Man had emerged from the Ice Age to become a weapon of mass extinction. Here we were, divorcing ourselves from Nature, wreaking havoc with the climate, and crucifying biodiversity. [loc. 1692]
Alice Roberts examines seven burials, ranging from the 'Red Lady' of Paviland (34,000 years ago), via the Amesbury Archer (4,500 years ago) and the Pocklington chariot burial (2,300 years ago), to the cremation -- very unusual for the time -- of archaeologist Pitt-Rivers (120 years ago). She uses these examples to discuss the waves of migration, and the 'restlessness', of the past, and to explore ideas about race, gender and culture. There is evidence of cannibalism in human remains from the Cheddar Gorge, dating back 10,000 years: but was it cannibalism in a time of starvation, or cannibalism for religious purposes, or something else? Chariot burials were usually associated with male warriors, but of the burials where biological (osteological) sex could be determined, nearly a third are female. Perhaps women were warriors -- think of Boudicca, of Cartimandua -- or perhaps these were women living as men, or perhaps ... something else.
As in Buried, there's a lot of archaeogenetics here. Roberts writes of the Thousand Ancient Genomes project at the Crick Institute, which aimed to sequence a thousand ancient genomes: unfortunately this was put on hold at the start of the Covid pandemic. (They've started to publish results this year, for instance '1,000 ancient genomes uncover 10,000 years of natural selection in Europe'.) I was intrigued by the genetic analysis showing that 'the people who lived in Britain before the Bronze Age didn’t contribute much ancestry to later populations', and by evidence of the yersinia pestis (Black Death) bacterium in human remains dating back to the Bronze Age. Roberts is at pains to emphasise, though, that genetics can only provide the bigger picture: archaeology fills in the smaller details, the remains of individual lives. She writes movingly of lifting a pottery bowl out of a child's grave: 'Human experience is built of moments – and here were two, linked together across millennia. The moment I lifted the bowl out of the grave, my hands earthy from digging; the moment the potter (the mourner, the parent?) held the bowl in their hands, making that corded pattern, their hands covered in clay.' [loc. 3357].
At first, the inclusion of the Pitt-Rivers 'burial' seemed an awkward fit with the other burials here: but it gives Roberts an opportunity to discuss, in more relatable terms, the cultural trappings of a burial. When Pitt-Rivers was cremated, it was only fifteen years since the first cremation in Britain: burial in a graveyard -- inhumation -- was by far the most popular option, and the one deemed acceptable by the Christian church. Roberts suggests that Pitt-Rivers was not especially religious. He clearly didn't believe in bodily resurrection, and perhaps his archaeological career had 'lift[ed] him out of his contemporary culture'. Cremation now accounts for nearly 80% of 'mortuary rites', although it is astonishingly un-green. ('Each cremated body results in 400 kilograms of CO2 emissions – about the same as burning two tanks of diesel in an SUV. Toxic mercury vapour from tooth fillings also escapes into the atmosphere from the chimneys of crematoria. [loc. 4985])
A fascinating and deeply humane book, well-written, with a distinctive voice and a wealth of incidental detail. I'm almost tempted to watch some of Roberts' TV work ...
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