Gone Medieval - DNA and Jewish Persecution in Medieval Britain

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

When the skeletons of six adults and 11 children were found at the bottom of a Medieval well in Norwich in 2004, they were thought perhaps to be the victims of plague or famine or civil unrest. Now scientific advances in DNA analysis have made it possible to not only age the victims, but identify their Jewish origin and - in combination with historical sources - the precise day they died.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis unravels the mystery of the bodies in the well with Dr. Selina Brace, an ancient DNA specialist at the Natural History Museum. The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. A while ago, a group of skeletons were found at the bottom of a disused well in Norwich as part of construction work on a new shopping centre. They were identified as medieval and almost certainly as murder victims. Since then, there's been some debate about the heritage of those victims of violence 800 years ago. The main question was, were they Jewish people? victims of one of England's many anti-Semitic episodes that often culminated in violence. The problem was how to prove cultural and religious identity from skeletons.

Science has moved on since the discovery and I'm delighted to be joined by Selina Brace, one of the team behind the most recent work on these remains, which sets out to see whether you can do just that, demonstrate someone's religion from their skeletal remains. So thank you very much for joining us, Selena. Hi, Matt. So you're an ancient DNA specialist at the Natural History Museum. what exactly is ancient DNA and why is it so useful?

Ancient or historical DNA is basically the DNA from a plant or animal that's died, but where the tissue or the DNA itself was not immediately frozen or stored specifically for the analyses of looking at the DNA. And this distinction is actually quite important because when any organism dies, the DNA inside their cells begin to break down and they fragment into smaller and smaller pieces. So this requires different techniques and laboratory protocols to retrieve the DNA and piece it back together.

So the types of material that I particularly or ancient DNA workers typically work on are those from museum collections or archaeological digs. So these might be bone samples or dried tissue, even insect legs and bits of old dung. And it's useful to look at the DNA. we go to the trouble looking at the DNA because DNA obviously provides blueprints on that individual, the individual plant or animal. So it can tell us about aspects of what they would have looked like. It can tell us how they might have responded to certain stimuli or even what genetic disorders they might have been predisposed to.

It can also tell us information about their past because the DNA is inherited from both your mother and your father, but it's also inherited from their mothers and fathers and the mothers and fathers before them. So by analysing the DNA of one individual, you can also paint a picture of where they came from, who their ancestors were. And you can identify certain signatures that represent different groups, that may be from different locations, and we can use this to interpret events such as migrations of people or animals in the past. Fascinating. So in terms of telling us what people looked like, Is that because we can tell from their DNA what their hair colour might have been or eye colour? Is there specific ways of identifying things like that?

Yes, absolutely. Actually, pigmentation of both their hair and skin and eyes is actually a very complex trait. It's one of these ones that's not covered just by a single gene. There are many different small changes that together make a difference like that. So yes, you can use DNA to do that, but it's quite a complicated trait. And I suppose traditionally there's been a group of things that it can't tell us. So it's not very good at telling us about people's cultural or their religious background, which is what we're going to come on to a little bit later.

So I guess it does have its limitations in what it can tell us. But it seems like it can tell us a lot about who people were, what they looked like, and where their family had moved from and too. Absolutely. I would say that typically in terms of cultural background, then you'd probably be looking more at the skeletal remains themselves often. So in the past, you would be looking at how they were buried, what they were buried with. and these kind of would be the indicators you'd look to for things like culture rather than the DNA.

But with advances that have been made and changes that we had, we can start to piece these things together. But it's a dual effort of looking at both the archaeology and the bones and the DNA themselves. Fascinating. And what can you tell us about these human remains that were discovered in Norwich? When and where were they found? So these remains were initially found in 2004. They were found by construction workers who were. building the Chapelfield Shopping Centre in Norwich. And when they were digging in this area, they uncovered a medieval well that contained human remains. The building work obviously was

halted and the site was then excavated by professional archaeologists. And they found that the well contained the remains of at least 17 people. Six of these people were adults and 11 of them were children. This is quite unusual. This is unusual assemblage. Because, in part because there's so many children. It's also obviously quite an unusual site for a burial, and it wasn't done in an organised or orderly fashion. Normally, if you're burying people, you bury them in an organised way, whereas these were very disorganised.

