The Ancients - Human Sacrifice in Ancient Britain

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence from the start.When we picture human sacrifice in ancient Britain, the iconic, flaming Wicker Man often comes to mind. But how much of this is Roman propaganda, and what does the actual archaeology reveal? Tristan Hughes is joined by archaeologist Dr. Miles Russell to separate popular myth from gruesome reality. From perfectly preserved bog bodies in the north to mysterious grain pit burials down south, who were these victims and why did they die?Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio & video editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Robin McConnell. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch HEREWant even MORE Ancients? Sign up to History Hit for early access ad-free, plus exclusive subscriber-only episodes. PLUS with a History Hit subscription you can watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Sacrificing animals to the gods was a common feature of ancient cultures. Classical writers claimed the Celtic peoples of Western Europe went further that they sacrificed humans. But the religious rights of ancient Britain remain a mystery. Without written evidence from the Britons themselves, we don't know exactly what they thought their sacred duties were and what value they placed on human life.

Archaeology can help to fill gaps in the written record. And today, I'm joined by my good old friend, Dr. Miles Russell, from Bournemouth University, to take on a contentious question. Did the people of Iron Age Britain and Ireland really sacrificed humans to their gods, or have our ancestors been horribly misrepresented? Miles, always great to see you. Welcome to the show. Thank you.

First, I've got to say, you've just come off your latest dig, loving the beard, very much an archaeology vibe I'm getting straight away. More sort of Robinson Crusoe, I think. But should we also mention your T-shirt? You've got Duotriguez. So what is that? I'm officially branded. Yes, yeah.

So our Deutriguez project over the last 17 years, we've been looking at the understanding of the Iron Age tribe just prior to the Romans arriving. So the duetriguez has got very distinctive cultural impact with their burials, with their settlement types. So we're just trying to understand what happens when the Romans arrived and how Roman did they become? The answer is not at all.

And also, well, also, no doubt we're going to be covering them in our chat today about human sacrifice. Yes. Because this is the thing that it's so difficult sometimes to see something that's clearly human sacrifice in the surviving archaeological record. But you get those interesting insights into what may well have been human sacrifice in the Iron Age from Britain. You do. I mean, lots of Roman writers describe the Britons as performing lots of acts of human sacrifice. and a lot of the time, I guess we've looked at those classical sources and thought they are just demonising an enemy, this kind of negative propaganda that anyone puts out. You don't want your opponents to sound like nice guys. So they commit acts of human sacrifice as well as painting themselves blue and cannibalism and stuff like that. Cannibalism, marrying their sisters and sticking horse urine in their hair and all this kind of stuff that are Britain's.

You know, we're told do that makes some alien outlandish and odd. and clearly sort of barbaric. So there's lots of description. Julius Caesar, in particular when he's describing the Gauls of northern France and the Britons talks about human sacrifice and the fact that this shows that these barbarians, their religions are so primitive and crude. And that's what the Romans need to stamp out.

You know, they need to bring their idea of civilisation to these poor benighted natives who are committing all kinds of atrocities upon themselves. But finding archaeological evidence for that is very difficult. Is this also where we get the idea of a wicker man from? Yeah, I mean, that's really thanks to Caesar. He describes, I think, one particular tribe as the way of getting rid of criminals is having a mass sacrifice where they pack men and women into this sort of big wicker work figure and then ignited and just burn people alive. So we don't know whether this is something that Caesar saw or whether he heard of or whether it even happened, but it's one of those

sort of big mass sacrifice activities that the Romans, I mean, I think partly is to titillate their own audience. You know, they entertain a Roman audience, think, oh, you know, this is the kind of wanton atrocities that these barbarians commit. So we don't know whether that's true. There's certainly no archaeological evidence that's been discovered yet of a wicker man, but it's one of those deep-seated things that we think of when we hear about human sacrifice. And the Romans really like that idea. There are several writers. Caesar's just the first who mentions kind of infer that they had these great kind of wooden things that they then set alights with people within, right?

Yes, and that fact that it's the druids, it's some kind of priestly class within the Gauls of the Germans, even the Spaniards, we're told, that have human sacrifices, every different tribe has its own curious way, whether it's burning or whether it's stabbing somebody in the throat and then watching their limbs contort,

or whether it's hanging or drowning. But there are all these various different ways in which, I mean, it's usually some aspect of cutting open and looking at the entrails. And what I find, particularly wonderful, but what I find really interesting is that the Romans

are very keen to say this is horrific. Killing people for religion is bad. But the Romans, of course, commit mass atrocities for entertainment. You know, you think of gladiators, you think of the kind of people being ripped alive by panthers

or being burnt alive. Crucifixion, you know, thinks of the tens of thousands that the Romans regularly crucify. As a public statement, as warning, they would view that as execution. They're not doing it to the gods. And I think that's the key thing,

is that their feeling is killing somebody to appease gods is wrong. That's the wrong kind of God. That's the wrong kind of activity. But killing people for entertainment, that's fine. Yes. Human sacrifice versus public execution, you know, midday during an event at the amphitheater at the arena in the Roman world. What's good?

What's right and what's not? I mean, as a matter of scale, I don't want to defend human sacrifice, but if you are killing one person in an event to the gods, surely that's preferable than killing thousands in front of obeying mob. But the Romans don't see it that way. They've got their own sort of curious of cultural blindness as far as that's concerned. They think that killing for religion is something that should be outlaw, should be stamped on and removed. Going on to the archaeology to figure out whether there actually was any human sacrifice or not in Britain,

whether it's an invention by the Romans to smear them. Archaeologically, how difficult is it to look at human remains and to say clearly, this is evidence of human sacrifice? Well, what complicates it in Britain is the fact there's actually relatively few individuals make it into the burial record. So there are some areas like the Dioritriguez of Dorset, areas in eastern Yorkshire, where you get large inhumation burials,

as we would recognize, so skeletons complete. and you can look at injuries sustained on that person. But for the vast part of late Iron Age Britain, we don't get that quantity of skeletal remains. So you'd say about 99% of the population are not appearing in the archaeological records. So perhaps they're being cremated, perhaps there's some kind of exposure burial,

perhaps they're being placed in rivers or bogs or somewhere where archaeologists can't recover those remains. So straight away, we're not getting anything like a complete burial record. So finding people who have been sacrificed, is very difficult. We do find individuals who have sustained injuries. Sometimes

you're put down to war cemeteries or battle graves. There's a number of hill forts in the sort of southern part of Britain like Dainbury that Barry Cunleiff excavated in the 1970s and 80s and Maiden Castle that Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler excavated in 1930s.

