St. Brice's Day Massacre

Well, quite a lot of archaeology in the UK is actually done through planning framework and planning consent.

So St John's College, they were actually building a new accommodation block.

So an archaeological company called Tevas were brought in to actually do the excavation in Oxford.

And it was kind of like a routine thing.

They're expecting, I suppose, like medieval stuff, perhaps Roman.

What they actually uncovered was a bit of a surprise.

So what they actually found was the Neolithic Henge.

So this like amazing prehistoric monument um the interesting thing was was that during the medieval period people were using it to actually dump their rubbish so they were finding remains of medieval ceramics and food waste but then they found a shocking discovery they found this massive pit that was full of skeletons that were in this kind of like jumbled mess there's complete disarray So normally when we like look at burials, they're kind of like uniform, they're laid to rest really nicely.

They're either put in positions or they're kind of prone, which means they're just like straight on their back.

But this was just higgledy-piggledy mess.

We had one decapitation, skulls and arms everywhere, you name it.

It was like a mess.

Sorry to interrupt, but how do you know, the non-archaeologist here, how do you know that something is a dodgy burial? I mean, how do you differentiate between like natural maybe movement from other things going in and bodies purposefully being injured in ways that seem kind of...

dark and grim.

Well, I think like for centuries, for millennia, people take care of their dead.

They show love and respect to their ancestors that have passed away, their family members.

It doesn't matter what century that you're living in.

People still afford respect to the dead.

So even in the prehistoric period, you get these amazing burials where they're kind of like on their side, like they're sleeping.

They call them crouch burials or When Christianity comes in, they are buried in a specific way, lying on their back, no grave goods.

So everything's very regular and uniform.

But this wasn't.

It's what we would call almost like deviant burials where things are not quite right.

And it looked like as though they were literally just tipped in like rubbish.

And how did the archaeologists go about dating this burial? What was the initial thoughts about the circumstances of their deaths?

Well, quite a lot of archaeology in the UK is actually done through planning framework and planning consent.

So St John's College, they were actually building a new accommodation block.

So an archaeological company called Tevas were brought in to actually do the excavation in Oxford.

And it was kind of like a routine thing.

They're expecting, I suppose, like medieval stuff, perhaps Roman.

What they actually uncovered was a bit of a surprise.

So what they actually found was the Neolithic Henge.

So this like amazing prehistoric monument um the interesting thing was was that during the medieval period people were using it to actually dump their rubbish so they were finding remains of medieval ceramics and food waste but then they found a shocking discovery they found this massive pit that was full of skeletons that were in this kind of like jumbled mess there's complete disarray So normally when we like look at burials, they're kind of like uniform, they're laid to rest really nicely.

They're either put in positions or they're kind of prone, which means they're just like straight on their back.

But this was just higgledy-piggledy mess.

We had one decapitation, skulls and arms everywhere, you name it.

It was like a mess.

Sorry to interrupt, but how do you know, the non-archaeologist here, how do you know that something is a dodgy burial? I mean, how do you differentiate between like natural maybe movement from other things going in and bodies purposefully being injured in ways that seem kind of...

dark and grim.

Well, I think like for centuries, for millennia, people take care of their dead.

They show love and respect to their ancestors that have passed away, their family members.

It doesn't matter what century that you're living in.

People still afford respect to the dead.

So even in the prehistoric period, you get these amazing burials where they're kind of like on their side, like they're sleeping.

They call them crouch burials or When Christianity comes in, they are buried in a specific way, lying on their back, no grave goods.

So everything's very regular and uniform.

But this wasn't.

It's what we would call almost like deviant burials where things are not quite right.

And it looked like as though they were literally just tipped in like rubbish.

And how did the archaeologists go about dating this burial? What was the initial thoughts about the circumstances of their deaths?