It's entirely possible some of them may have been deposited head first because the legs appear to be higher up than the skulls in the position, but they do all appear to have been interned at the same time and most likely post-mortem. This is very unusual. And this kind of thing, when you see it would often be representative of some kind of catastrophic event, potentially a famine or disease or indeed a mass killing. It's fairly horrific to think there's around six adults and about 11 children down this well and that they may have been murdered and then thrown there to sort of hide the bodies or dispose of the bodies. But presumably this is an unused well by this point. You wouldn't be throwing dead bodies

into a used well. Yeah, I think there was soil underneath and then more soil on top and more pottery in top of that. So it certainly doesn't look like the well was being used at the time, no. It's horrific. So what work was undertaken with these remains at the time? What testing was done and what was it able to find out and what was it perhaps not able to find out at the time? So in 2004 there was like a full archaeological report down the remains and the well. We had nothing to do it until around 2010, 2011. And we were asked to look at the boat. as part of, it was actually a TV series, they asked us to see if we could tell anything more from these individuals by looking at their DNA. At this time, so back in 2010, the sequencing

technology and the work that we did was actually quite limited. We were actually only able to sequence a small amount of mitochondrial DNA, and this was using a technique at the time called PCR. That hopeful of getting too much really useful information, to be honest, but it was to see if we could get anything. We were wondering if we'd be able to see if they were related to each other by using mitochondrial DNA. As I say, at the time, the initial archaeological report had suggested that this mass burial may have represented a disease or famine, but they also had suggested they could have been victims of civil unrest, such as the persecution of medieval Jewish community at this time. But saying all of that, we were still very surprised when we found that the

limited DNA data that we were able to retrieve was compatible with the idea that they may have had some form of Jewish ancestry. This was actually suggested by a very partial identification of a mitochondria DNA haplotype, but one that's more commonly found in modern Jewish communities. So it was based on only a very partial mitochondrial DNA identification, and I really must stress this, the evidence at that point was very far from confirmatory. It was very strong. light evidence that we had at the time. So I know from my Richard the third nerdiness a bit about mitochondrial DNA now. So that's the DNA that you inherit from your mother. It's only passed on in a female line. So I guess there's certain things that that can tell you, but it doesn't necessarily

travel many generations if there's a break in the female line. Yes. It's a very small genome compared to your whole rest of your nuclear genome. It's almost like one gene, one marker compared to the millions that you have in the rest of your genome. And as you rightly say, it's only passed down the female line. So the story sort of seemed to go quiet for a little while after that. Why did you decide to revisit these remains? What was it that caused you to go back to them? Yeah, I've got to be honest, this remained a puzzle for us for several years. I can honestly say that it kept coming back to me. It kept playing on my mind that we didn't know who these people were. I was always worried about it because it was such a horrific event, such a horrible thing that had happened to these people.

we really wanted to try and understand really what had happened. And in the meantime, the remains of these people were buried. They were buried in a Jewish cemetery, but with a multi-faith ceremony to reflect this level of uncertainty and the fact that we didn't really know about their ancestry or their identity. So it was something that stayed with me. And so basically then, as over the coming years, DNA technology has changed, particularly sequencing technology has changed,

and these developed. And so as they got better, as we were able to sequence more and more DNA rather than targeting just these small, tiny sections of DNA that's the mitochondrial DNA. We actually started to be able to sequence all of the DNA. And so the DNA from the nuclear genome as well. And so as this was happening, we were returning to the DNA from these individuals to see if we could get more information to try and answer questions about their ancestry and their identity. And so did the technology then kind of reach a tipping point where you thought now we're ready to really investigate this and maybe get some answers from this DNA? Yes, exactly. We just kept trying every time and then the techniques had improved so much that we were able to actually sequence whole genomes from six of these individuals. And that was when we could really start analysing the data and try and make a bigger impact about who they were or a bigger understanding to actually in-depth work out who these people were and what their ancestry would.