And there are some skeletons that have major cranial trauma but it's difficult to say are these executions, are these these people who've died in single combat, are they sacrifices? So it is very, very difficult. I think the best evidence that we've got,

it's fairly limited in Britain, but across Ireland into southern Scandinavia is the so-called bog bodies, where you get very well-preserved individuals, and it's very clear that these have been killed in a way. It's not a simple execution, but there's some kind of performative act that's being conducted on these people.

Well, let's explore the bog bodies, first of all, and then we'll delve into some particular burials that might also show evidence of sacrifice that you've been working on. And bogs, first of all, give us a bit of an idea, Miles. What area of the world are we talking about where you see lots of bogs? Why are they so prevalent in a place like Britain?

Well, any prevalent in certain areas where you've sort of get restricted water flow where you get sort of very boggy deposits, if you think of these are sort of liminal spaces where people aren't essentially living, but they are going to, perhaps, extract iron ore, they're extracting peat. But these are, I think when we're looking at in the late Iron Age, it's watery places,

it is rivers and bogs, which form the edge of specific territories. And it's in these places that you often find prestigious objects. You think of the River Thames, some of our best examples of late Iron Age metalwork have come from the Thames because they've been effectively sacrificed. The Iron Age communities have thrown ceremonial shields and swords and helmets. might be that the water's perceived to be a portal to another world. If you believe your gods inhabit the ground and the waters, then by dropping something into the river, it's lost, it's entered the realm of the divine. So I think straight away, there's something special

about those kind of environments. And it's intriguing when we look at certainly the settlements that we've been digging in Dorset. It's very clear that these people don't eat fish. They don't eat anything from the sea or from the rivers. That's not in their diet at all. The Romans love shellfish, the Roman love, all kinds of things for marine resources. Iron age people don't. And it might be if you're dropping your dead or your special objects, if you think your deities reside in the river, you do not eat what comes out of the river. And I think bogs also occupy that kind of liminal strange space in which deities are there. You can place things in a bog. It gets swallowed up. It gets lost. The divine that your gods have taken control of that object,

be it a person, an animal, or sort of. some kind of prestigious artifact, it's been claimed. If you leave it on a mountain, you can still see it's there, but if it goes into the water, it's gone. It's gone. So I think there's that sense that watery spaces are very, very special. And that's where we find our best examples of sacrificed objects, animals and people. I guess it's also interesting with Boggs.

I remember talking to Melanie Giles about this last year. The fact that almost like rivers where you can see the flow, you can see movement happening in the rivers. so you get a sense of almost life in this linear zone. Bogs aren't stationary things. They grow. They take more of the environment as time goes on. So people living near a bog will be able to see it, you know, grow and bubble is probably the wrong word.

But you know what I mean? It also looks like it's alive as well. It is alive, yeah, in a way that sort of the chalkland or sort of another arable area isn't. Crops grow from it, but the ground itself is static. Well, you're right. A bog. Sometimes it's in a sense you can see it breathing. because it's a real feeling that it is alive.

And so do we think this is something that stems all the way back from the early Iron Age, dare I say, the Bronze Age before, that these places have been important, liminal zones? I think, yeah, you certainly do get quite a lot of bronze age metalwork from watery places as well, but I think in the Iron Age, certainly we're getting towards the later Iron Age, the importance of these, it might be that if a river is at the board of a territory, by dropping things into it, you are somehow increasing the,

the spiritual nature of that barrier. You are the protection zone from your own environment. Of course, the water's bringing you, you know, the actual waters of life and so on. But I think there's this feeling that as you go into the late Iron Age, bogs, rivers, even the sea, are becoming far more importance in a spiritual sense. And the examples we have surviving from bogs of human bodies

from the late Iron Age, do we have a lot of examples surviving from Britain and Ireland? Quite a few from Ireland. Lots from Denmark and southern Scandinavia. Of course, the most famous one from England is Lindell Mann, covered from Cheshire. He's one of a small limited number of bog bodies. Of course, the great thing about a bog deposit as anaerobic conditions, you don't get organics decaying to the same degree as elsewhere.

So you do get skin, you get flesh, you get textiles, you get a whole range of organic preservation that you don't get. So we do get complete, sort of leathery bodies coming out. out, but most have been recovered through peat digging. So they're not being recovered through careful archaeological examination. So a lot of bog bodies recovered, they're incomplete because they've been hit by spades or they've been hit by sort of machinery. So Lindau Man is a classic example.

We're missing his lower half. So we don't know where that's gone. But the upper half is well preserved gives us a very clear idea of this individual, but also the mode in which he was killed. Shall we explore that now? So Lindoman's the most famous one and he also might have a link to human sacrifice. So tell us about this figure of Lindoman

what we know from his remains. The key thing is we've got an individual who seems to be well looked after. He's got nicely sort of trimmed fingernails. He's got nice to look after hair. He seems to be relatively well fed. He's died violently. This is not a simple case of murder or execution.

He's died what some describe as a three or in his case probably a fourfold death. in that he's naked. I mean, all the bog bodies has recovered across whole north-western Europe seem to be naked as they've gone into the bog. One or two have got a cap. Some have got a little bit of sort of some kind of fur scarf or something or armoring. But essentially, they've been, their clothes have been removed from them.

They've probably been walked alive into the bog. It's very, very difficult to drag a dead body into a bog to deposit. So they've probably been marched into the bog, knowing that they're going to die. Of course, we don't know whether they've accepted. accepted that or whether they've gone struggling. But then with Lindau Man, he seems, someone seems to have struck him violently across the head. So his skull's been fractured and part of the bone has sort of gone into the brain case. He's then had his throat cut and he's been garotid. That seems about overkill. But there is a real sort of sense. If you're killing somebody,

I don't give you ideas, Tristan, but if you're killing someone and trying to do it in a theatrical way, you want to make the blood spurt further. So his throat's been cut, but the actual application of a ligature and a tourniquet, it tightens the neck. It makes the blood spurt further. And Melanie Giles, as you mentioned as now,

has described very sort of viscerally that the way in which that kind of death excites an audience, because it's that sense of, you're not seeing somebody die, but they're doing in the most explosive way, imaginable, the most theatrical way. So someone's tightening this from behind, creating this massive area of blood flow.

Then he's being placed face down into the bog. And he's probably still alive at this stage. Gosh. Because they were finding a lot of water in the lungs. So there's a suggestion that not only is he's been concussed, he's had his throat cut, he's been strangled, and then he's finally been drowned. So that might be, if you've got four types of death, you've got about four people involved in the killing.

but it's a real over-the-top way of executing somebody, arguably in front of an audience, to make it viscerally exciting, but also to sort of demonstrate that this person is definitely dead. Gosh, and you can imagine, as horrific as it is, probably, you know, ritual meaning behind each stage of that killing. You know, there's very much a process behind it. It is.

And also, of course, we don't know who that person was within their community. I mean, were they a priest? Were they a leader? Were they somebody from a neighbouring community who's somehow considered less important? Were they a prisoner? Yes, it could be a prisoner of war.

There's been some suggestion in his stomach cakes. He's got relatively simple sort of oat cakes, but there's also traces of mistletoe, which there's some suggestion, certainly with their Scandinavian bog bodies, that they've been fed ergot, which is this fungal growth on crops, which creates this kind of cyclical,

psychological imbalance, it's a psychoactive drug. So these are people who might be, and that might be the case with a mistletoe, that there's some sense of altering their mind state before they're sacrificed. That might be considered a kindness because they're not wholly in control of their senses. They don't quite know where they are. It might be that by altering their mindset, you're making, you know, they're making greater contact with their gods because of that altered states, they're seeing hallucinating this thing

so they're entering into that kind of world of the divine. But there is a sense that these are people who have been walked into the bog they've been fed drugs and then they're killed in a very overly dramatic way. But is that a punishment or is that have these people

gone willingly to their death? That sounds like an odd thing to say. Why would you go willingly to that kind of violent death in that kind of exposed liminal space? But we don't know what their views about the afterlife was. I mean, if they're being sacrafated, you think of obviously, early Christian martyrs,

who willingly went to the most extreme kind of torture and death in the belief that that kind of violence led them to a glorious afterlife. It's the afterlife that they were searching for. They wanted to die in a more extreme way than Jesus had done on the cross. So I think we've got lots and lots of examples of people who willingly go to death in the belief is a good thing. Bloody Mary and obviously the burnings, of course in the junior period as well.

Yes, exactly. So it might well be that these, like Lindau Man, went willing to his death in the sense that his life, giving of his life was good for his people. In some way he was appeasing the gods. We know, I don't know, it might have been a case of some kind of environmental collapse, a failure of a harvest. It might even be the arrival of the Romans,

because he's dying at a time that the Romans are starting to possibly be investing in southern Britain. But it could be that there was no sort of, struggle that he voluntarily gave himself up to this kind of death. We just don't know. It's lots of interesting questions and debates, but we shouldn't necessarily assume that these are criminals being punished. They might be willingly offering their lives in the hope that this brings a better existence to those people left behind.

It's an amazing story, though, from the surviving archaeological evidence of Lindellman. As you've mentioned, mistletoe in the stomach, I mean, that does make you think, is it a druid who organise it? Because the Romans do associate mistletoe with druids, if I'm... They do. And Julia sees and others are very sort of keen to link the mistletoe as some kind of special material that the druids create. The difficulty with the druids is lots of speculation,

lots of fiction's been writing about them, written about them. We know that there is a priestly class in one part of central France called the druids. Undoubtedly, there would have been priests and priestesses who were engaged in sacrifice, who were making the contact with the gods. So it could be. I don't want to say, you know, say with mistletoe,

all that definitely proves there's a druid connection. This is somebody who, it might be a druid himself. We don't know. Obviously someone knows how to kill this person is doing it in a certain way. They've done it before. They've undoubtedly been doing it again. But, yeah, the mistletoe there might be a way of dulling the pain

or introducing some kind of mind-altering substance that makes the death less painful to the individual involved. So, Miles, I got a couple of others on my list before we get to your work at the Doer Trugas. The biggest name that I recognize here, and I think is he on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, old Crohn Man. Yes, one of those things about human,

I mean, it's another aspect about the human burials, is the display element, is that there is a sort of a feeling that, you know, should we be putting these figures on display? I have to have to say that they are probably the most exciting things for people to sit. Not everyone's going to be affected the same way, and I think you do need some kind of trigger alert if you are showing human remains, but you're right.

With Crogamann, we've got an individual there. He's missing the head and lower part of his torso, because, again, the way that he was recovered through peat digging. But it is another individual that seems to have suffered torture prior to death. And what do we know about this torture? Do we think it could be evidence of sacrifice? Yeah, I mean, I think with old Crogamann, indeed a lot of the other burials from Central Ireland, is that these are individuals who have been sacrificed. I mean, Crogamann seems to have his nipples removed as another element, perhaps, of torture prior to death. So they're instigating pain.

