond the Empire. Of course, that didn't stop as we enter the medieval period, either. Moving onto the steamy heat of the industrial revolution, fossil fuels drove an economic boom for some nations, though slavery remained integral to the production of high-value foods and minerals. Longevity and quality of life have improved on average, around the world, in the last century and a half. Scientific and technological advances can be thanked for that improvement. But still, it's very unequal. I think all of us that write and read books know very well that there are people who, still, will never - can never - read our words. But if we’re really going to understand our prehistoric ancestors, archaeology is where it’s at. ‘The physical remains of the ancestors themselves, and all of their amazing culture.’

Yeah, well, I was brought up in a quite devoutly religious family. So I got taken to church, pretty much every Sunday, and to Sunday school. And brought up with no kind of idea that there was really anything else on offer. And I went as far as getting confirmed. So I think I got confirmed when I was about 14. Roberts starts with the earliest Britons, the early humans and Neanderthals who migrated here in between Ice Ages, before moving on to the waves of visitors who followed, including the earliest Celts and other peoples who populated Britain in the distant days of pre-history. Along the way Roberts also explores a multitude of subjects, from the white, male dominated history of archaeology which has irrevocably and often incorrectly skewed how we view the past, to the nature and purpose of burials, funerals and trinkets in early human societies.Beginning chapters with a particular archaeological find, Roberts gently provides the historical context in an easily accessible narrative style. This is a series of archaeological “snapshots” from Britain in the first millennium. Well written and showing wide knowledge of the period, I didn’t find this as engaging as her previous book, Ancestors: A History of Britain in Seven Burials.

Indeed, Alice Roberts was up at Uley Camp just the other weekend. ‘What a fantastic hillfort – the views are absolutely stunning! Except she did this in her previous book, too--archaeogenomics is very exciting! Much potential! Such answers! Wow! The first time she brought it up in this book I got excited, thinking that now we were finally going to get some of those results that she'd teased in her previous book. But no. Still coming! So ground-breaking! Much soonly! Very answers! 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.

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Roberts presents evidence both for and against this theory, in a very readable way for even the reader who has no previous knowledge of British history from the Iron Age to 1066. This is a detailed and richly imagined account of the deep history of the British landscape, which brings alive those “who have walked here before us”, and speaks powerfully of a sense of connectedness to place that is rooted in common humanity: “we are just the latest human beings to occupy this landscape”. PROFESSOR ALICE Roberts – TV presenter, anatomist, biological anthropologist, professor of public engagement of science in Birmingham – can’t stand the term ‘cavemen’. She almost physically shudders across the Zoom-ways.