was. Fascinating. So if we get onto the research that just been done or the results have just been published, what were you able to discover about these individuals now? What do we know that we couldn't know before? So we sequenced the whole genomes from six individuals. We found that four of these individuals were closely related. Three of them were actually sisters. This was a five to 10 year old, a 10 to 15 year old and a young adult girl. And we were also able to attribute some further physical characteristic. So one of the victims was, or likely victims, was a young boy about zero to three years old and he would have had blue eyes and red hair. And then in terms of their ancestry, as we've said and as you're setting your introduction, Judaism is a shared religious and

cultural identity. But present day Ashkenazi Jews often carry genetic ancestors which reflect their very distinctive population histories and the fact that both historically and in present-day Jewish communities, they follow endogamous marriage practices. So they marry within the community. So because of this, there is a very specific ancestry that you can look at in the DNA. And what we found is that the ancestry or genetic signatures found in present-day Ashkenazi Jewish populations were mirrored or rather shared by the genetic ancestries we found in these individuals, which yeah, almost certainly meant that these that individuals were in fact Ashkenati Jews.

Wow, it's incredible to think that you can tell someone's religious background from their DNA. It seems an odd thing to be able to tell about someone. Yes, it's only in specific circumstances. It is because they have a very strong genetic ancestry structure that you can do that because otherwise it's a belief and that in itself would be very difficult to show from the DNA. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, host of the new podcast American History Hit. Twice a week, I'll be exploring stories from America. has passed to help us understand the United States of today.

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Join me every Monday and Thursday for American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. So what kind of hereditary conditions are you looking for to help to pinpoint a Jewish background? Ancestry is one thing. It's because they actually have followed this particular sort of historic past that you can see that. But one of the things that we're also able to look at as well as the ancestry markers are genetic markers. associated with genetic disorders because modern day Ashkenazi Jewish individuals are at a higher risk of certain diseases. They have certain predispositions, say for cancer. So to put this into an actual context, so genetic disorders can become commonplace in populations that have experienced bottlenecks.

So this is when a population reduces down in size. And when it does so, this can lead to an increase in the number of people carrying an otherwise rare genetic mutation. And then that leads to that coming higher in the population and it's then associated with that population. And so some of these modern genetic disorders that you see in modern populations, we actually were able to pick up in our individuals that we were looking at from Norwich.

So what was even more interesting about this is that it had been hypothesized that the present day, Anasi Jewish population, that the bottlenecks that caused the diseases that we see today was likely occurred around 500 to 700 years ago. The fact that we find these rare genetic markers in individuals from the 12th century means that the associated bottleneck that occurred for this group of people must, in fact, have occurred to centuries earlier, so prior to the 12th century. Fascinating. So sequencing that DNA from those remains is actually

altering our understanding of Jewish communities and what may have happened to them in the past. So it's kind of shifting that bottleneck incident, even if we don't know exactly what that is, it's shifting it back several centuries in our understanding. Yes, absolutely. So it's been very informative. And so in terms of being able to date these remains in terms of when these people may have been killed, how close are we to knowing when this event might have happened? The dating of these individuals is like one of the other pieces of this place. that's really important for our understanding of what happened.

So in this case, it's a case of radio-carbon dating the remains. So radio and carbon dating is used to identify when approximately an individual or an organism died. In its most basic sense, it's based on the fact that carbon 14 undergoes a measurable amount of radioactive decay. And so the amount of carbon 14 left represents how long ago an organism died. So we had several radio carbon dates from these individuals, and we were able to remodel these dates to give an approximate range of time of death. And it's not like time of death in movies.

This is like broad date ranges here, and we were able to put it down to the period of 1161 and 1216 AD. So this was really important because it ruled out that they were victims of the black death, because they would have needed to have died in the fourth. century. And also, if you remember from the archaeology reports, we were saying that this type of burial is usually associated either with a disease and black death would have been a natural one to have thought of, or in fact, famine, but there were in fact no recorded famines during this period. However, there is a historically recorded anti-Semitic event in Norwich at this time. And it's very specifically reported that on the 6th of February 1190 AD, there was an anti-sumatic riot in Norwich that reports that although many Jewish people found refuge in Norwich Castle,