Now, is that because he is a criminal and you're trying to make him suffer before he's executed? or is it all part of this process of introducing different aspects which aren't necessarily fatal but ultimately contribute to the ultimate demise? I think this is also the thing, isn't it, that because we've got some examples that might suggest human sacrifice for some of these bog bodies, we can't then just say that every body you find in the bog is a result of a ritualistic killing, which may well be human sacrifice. Many other times, actually sometimes, remember talking to mentally about this,

they might have just fallen in the bog and not got out. Exactly. I mean, bogs are dangerous places. So we could have a number of individuals who've just fallen in and have drowned and have been lost. And there's no way you can recover that body. So it only comes later with doing peat digging. But I think a lot of the examples that we're finding archaeologically,

because they show evidence of trauma on the body, I mean, things like with old Crogger Man, with his nipples being removed with a knife, you wouldn't find that if you were just dealing with a skeleton. You know, you'd be looking for trauma on the body. the bone. So finding the flesh, finding the skin of these individuals, you can see if they've been tortured, if they've had been forcibly shaved, if had ears cut off, all these sort of elements we can see if you've got the body preserved as they are within the bog context. I just read out the

other two I have on my list because I want to get on, but just because they're highlighted as well, we've always got Galaachman between 400 and 200 BC, probably strangled, Withee was found around his neck, maybe a garot. This interesting, two wooden pegs pinned him down, which is quite something. There is that sort of sense that when garotting, strangulation does seem to be. I mean, that makes, I think, the death last

longer. But less blood in that case. There is less blood in that, but if you're, yeah, I mean, that particular example, there doesn't seem to be a throat cut, but it's the cutting of the throat and the strangulation that seems to be a fairly common feature, certainly in the Denmark burial. And this last one, this is of a woman,

Ballymacham's Moore Woman, from about 343 BC to 1 ADCE around that time. Her remains, she was decapitated at the bog and her head was taken away. But that almost sounds like once again she was led into the bog alive and then it happened there. But in that case, maybe different tradition is that we don't know the context around it. But then her head is taken away and the rest is kept in the bog. The removal of the head, I mean that's an interesting story in its own way because you see a lot of in early medieval Christianity, certainly in Wales, there's lots of, um, artists and saints who have their heads remit and that's the origin of a of a sacred spring.

So it might be going back to that idea of head hunting. We know, again, from Roman writers, that the taking of the head, that a sense of a person's identity as a kind of, as a prestigious object is relatively common. So it could be there, it's less of a sense of a sacrifice. Again, we don't know whether this is a punishment, but the head being retained and taken somewhere else. But it is another good example of someone being led into the bog, knowing full world. the fate that is reserved for them.

So those are a few examples from peat bogs in Britain and Ireland. But I mean, that's only kind of, so it's the northern part of Britain and Ireland where you have the peat bogs. It's less so in southern Britain. But there is still potential evidence of human sacrifice and remains discovered in southern Britain as well. And these are from both hill forts and everyday settlements, do you think? Yeah, I mean, it does get very difficult when you're dealing, certainly with air. areas where you don't normally get a huge numbers of skeletal evidence, but you can often tell when you're getting the actual bones whether an individual has suffered a particular trauma, usually

to the skull. You can see there's a definite blow there or to the shoulders or to the arms, whether these are defensive injuries, someone's faced their attacker, or whether these are somebody who has been executed. And then the actual subsequent treatment. So somewhere like Dainbury, and there's a number of hill forts across the sort of central, southern Britain. There are pits with heads in, Sometimes with the jaw and a few vertebrae suggesting forcible, you know, actual decapitation, as a cause of death rather than the head being removed in a post-mortem sense and curated later, you get individuals who've died violently who've been thrown in a pit. You sometimes get evidence of sort of sword or spear blows to the head.

It does get difficult to be sure in those kind of circumstances whether you are looking at individuals who've died fighting. This might be an honoured ancestor or someone who, a sort of, died and heroic death facing an enemy combatant and therefore has been treated with ceremonial burial rather than somebody who's been dragged there and then sacrificed and then killed. So a lot of the times we can say this person has died with violence, but we can't say what the cause of that violence is. With the bog, we can say they've been taken a long way from the area settlement and then they've been done to death. So this is a premeditated theatrical execution. but if you're dealing with a skeleton in a grave in a hill fort and they've died violently,

it's difficult to know whether that is, they've died in the circumstances of normal life or whether they've been executed or sacrificed or whatever. So usually it's the kind of context that that body is found. If that's unusual, that in turn might suggest it is a... Well, that's going to ask, what's the context of these skeletons discovered at Dainbury Hillfort? So should we be imagining were they found within the confines of the ramparts? or were they found outside the hill full. Give us a sense of that.

So a lot of the burial remains there are found in what appears to be disused storage pits. So if we think of a big cylindrical pit cut down into the chalk, which may have been used as a grain silo. It may have been used as a cold storage for food. When that's gone out of use, what you often find is that animal remains. So sacrificed animals, animal body parts have been thrown into the pit. And in some cases, we get skulls with cranial trauma. Sometimes you get bits of jaws, sometimes you get complete individuals that are thrown in. And it's that sense of this isn't a formal burial, as we'd understand it, if somebody laid sort of lovingly within a grave, with grave goods.

There's a feeling, the actual throwing into the pit or the dismemberment of the body that suggests this is an execution or this is a sacrifice. It's not a grieving family looking after the remains or sending the remains of a loved one off into the afterlife. this is the disposal of somebody in a very dramatic and violent way. And are there any particular examples from Dainbury that people have thought, this is more likely than any others to be potentially a result of human sacrifice? I mean, there are. I mean, the problem is there's no single pattern to everything. So you get some pits where you've got a selection of skulls in.

Sometimes you get individuals who've been, as I say, sort of sharing a grave or sharing a pit and looks like they've been thrown in. So are these people who are a captured enemies, who've been executed. Are they people who have died defending the site? Are they criminals? There's lots of different speculation, but we can say that violence and the treatment of the body afterwards

suggest that this is not a normal burial, that these are not honoured, respected ancestors, that they've died for a particular reason and then they've been disposed or perhaps in a storage pit rather than in a grave because it's a sacrifice to the gods. I think that's all we can say. Yes.

That's all we can say. But let's go on to a site where you have done a lot, a lot of work. And we can focus on a few particular discoveries made and the evidence supporting that these figures were sacrificed. So let us introduce the site of Duropolis. Now, Miles, would you care to take it away? Sometimes I regret using the term Drupolis. We've got five minutes for this, by the way. It condensed 17 years of five minutes.

It's a big late Iron Age settlement with some evidence of Roman activity coming in as well which we've been investigating at Winterbourne Kingston in Dorset. It's part of the Deutriguez project looking at the way in which the late Iron Age tribe of the Deutriguez do they become Roman, what actually happens when the Romans arrive? So we've had roundhouses, we've had storage pits, we've had cemeteries, a whole range of evidence coming up.

I mean, the key interest that we've had is the cemeteries because these are people who are bearing they're dead in a particular way with grave goods and so we're getting quite a nice percentage of the population. We can study things like age at death, disease, health, what they're eating and so on. However, within that

context, we've also found at least five individuals who aren't buried in that very safe, respectable, usual way as if they're being placed in the ground for their journey to the afterlife. These are people who are found at the bottom of storage pits

usually face down as if they've been thrown in. And it's these individuals who we are suspecting our human sacrifices. And before we delve into that, I mean, explain just how special it is to have a cemetery surviving with multiple human burials surviving from late Iron Age Britain. Yeah, I mean, it sounds odd to say you assume that there's cemeteries all over the country. But within Iron Age Britain, it is actually relatively rare to get a large cemetery whereby you're getting men and women and children buried. In Dorset, in Eastern Yorkshire,

there are cultural groups who, for whatever reason, decide that they are going to dispose their dead in individual graves in larger cemeteries. The rest of the country, they might be cremating their dead. They're doing something unusual with human remains, and we don't get the skeletal evidence. So we're very, very restricted in those sort of areas where we can actually study the human population.

and Dorset is one such zone. So we've, over the last 17 years, we've excavated at least six cemeteries of late Iron Age date, which men and women in equal numbers are being buried, and they've got grave goods. They've got joints of meat. They've got pots containing drinks.

So we don't know much about the gods that they worship, but there's a clear sense there's life after death, and they're being given the necessary prerequisites for that journey, food and drink to sustain them on that journey to another world. So that's great, but that really relates to, I guess, to the elite, the wealthy, the well-off, the generally successful farmers. But finding individuals face down in storage pits tells us a completely different aspect to that lifestyle. That's really interesting. And how many do you say potentially?

So we've got five individuals. Four look like they've been thrown in. So arms and legs are all disjointed as they've been faced down. One is face down, but appears to be. The legs are drawn up under the body. There might have been bound up and then thrown in. But four definite five possible. Shall we go through them one by one and kind of explore what we know from the archaeology?

The first one I've got is the Winterbourne Woman. Yes. I mean, that's the one we've managed to publish. That's what we found in 2010. So it's one of the first storage pit burials that we recovered. And to that date, we'd had one cemetery with all these sort of individuals buried carefully and respectfully with grave goods. This was a storage pit.

Now, every one of the storage pits that we find, we excavate because pretty much everyone has got some kind of placed deposit. There's this feeling, I guess, that in the Iron Age, you dig a pit, you put your foodstuffs in it. The next agricultural cycle, that pit gets abandoned, but you put an offering. Sometimes that offering might throw someone in there. Well, not every time. I think it was a way of getting through your population quite quickly if you did that. But sometimes it's an inverted pot. Sometimes it's a dog burial.

We've got a few of those. sometimes we get bits of animals which are cut up so we get bits of horse, bits of cow in the bottom of the pits. So there's a feeling that animals are being sacrificed and they're not being eaten, but the meat's being consigned to the bottom of the pit as an offering.

But in 2010 we found, going down into one of these pits, there was an adult female. She was lying face down, so completely unlike the other graves that we'd had, which are in crouched or fetal positions, lying on one side with their legs drawn up in a shallow grave. She was faced down as if she'd been thrown down,

as if she'd been thrown into the pit. And she was lying on what we thought at the time was a bed of meat. It was sort of like a mass of horse, cow, pig bones, very weathered bones. So these weren't freshly killed animals. This was bone relating to animals that had been killed some time ago.

The bone was very weathered. Creating a platform at the bottom, and she was lying face down on top of that. So straight away, we knew that was odd. We hadn't found anything like that before. And there was something deeply suspicious about the nature, of that deposit,

the nature of those remains. It wasn't until we excavated and removed her, did we see, looking at the remains, there was a series of injuries on the body, one of a very violent break across her rib. So just before, a couple of weeks before she died, she'd had a significant bloat of a chest,

which had cracked one rib, which was starting to heal, and had bruised other ones. She had an injury to the head, but most critically of all, she had a massive cut to one of the neck vertebra, So what actually looked like is the only way that could have happened if someone was holding her from behind

and had run a sort of a blade, a deep incision across the neck and effectively cut her arteries in the neck. So just like with the bog bodies, here or somebody had their throat cut, we can't obviously tell whether she had a ligature applied as with Lindyam and to make a more theatrical blood spurting. There was three or four kind of levels to the killing almost, right? But here is someone, and what is the intriguing thing is, because having had that throat cut, which would have introduced a lot of blood into the pit, she's then thrown face first onto this white platform of bone, of animals that had long since died.

So it might be a sense of the transfer of the life essence of the human into the animal bone or her life essence as a soul of the blood draining out into the ground. If you believe your gods are in the ground and they control the fertility of your crops, then the giving of a life in that very public and theatrical way into the bottom of the pit is probably the best way from that perspective of appeasing your gods. God, so it could be an agriculturally linked kind of ritual. It could be. I mean, we don't know enough about the actual time that she was killed, but it could be if there is crop failure or there's some kind of catastrophe with food procurement,

you think the gods are angry, you give the life of a human. It's an extreme sacrifice. We know they're sacrificing animals all the time. You know, we're getting pits and pretty much every single cut that we excavate has got animal body parts in. So they're killing animals to eat, but they're also giving offerings to the ground all the time. But every so often, presumably,

something extreme is needed to keep the gods on board. And I think this is an instance of that. Do we have any idea? Has there been studies of the bones themselves to find out more about who this woman was? Yeah, I mean, the sense we've done lots of DNA analysis of all the cemeter, all the burials we've got, this individual is not connected to any of the other burials that we've got. She's not family as far as that. I mean, she might be connected to somebody in the nearby farmstead, but they don't appear to be killing one of their own. Looking at the sort of mobility isotopes, looking at the whole range of stuff, evidence in the teeth and so on. It looks like she didn't grow up on the chalk. We're digging primarily on the chalk. So she's not connected. to the family that lived there, she's probably not growing up

in a geological environment that's close to the settlement. So effectively, I think she's an outsider and it's not making it better, but I think she could be a captive, she could be a prisoner. She's certainly very maltreated,

you know, she's quite malnourished. She's got a series of injuries and said the most recent one being the rib damage before she's then killed at the pit. So she's somebody might be the lower end of the socio-economic scale. She might in some way

be thought to be more disposable, which is a terrible thing to say about anyone, but within the community, they might have thought, if we're going to sacrifice somebody, she's the one we're going to sacrifice. She's also got, when we look at her vertebra, they're very, very compressed, so she's carrying lots of heavy weights through a lot of her life. So I think all these things together suggest that she's probably a slave. She might well be a prison of war, but for whatever reason at whatever time they've decided we are going to kill someone, make a human sacrifice, she's the one to kill. I guess it's also very interesting when you explore the wider context of new research

that has come out from your site in the past year or so. I remember going down there last year, we did a documentary on this very topic. The fact that it seems that the men are moving in to the settlement, they're moving in with their wives and it seems that they're matrilocal societies in which it's easier for women to, well, lands being passed down their side of the family. So, I guess, it's horrific as it is to say, it makes sense that they're not sacrificing one of their own women because they're one of the landowners of the society. They hold quite a bit of power. So they're not one of the ones being sacrificed and then thrown in the pit. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, it obviously the study is still

in its early days, but it does, as you say, with Lara Cassidy and our colleagues at Dublin University looking at the DNA. It does look as if we've got individuals, certainly women who are staying on the land, the multiple generations of women being born, grown up and died and being buried there. The men seem to be further distant and less connected to the women. The women have more grave goods with them. So there is a real sense of it being a matrophocal, a matrilineal society, land ownership, passing down the female line. And a lot of the times you look at the roundhouses that are living in, you look at the settlements they've got, look at the landscape, you think, this is some kind of utopia.

This is a fantastic lifestyle. We recognize a lot of their hopes and dreams and the kind of, and then you see something like this human sacrifice. You think, actually, no, they're very different. There are certain aspects of their life, their attitude to life, their outlook on existence that is totally different for us. And they think it's perfectly acceptable

in certain conditions to kill somebody and throw them in the pit. And that's fine. But as you say, she's not one of them. So I don't know whether that's good or not. They're not killing their own, but they certainly deem it perfectly acceptable to kill someone who's considered to be an outsider. Yeah, I don't think we need to see whether it's good or not. No, no.

But I think it's interesting to theorise in that society whether one of those women landowners had power could have also been a spiritual leader, you know, a druid. As we know, it was men and women who could have then been overseeing this ritual or this ceremony that might be an example of sacrifice in that case. Exactly. I mean, it's one of those things, certainly with the bog bodies, we never know. whether the individuals who are buried, are they one of the communities being killed, or is it a prisoner of war, someone distant? With these skeletons, we can say that this is somebody

who's not part of that community, but who's doing the killing, whether it's part of the women who are in control there, who's killing somebody, perhaps not to pollute their own kind of genetic sort of makeup. We don't know. But it's a very, and people have said, well, can you say it's a sacrifice?

It's definitely an execution. but I think the fact that this is someone who has been killed it in this obviously theatrical over the top way but there's a lot of thoughts have gone into actually creating that bone platform when you look at the bones she was thrown down on top of it's not a random scatter they've at one end of the pit they've got the skulls of horse and cow then you've got the vertebra and ribs and pelvis there's some kind of order that's been created so there's a lot of thought

has been gone to how we're going to create the theatre within which this individual will be killed. So in that sense, I think it's probably one of the best examples we've got out of a wetland context of obvious human sacrifice. And are the other four potential examples of human sacrifice at Duropolis at the site, are they very similar in how they're laid out in the burials? They are in the sense of being thrown into the pit. We had one three years ago now, an adult male, who very clearly had been thrown in because

one of his legs was up against the side wall of the pit and the foot was at the top. Gosh. And he was lying with his arms. You could imagine they almost see where he'd been killed and where he'd been thrown into. So you would have found the foot first when you were digging down on those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So they found the upper levels of the feet and to work down and to find him. So, I mean, that's one of those other things that sort of brings you up short because, as archaeologists, we're finding skeletons all the time.

but these are people who've died somewhere, have been taken somewhere else and have been buried, and you should get the sense of care and decency. Here we're actually dealing with a murder victim, and we can identify the place where they were murdered. You can see they were obviously killed here at the top of the pit and thrown in,

and that does bring a whole new perspective, and it does make you feel quite, you know, you're dealing with a crime scene effectively. You're never going to work out who the perpetrator was, but you can see the victim, and you can see how they were killed, and you can see where they were killed. Gosh.

But that particular man, he was thrown in. There were a few animal bones underneath him, but nothing like the platform, the First Lady. There was no obvious trauma that we could see on the skeleton, but the fact that he was lying face down suggested a violent death. And to be honest, again, it's a lot of the bog bodies, the way they've had their throats cuts and they've been strangled. It doesn't leave an impact on the bone.

So there's plenty of ways he could have been killed without it then impacting on his skeleton. And that's in contrast to the bog bodies where you had that skin surviving so you can see the evidence of the garotting and stuff. Yeah, I mean, if you've been garrotted, and you said with the bog bodies, often they're found with the noose still with them. Tolandman is. Yes, it's another good example. If he'd been strangled, that would have decayed in the chalky dry soils as well, so he wouldn't have the evidence. But it's the fact that it's the nature of that throwing into the pit. That's very disrespectful, given that every.

everyone else is buried in nice shallow graves with grave goods and there's an order to it. The fact that he's thrown in suggests a disregard for the individual and I suspect that he probably died on the surface. And we had one last year, again, this was an adult female who also was thrown in and the body, the limbs are tangled. So I think she is another good example of a sacrifice. But interesting that of those five, it is men and women clearly. It's almost like there's no kind of gender focus on these girls.

Yeah, yeah. So it doesn't seem to be. Neither does it seem to be an age focus. I mean, what we're doing at the moment, obviously, the one we had in 2010 was quite early on in our studies. The other four that we've recovered, we're also now doing the DNA, I mean, analysis of those to see, again,

are these outsiders, are they connected to each other? Is there anything we can say about their lives? Because all of our lives are dietary choices and injuries are written in our bone. We might, for the first time, be able to bring up a sort of a biography of the sacrificed. Now, what is it distinctive about these individuals and their lifestyles that made them different?

Are they undergoing a harsher lifestyle, a different kind of diet, to those who are in control? This is something we can do for the first time. And that's research you're doing at the moment. It is. I'm hoping to reveal soon the results of it. Yeah. Right. You're teasing us, basically. You have to get you back on for a future one.

But yes, I guess we'll now, well, actually, one more question before the big why part. does it seem like I know because the organic material doesn't survive in those burials but as you say it's a crime scene it seems to be almost you know where they're killed you know where they're thrown in the pit should we also be imagining

that their hands are tied behind their back almost yeah the first burial that we had had her arms underneath her and they were crossed the wrists were touching so I suspect her hands were tied the second one I described

had his arms in front as if he'd been thrown in and perhaps we're still alive and his arms are gone off defensively to protect him in the fall but the other ones had all their hands behind them and again they were crossed so they were tied

and I think that also suggests an element of being being killed going to an unwilling death so these aren't people who have been drugged potentially with the bog bodies and know what's in store for them and are going perhaps to their death

willingly even though it's violent these individuals do seem to be bound at the point of death so there's less likely that they are happily, willingly going towards this fate. But that's a great example to point there because it shows that for all the times we've compared the examples like Lindelman and the Winterbourne woman, you need to be careful at the same time because they're clear differences. The actual, how far we can compare the two environments when exploring human sacrifice in Britain? Yes, I mean, all we can say is that these are individuals who have died with violence.

They are sacrifices, but the context is very, very different. So I think with the bogs, because it feels like it's such a liminal space, that the gods are physically residing there. They're being walked there and then killed. Whereas in the hill forts and the banja enclosures and all the other sorts of sites we've been looking at on the Chalkland, these might be killed within the settlement zone. So there's a very different element to the death, even though we can say that they are being killed for whatever reason to appease the gods.

Sir Mars, we've covered all these different potential examples of human sacrifice in bogs, hill forts, in everyday settlements. I want to ask again in kind of this more focused question of why. What are the theories behind why people in late Iron Age Britain would want to sacrifice people? I mean, the difficulty is, of course, they didn't write anything down. So we can't see into their minds as to what is going on here. And we have to rely to some extent on Roman writers that Julius Caesar when he's describing the executions of criminals. He talks about people who are being put to death for various immoral aspects. You know, judging by Julius Caesar, it seems bizarre because everything he does is pretty immoral.

But he doesn't give us, none of the Roman writers give us any reason as to why they felt these people would be. killed. But they do sort of imply there is a criminal aspect to it. It's not the taking of a leader or a priest or someone important. It is the lower class or someone who's gone against the wider community. So, I mean, it could be that is an element of it because the Romans are very good with making death a public event as a warning to others. So even people dying in the arena, it was done for entertainment, but it was also from the point of view of saying, these people have transgressed the law or they fought against Rome,

this is the punishment. If you step out of line, this will happen to you. And crucifixion is part of that. I mean, it's essentially a mode of death that's reserved for slaves or people who had some kind of uprising. But it's, you're nailing somebody to a cross

and they die and their bodies are left there. So it's like the gibbet in medieval Britain. It's a sense of this body is a continual warning to not step out of line. it could be that a lot of the Iron Age burials that we see, certainly the ones in the pits, if they've got their throats cut, if it's done in their theatrical way in front of an audience, it could be this is a warning.

This person has broken the law, has done something bad. We're killing, everyone has to watch it, and there's a sense if you step out of line, this will be you. But then is that sacrifice, or is that more just the punishment execution? Yeah, I mean, it's sacrifice in the sense that it's a theatrical killing in a pre-measured way that they're, they're actually doing it and the creation of a, of a platform. There is in what stage does an execution become a sacrifice?

If you're doing it to appease the gods, if you're killing somebody as a punishment, but also to keep the gods happy, then it is a sacrifice. I think it's the theatrical element, it's the overkill element that makes something a sacrifice rather than necessarily a punishment execution. But it is of a thin line between the two. And certainly the Romans were very clear cut that all the people they killed

it was for punishment rather than as a way of making the gods happy. What about the context in which they are killed? Because from what you've been saying, it seems as a bog is a more prestigious place to be executed, to be sacrificed than thrown in, quite frankly, thrown in head first in a storage pitch.

Yes. Yes. I mean, I guess if you think your gods reside in the bog, if the bog is a living space, And perhaps, would anyone be happily go to their death in that way? But if you feel that the gods inhabit that space, then you are going immediately to join them. Yes. So however severe the mode of death, it's going to be painful, but it will be relatively quick. If you're drugged with ergot or mistletoe, then perhaps elements of that pain will be minimized,

but you're being placed in an environment where the gods reside. So you're joining them instantly. So there might be that sense that you are much like. Like the, you know, we said earlier about the Christian martyrs, who feel that the manner of their death makes them go instantly into their afterlife. You don't, yes, you might be worried about the pain element, but once that's done, you've proved yourself and, you know, your afterlife is secure. Whereas with a storage pit, you're being thrown in with the remains of animals,

decaying animals, right? Which feels less, quite frankly. That does seem less respectful. I mean, it seems bizarre to say respectful ways of killing somebody. But there is a sense of, yeah, the ultimate disposal. you are in a storage pit. And yes, okay, it's going down into the ground where the gods main habit,

but generally speaking, those pits are filled with rubbish. So there is a sense, within the bog, you are being claimed by the divine, whereas in the pit, you're just being thrown in with the rubbish. So there might be a sense that that is

a far less respectful, which, again, might possibly tie into the fact that these individuals had their wrists bound because they did not want to go happily into that world. Yes, compared to the ones, we have from the bog bodies where to our knowledge there's no evidence of wrists being browned

not as far as I'm aware of no so there is a sense that I mean it might be that they were so drugged up they didn't realize what was happening to them but it could easily be that yeah they were that feeling that you are joining your deities straight we've got that instant link with the afterlife with the other world which you don't have in the chalkland storage pits and we talked about bogs and hill forts and settlements I guess this is theory as well if we don't have the evidence surviving, but could we imagine similar activities happening on the sides of rivers or on the coastline, but that evidence just doesn't survive? No, it doesn't. I mean, that's the trouble. Once a body's been inserted into a river, it will break down. There's been quite a lot of skulls brought out

from the Thames and from the Walbrook, which may be from bodies that have been buried but have been disturbed by the water. But it's quite possible that what we're looking at are individuals who've been killed and have been flown into that watery space. So there, shield, sword, spears, which thrown in will get recovered and we'll go, well, this is a votive ritual object clearly. But human remains, bodies thrown in will break down and will very unlikely to be recovered. So there could be a large number of people more than in the bogs who are being killed and are being placed directly in the river and therefore are being seen to be claimed by the river gods. But we will never recover them archaeologically.

So that's the frustration that we've already highlighted with the surviving evidence we have. and overarchingly can we see any emerging pattern as to the types of figures that seem to have been like it seems plausible that they were sacrificed whether it was in a place like duropolis or in a peat bog i mean as far as we can see in the peat bogs the bodies because they're far well better preserved there is a sense that these to some extent are individuals who aren't engaged in hard labour. So with Linda Mann and with some of the Irish examples, as it being explained, they got really nice, looked after fingernails. They doesn't appear to have done any kind of hard labour. Their hands are uncaloused. So it could be what we're seeing there are the sense of a priestly elite or perhaps a ruling elite. There's been a suggestion that in some of the Irish ones, these might be kings. It might be the idea of when you come to the end of you rule, you are

sacrificed for the greater good. Whereas the individuals that we've been looking at from the storage pits in Dorset seem to be at the lower end of the scale. These are people who are engaged in hard labour who are considered to be more disposable. So the sacrifice there, it might just be the giving of a human life. And it's better from their perspective to kill someone who is of less significance. Whereas in the bogs, we're seeing people who are great significance, who are being consigned to the bog. So it might be different levels of society, different forms of death, different forms of sacrifice.

That's an interesting theory. I mean, with the people in the bogs, whether they, you know, reach an old age and they're almost kind of passing the torch on to the next generation. And rather than living out their days, they have this end. I mean, do we have any idea whether many of these peat bog burials, they're older people? Well, they seem, I mean, define old in the Iron Age. I mean, they seem to be within that sort of age of late 20s to perhaps early 40s. Okay, I wasn't thinking that.

But, okay. But given the life expectancy of the time, that might be concerned. are quite good. You are sort of, you're sort of cutting the rows in full bloom rather than letting somebody degenerate into later life. So there might be a sense of, of you're in your prime, that's the good time to go rather than wait for later period. But whether, I mean, it has been a suggestion that these are perhaps members of, of Iron Age royalty. And that's part of the deal. You rule, but in the knowledge that you are later going to join the gods in that got a violent, dramatic way.

So you can't have one sense without the other. You can't have the power without the sign off at the end. Miles, it's been so fascinating. I think I'm running out of questions to ask because we've covered quite a lot. I think I'm going to leave it with one last thing I have in front of me, which is a couple of views on human sacrifice from Roman authors. Not actually in Britain, but it'd be good to get your thoughts on this as well as whether we can apply it to the British context.

So this is first of all an extract from. Julius Caesar talking about the ghouls, an extract from the Gallic Wars in the mid-first century BC. And he says, the ghouls believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the act of theft or robbery or some crime is more pleasing to the immortal gods. But when the supply of such fails, they resort to the execution of the innocent. So that's an interesting one first. And the second one is from Tacitus in his Germania. So they talk about in Germany. It says punishments vary in Germany according to the nature of the crime. traitors and deserters are hung upon trees

cowards dastards and those guilty of unnatural practices are suffocated in mud under a wicker fence this difference of punishment has in view the principle that villainy should be exposed while it is punished but turpitude concealed the difficulty as all things with individuals like Caesar is that he's not like in the modern anthropologists he's the first one he's the first section of

with all those accounts in the sense of all Roman writers, they're not modern anthropologists sort of living with a community, understanding them trying to understand their practices. So I think there's a lot of things like the face down in the bogs, the, you know, that kind of stuff. These are actual accounts of things that have happened, but the reasons for which they are happening aren't necessarily the right ones. So I think the punishment idea,

that is certainly something that we, you know, is eminently plausible, but we don't know how much of a Roman spin has been added to that. that to try and explain it because Caesar and otherwise like Tacitus and so on, they're not overly concerned with getting their facts right. They present evidence, but essentially they're writing to a Roman audience. They're entertaining that audience. They're trying to remind their Roman colleagues how barbaric and odd these people are. So the practices like we said earlier about Susan the Wickerman or the execution of criminals and then innocence and then placed down in the bog. They're explaining these or describing them, but they're

They're not really giving you the full set of evidence because they weren't aware of it. They're not really, don't really care that much. But that's all we've got. So it would, you know, it would be more interesting to think if all human sacrifices at the time were punishments. But they don't always seem to be. The bog bodies are being a case in point that we've got people there who seem to be at the upper end of society. So what are they doing that's considered worthy of punishment? Big question, isn't it?

But certainly the whole thing is the giving of a life. That it's not something that happens all the time. We're not dealing with industrial levels of human killing. They're very good at killing animals and giving those kind of lives. But every so often, and the key point is what is it in society? What is it in the natural world, the environment that means the giving of the human life is the important thing. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen. And we're trying to understand by looking at the skeletal and the body remains,

the person involved, the person at the end of that being sacrificed, does that explain the nature of the killing itself? Why is it being done? What is the need for it? That's something we're still a long way from answering, but we're getting closer. Do you think we ever will answer that question? I think given the more examples of sacrifice that we get,

given the battery of scientific analysis that we can now do on the bodies, looking at ancestry, looking at connections, looking at dietary evidence, all these sort of things give us a better picture of the sacrificed. So the building up of that database, I think in a couple of years' time, we'll have enough, really to have a better idea of the kinds of people who are being killed, the ways in which they're being killed, and that might help us to understand better that aspect of our in age society. Well, we'll get you back on the show when that happens,

my friend, to learn more about this. But in the meantime, it's been so interesting, and it just goes to say, thank you so much for taking the time, Miles, to come on the show. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for joining us on The Ancients today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you are loving the ancients, then why not become a History Hit subscriber? As a subscriber, you will have access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week, plus early access and ad-free podcasts.

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