https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/18/archaeologists-in-cambridgeshire-find-graves-of-two-men-with-legs-chopped-off
With their legs chopped off and placed at their shoulders.
Too lazy to dig long enough holes? Unfortunate accident with a Boadicea style chariot?
Malfunctioning Gallo-Roman reaping machine (http://www.gnrtr.com/Generator.html?pi=208&cp=3)?
QuoteWhy did the Gallic reaper invented at that time only live till the fourth century of our era and then disappear from historical records?
Because it chopped people's legs off, we can now say with confidence.
Quote from: Duncan Head on June 19, 2018, 03:27:52 PM
QuoteWhy did the Gallic reaper invented at that time only live till the fourth century of our era and then disappear from historical records?
Because it chopped people's legs off, we can now say with confidence.
I can't see the Romans viewing that as a particular disadvantage.
Really interesting.
But why remove the second leg, if not for ease of packing? :)
Obviously you die within a minute, after the first leg goes.
And I can't think of a Roman tool with which you remove both at once.
Note the article says the bones were of good quality, I guess no obvious signs of disease/malnourishment.
If it was a notable local, why bury them inside the Roman fortification? Seems odd.
A poorly behaved soldier perhaps?
A small point of detail (which probably has no bearing on the principal conjectures so far):
"
The graves of two men whose legs were chopped off at the knees and placed carefully by their shoulders before burial ..."
contains a misstatement. Only one corpse was so treated; the other had the disarticulated lower limbs placed alongside the thighs. Even the one with placement 'carefully by the shoulders' has but one demi-limb so situated: the other is alongside the pelvis. One out of four is a pretty poor score for 'careful placement'.
Quote from: Dangun on June 21, 2018, 02:13:51 AM
If it was a notable local, why bury them inside the Roman fortification? Seems odd.
A poorly behaved soldier perhaps?
Two poorly-behaved soldiers, presumably - leading one to wonder what behaviour two soldiers could have indulged in to merit such disapprobation.
I am more inclined to wonder if they were casualties from an attack on the camp - buried within the site as a siege continued - and truncated for reasons of space. If this was the case, we should expect more to be found as the excavation continues.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on June 21, 2018, 07:37:51 AM
I am more inclined to wonder if they were casualties from an attack on the camp - buried within the site as a siege continued - and truncated for reasons of space. If this was the case, we should expect more to be found as the excavation continues.
A further thought.
The effort taken to bury separately and reincorporate leg with body would seem to at least suggest a Roman casualty.
You could even argue that effort would not be expended on naughty soldiers either.
That line of argument would fit with Patrick's Roman military casualty idea. Although the text of the article seems to implicitly assume that these were not combat wounds, which pushes the other way... And two legs at once is an unlikely combat wound, although there is a similar dual-amputation casualty from the medieval mass grave at Visby.
https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=nY0T9n4zAQAC&pg=PA197&lpg=PA197&dq=both+legs+cut+off+Visby&source=bl&ots=bsCc17a6TN&sig=QsSpavA_cWjpxg8-DEwcyKHFzDM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx-8q9neTbAhVtp1kKHYZHBS8Q6AEIRDAI#v=onepage&q=both%20legs%20cut%20off%20Visby&f=false (https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=nY0T9n4zAQAC&pg=PA197&lpg=PA197&dq=both+legs+cut+off+Visby&source=bl&ots=bsCc17a6TN&sig=QsSpavA_cWjpxg8-DEwcyKHFzDM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx-8q9neTbAhVtp1kKHYZHBS8Q6AEIRDAI#v=onepage&q=both%20legs%20cut%20off%20Visby&f=false)
Interesting.
If they were casualties sustained during a siege, they would probably have died from ingesting missile weapons and the corpses would then require disposal. Fuel and space might have been in short supply, precluding cremation, so the bodies would just have to be dug into such spaces as could be found between tents or huts or whatever. So the bodies are shortened (in a non-combat fashion) by the camp surgeon to fit the available spaces. It is really a faute de mieux conjecture.
Before we get too caught up in this, maybe we should consider the dating? The bodies are Late Roman or Early Saxon. The military presence is a temporary camp from the 2nd century.
Good point.
Which raises the question of what the bodies were doing in a 2nd century camp.
One wonders if the camp was in intermittent use rather than solely for a single occasion. In theory the excavators should have worked this out by now, of course.
The again, the phrasing is: "... believed to be from the late Roman or early Saxon period ..." albeit the reason(s) for belief are not given.
Similarly, "The Romans then arrived and by stupendous effort drove a huge ditch across it, almost two metres deep and three wide with the spoil heaped up into a huge bank. Despite its size and the labour involved, there was no evidence of large permanent Roman buildings and so the archaeologists believe it was a temporary camp on the march north towards Hadrian's Wall."
Was there evidence of smaller buildings? The 2nd century AD connection seems to be tied in with the belief that the site was associated with "the march north towards Hadrian's Wall," without specifying whose. The significant ditch and absence of extensive stone buildings does seem consistent with the building techniques utilised in the Antonine Wall (substantial earthworks with much use of wood, the latter now rotted or purloined), and this may have been seen as a connection. Yet establishing a ditch of the size discovered at the site argues a time when frontier defences had been breached and the countryside was no longer secure. This would fit better with the Late Roman/Early Saxon period to which the bodies are assigned.
I agree it isn't particularly clear in the report who was marching to Hadrian's Wall and when, but it seems an oddly specific note when all you have is a bit of ditch, which suggests they have got some dateable evidence that makes a link. If it had 4th century dating, they would more likely have invented a tale about rampaging Saxons for the press. Having read the article again, there is no connection made between the ditch and the burial.
On the temporary camp idea, would the Roman army have built a series of pottery kilns while marching? I think that's unlikely. Or are they implying that they camped next to a pottery production centre and bought up the stock?
On substantial buildings, it would be a poor archaeologist who couldn't identify a substantial wooden building. Flimsy structures you might miss but not a big thing like a barracks or a granary.
All in all, a report that sacrifices clarity for sensation.
Quote from: Erpingham on June 23, 2018, 08:38:31 AM
All in all, a report that sacrifices clarity for sensation.
Where would we be without journalism? ;D
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on June 23, 2018, 09:06:07 PM
Quote from: Erpingham on June 23, 2018, 08:38:31 AM
All in all, a report that sacrifices clarity for sensation.
Where would we be without journalism? ;D
A lot less informed than we would otherwise be.
Quote from: DougM on June 23, 2018, 11:30:30 PM
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on June 23, 2018, 09:06:07 PM
Where would we be without journalism? ;D
A lot less informed than we would otherwise be.
Journalism appears to prioritise expression of opinion over actual information, as exemplified by this particular article. That is the whole problem.
Quote from: Erpingham on June 23, 2018, 08:38:31 AM
On the temporary camp idea, would the Roman army have built a series of pottery kilns while marching? I think that's unlikely. Or are they implying that they camped next to a pottery production centre and bought up the stock?
It does seem a little odd. Another detail which calls the purported ephemerality of the site into question is:
"
Within the new enclosure, farming became much more organised and intensive, with wheat and other cereals, beans and root crops being grown."
Not the kind of detail one would associate with a temporary encampment.
QuoteOn substantial buildings, it would be a poor archaeologist who couldn't identify a substantial wooden building. Flimsy structures you might miss but not a big thing like a barracks or a granary.
Indeed. Post-hole spotting and residue detection, or at least soil boundary differentiation, are old favourites. If what we have is ditch and crops, are we in fact looking at irrigation rather than fortification? This unfortunately would not explain the bodies.*
*
Unless, as Duncan gleefully suggests, a Gallo-Roman reaping machine crew were having a really bad day.
Old school journalism used to drum into heads the mantra of 'what, where, when, how and who'. If it was an opinion piece, you had the luxury of why. Sadly, the distinction between opinion and news has become so blurred, it is hardly surprising you complain. The outsourcing of sub-editing to huge hubs in countries with cheap labour further disconnects the writer and reader. And always the pressure to create a throw away read that will prove irrestible so the advertising can be flogged.
Quote from: DougM on June 24, 2018, 07:43:31 AM
Old school journalism used to drum into heads the mantra of 'what, where, when, how and who'. If it was an opinion piece, you had the luxury of why. Sadly, the distinction between opinion and news has become so blurred, it is hardly surprising you complain. The outsourcing of sub-editing to huge hubs in countries with cheap labour further disconnects the writer and reader. And always the pressure to create a throw away read that will prove irrestible so the advertising can be flogged.
add to this the problem that the money is drying up. So yes, a lot of articles can be seen as 'click bait' to encourage people to buy the paper and to advertise in it
Local newspapers have taken this to another level with the posters they have in the street advertising that night's evening paper
It's rare the story matches the headline on the poster, but writing the poster is becoming a competitive art form in itself.
The North West Evening Mail is probably hoping for an award for the imaginative use of the word 'probe'
I suspect the problem with the piece is that newspapers don't have archaeology correspondents as once they did. The sensationalism of the burial probably owes itself to the press release. If I wanted to get coverage for my dig, it's what I would lead with. Some of the other bits, quoting the archaeologists about Hadrian's Wall for example, are more press release populism, picking up on something the lay public will have heard of . But other parts of the press release probably actually made more logical reading before they were seemingly randomly distributed about the article and key evidence discarded by a journalist who didn't understand it but had a deadline to meet.
Patrick picks up another interesting oddment. They claim evidence of farming inside the "enclosure". Is this inside the Roman ditched enclosure or inside the previous civilian one? If the Roman one, ploughing would have removed any sign of insubstantial structures.
Quote from: Erpingham on June 24, 2018, 10:07:39 AM
Patrick picks up another interesting oddment. They claim evidence of farming inside the "enclosure". Is this inside the Roman ditched enclosure or inside the previous civilian one? If the Roman one, ploughing would have removed any sign of insubstantial structures.
A good observation. I think (and this is conjecture based on agriculture occurring within the ditched area) we are looking at someone's attempt to keep a fortification and food supply going simultaneously, much like a traditional hill fort (sdubject to the usual caveats about hill forts). This would suggest that hostile forces had free run of the countryside, and that the said hostile forces were not very good at sieges. Hence we may have - given the usual caveats - some form of semi-permanent settlement by embattled Late Post-Roman British who were trying to hold their own amid a Saxon-controlled, or at least infested, land.
That is my best effort at reconciling the various driblets of information we have.
Quote from: DougM on June 24, 2018, 07:43:31 AM
Old school journalism used to drum into heads the mantra of 'what, where, when, how and who'. If it was an opinion piece, you had the luxury of why. Sadly, the distinction between opinion and news has become so blurred, it is hardly surprising you complain. The outsourcing of sub-editing to huge hubs in countries with cheap labour further disconnects the writer and reader. And always the pressure to create a throw away read that will prove irrestible so the advertising can be flogged.
Very true, Doug: a few decades ago one could get a newspaper and look forward to reading some good informed comment from people who really knew their field. The era of the internet and the superficial 'ad-byte' seems to have largely put paid to that.
If ever there was a place for putting a chronological context around a statement, it would be stating that there was evidence of farming in the area, in the context of an archaeological dig in a non urban area .
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on June 24, 2018, 07:23:41 PM
Very true, Doug: a few decades ago one could get a newspaper and look forward to reading some good informed comment from people who really knew their field. The era of the internet and the superficial 'ad-byte' seems to have largely put paid to that.
While true, to be fair, its probably the high school summer intern sitting on the "archaeology desk."
And its the same Internet that has enabled/could enable specialist publications Slingshot to find a larger audience.
Quote from: Dangun on June 25, 2018, 01:29:07 AM
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on June 24, 2018, 07:23:41 PM
Very true, Doug: a few decades ago one could get a newspaper and look forward to reading some good informed comment from people who really knew their field. The era of the internet and the superficial 'ad-byte' seems to have largely put paid to that.
While true, to be fair, its probably the high school summer intern sitting on the "archaeology desk."
And its the same Internet that has enabled/could enable specialist publications Slingshot to find a larger audience.
And gives us immediate access to an array of sources that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago, methods of sharing and review that are unparalleled, and opportunity to get input from experts worldwide, in near real time.
