Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos science journalist
A “war cemetery” previously thought to be the result of the Roman conquest of Britain 2,000 years ago may not actually be the result of a single dramatic event, according to new analysis.
The burial at Maiden Castle Iron Age hillfort in Dorset, in England’s southwest, was discovered in 1936. It includes more than 80 bodies, including dozens with signs of violent death such as trauma to the head and upper body.
Dig director at the time, Sir Mortimer Wheeler suggested the signs of violence were “the marks of battle”, caused during an attempted defence of the hillfort against the Romans who invaded the British Isles in the year 43 CE.
The analysis published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology shows that the individuals in the “war cemetery” weren’t the victims of a single event but were killed in episodic periods of bloodshed over generations. These bouts of violence were likely the result of local turmoil, executions or dynastic infighting between Britons.
“Since the 1930s, the story of Britons fighting Romans at one of the largest hillforts in the country has become a fixture in historical literature,” says corresponding author Miles Russell Bournemouth University in the UK. “The tale of innocent men and women of the local Durotriges tribe being slaughtered by Rome is powerful and poignant. It features in countless articles, books and TV documentaries. It has become a defining moment in British history, marking the sudden and violent end of the Iron Age.”
“With the Second World War fast approaching, no one was really prepared to question the results,” Russell adds: “The trouble is it doesn’t appear to have actually happened. Unfortunately, the archaeological evidence now points to it being untrue. This was a case of Britons killing Britons, the dead being buried in a long-abandoned fortification. The Roman army committed many atrocities, but this does not appear to be one of them.”
Radio-carbon dating of the bodies shows that they were buried over a period decades between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, leading up to the Roman invasion.
The findings raise new questions about the nature of the tribes and the relations of the ancient people that were found at Maiden Castle.
“Here we interpret this as either a number of distinct cultures living and dying together, or we can understand this as burial rights that were determined by complex social rules or hierarchical divisions within this Iron Age society,” explains Paul Cheetham, senior author and also a researcher at Bournemouth.
“Whilst Wheeler’s excavation was excellent, he was only able to investigate a fraction of the site. It is likely that a larger number of burials remain undiscovered around the immense ramparts,” Cheetham adds. “The intermingling of differing cultural burial practices contemporaneously shows that simplistic approaches to interpreting archaeological cemeteries must now be questioned.”