any other Jews who were found at this time were murdered in their homes. So just tragic to be thinking about these things, but this is a recorded historical event that ties in with our timeline of when these people died. So it seems fairly likely that combining all these different lines of evidence, so we have this historical record that falls within our timeline of window of death, the archaeology, so the unusual assemblage that you find, the way these people were found, and the ancient DNA analyses themselves,

pulling all these lines of evidence together would seem to indicate to us that these people from the medieval well in Norwich were most likely the victims of an anti-Semitic violent event that occurred on the 6th of February 1190 AD. Wow, I mean, it really drives home the human aspect of it. But you said we can't get close to a time of death that they would give in a movie. But that is potentially incredibly precise. You know, if you bring all of those pieces of evidence together,

and it's incredible to see how the archaeology is working with the DNA, is working with the radio carbon dating, is working with the written historical record, to really focus on that one day. So we believe we have people of Jewish heritage who are the victims of violence, alive during a period when we have a recorded incident of people being killed as part of anti-Semitic violence in Norwich where they were found. So 1190 we're talking about when Richard I first has just come to the throne, he's preparing to go on crusade, and I guess whipping up all of that crusading ardour has the side effect of increasing levels of anti-Semitism

and potentially making Jews targets for attacks by people who are kind of inflamed by a crusading zeal, if you like. but it really brings home the human element of it to think there are around six adults and potentially 11 children here who were possibly murdered in their homes and then their bodies thrown unceremoniously into a disused well and all members of the close family by the sound of it as well it really drives home the human aspect of it that we can kind of put a date on it and almost identify these people yes all I say is we're pulling all these different lines of evidence to make some sense of it doesn't really make any sense of it does it I still don't understand why these things happened, but at least we can try and work out what it was, who they were. Yeah. And so this has

obviously been on your radar part of your professional life for more than a decade. So having got some of these answers together now, what did you find the most interesting thing that you found out about these remains? This whole thing has been such a long journey. I feel like I've been looking at this for a very long time. And I just quite relieved for these people that we've finally been able to actually say who they are and what happened to them. That's so important to me. Although it was a horrific event, I'm just grateful that we were able to finally put some understanding onto it and see what happened to them. Yeah, I was going to say, amongst all of the horror of what you're looking at, there must be some element of reward in it for you for being able to identify these people and

potentially give them some peace. They can have Jewish burial rights and things like that now. After 800 years? Yes, absolutely. I hope so. It was a horrific thing that happened to them, but to have this reported, it is a sense of relief to have answered these questions. And yeah, no, these poor people can now be put to rest. I mean, guess without looking into your crystal ball and thinking about where science is going in the years that follow, do you think there's more that we can learn from this DNA and these remains? So these remains have now been re-bearer, so it's not a case of us working on these anymore.

I think the most important thing for us was to actually understand their ancestry. And now that we've actually managed to identify that, we will no longer be working on the remains. I think it's fascinating to consider the larger historical element of you saying, you know, we're looking now at where this Jewish bottleneck in the population was and potentially moving that around kind of opens up another avenue of historical investigations to try and understand where that was. So I guess, you know, it is providing us with more things that we can look at,

even though they're now at peace. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us, Selena, and sharing those incredible findings. It's incredible, I think, where this technology has gone and the things that we're able to tell now. I mean, you must have thought 10 years ago, it was a shot in the dark, we'll probably never be able to find this,

and here you are able to present these findings. No, I would never have imagined 12 years ago we would have been able to say this much. The way the technology has changed, it's quite fascinating, what we're able to do. It's always important to stress, we don't do these things in isolation. It's not just about the DNA.

It's also so important to involve archaeologists, people in the community, to understand this as a wider picture and not work in isolation and just think about. the DNA, as I say, in isolation. It's important to see it as part of a picture. It is just one section of it. But yeah, it's come along in leaps and bounds. The technology, it's amazing now what we can do. History and science working together. I like that. Yeah, I like that too. That's a good thing.

Fabulous. Thank you very much for coming and talking to us. Thank you very much for inviting me. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify now. It really does help new listeners to find us. If you're enjoying this podcast and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I've better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits.