So far 45 skulls, believed to be almost 2,000 years old, have been found, and more may be found as the pit is emptied. Archaeologists have called the discovery extraordinary, saying it could be evidence of a disaster, a mass execution, a battle or possibly an epidemic...
The bones recovered so far are still being examined but most appear to be of young men, and are believed to date back to the late iron age or early Roman period...
As well as the skulls, the archaeologists found torso and leg bones buried in separate sections of the pit...
Doesn't sound like a disaster or epidemic to me. Anyone know of other instances of groups of bodies being disarticulated before burial? One unwritten rule of horror movies (which victims seldom follow) is to cut off the head of the bad guy/thing and bury it separately. Maybe something like that was being done here...
I went on a walking tour of London. I found they liked to cut to heads off people. I even found they liked to DIG people up from the DEAD to cut their heads off. Vampirism anyone??!!??
ReplyDeleteCelts took heads as trophies.
ReplyDeleteThe likelihood is that this was a punitive execution, perhaps of a rebellion, and the heads were probably displayed for a while as a warning to others, whilst the bodies were thrown in a pit straight away.
ReplyDelete@soubriquet - I would agree with your explanation as the most likely.
ReplyDelete