For me, living where I have been, simply doing the research I have, would be unthinkable without being in a large university town with a well stocked library, to which I had access.
These are from the A14 excavations (A14C2H) - a recent (most recent?) issue of Current Archaeology has a large freature on this - I haven't read it yet (maybe somebdoy else has?) - will see if it covers this.
The main problem with the article is the use of 'the site' without being clear whether they mean the whole of the A14 excavation (which is enormous) or just the site where these legless people were found, which is not necessarily closely related to the other features referred to - the Cambridge News site (https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/a14-archaeology-cambridge-huntingdon-roadworks-14805997) version of this story for example reports "Elsewhere in the expansive site, a Roman military camp was found. Located in a ditch measuring three metres wide and 1.5 metres deep, there is evidence for buildings and industrial activity within an enclosed area - but the size has led experts at the site to explore whether it was an earlier, temporary Roman military camp."
Further reading:
https://molaheadland.com/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a14-cambridge-to-huntingdon-archaeology-shines-light-on-6000-years-of-history
Edit: NB my own poor journalistic standards are revealed by the first two sentences of the above - for clarity, I mean that CA has a feature on A14C2H, not necessarily on the legless bodies, and 'the article' I rever to at stat of para 2 is the article in the Guardian, not that in CA. Imprecision in language is so easy...
Quote from: DougM on June 25, 2018, 07:53:21 AM
And gives us immediate access to an array of sources that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago, methods of sharing and review that are unparalleled, and opportunity to get input from experts worldwide, in near real time.
For me, living where I have been, simply doing the research I have, would be unthinkable without being in a large university town with a well stocked library, to which I had access.
Yes I can remember paying close to half a week's wages for my six volume Loeb Polybius
Without the web research was always going to be a nightmare here.I did check with the nearest university to see if i could join the library, but frankly the cost of that membership, plus the cost of getting there, means that if the book is under £30 it would be cheaper to buy it!
Thanks Richard. Reading the MOLA website, there is nothing to connect the ditch to the pottery kilns. The enclosed site has buildings in it, not fields. The buildings may not relate to the original purpose of the ditch.
Also on the Government site
"A massive Anglo-Saxon tribal territorial boundary with huge ditches, an imposing gated entrance and a beacon placed on top of a hill overlooking the region."
This seems to have missed the press release, as does the deserted medieval village.
Quote from: Jim Webster on June 25, 2018, 09:47:26 AM
Without the web research was always going to be a nightmare here.I did check with the nearest university to see if i could join the library, but frankly the cost of that membership, plus the cost of getting there, means that if the book is under £30 it would be cheaper to buy it!
Although with the cost of some books it might in the long run be cheaper just to buy the university. ;D
Quote from: Erpingham on June 25, 2018, 09:54:33 AM
Thanks Richard. Reading the MOLA website, there is nothing to connect the ditch to the pottery kilns. The enclosed site has buildings in it, not fields. The buildings may not relate to the original purpose of the ditch.
Also on the Government site
"A massive Anglo-Saxon tribal territorial boundary with huge ditches, an imposing gated entrance and a beacon placed on top of a hill overlooking the region."
This seems to have missed the press release, as does the deserted medieval village.
You have to hand it to today's reporters. One hopes they will develop the habit of including a link to a website with the relevant information.
QuoteYou have to hand it to today's reporters. One hopes they will develop the habit of including a link to a website with the relevant information.
Reporters don't write press releases, just read them and quote them. One of the aims you used to be taught in "How to write a press release "(or these days,I suppose, a media release) courses was to get the reporter to use as much of your own words as possible, to get your message across, not theirs. Also, all the press releases I've seen recently have copious "For further information" weblinks - you just can force people to seek further info.
One thing about this story - it's apparently not from a press release - it's headed: "Exclusive: men believed to be from late Roman or early Saxon period were found in pit being used as rubbish dump", and if you follow the story around the interweb other tellings of it quote the Guardian original, rather than a press release - for example, this one:
http://www.newsweek.com/archaeologists-find-legless-skeletons-excavation-982610
This is a slightly better telling in some ways (despite some Chinese whisper elements) and includes comparisons with other mutilation burials (though strangely, there's nothing about Roman reaping machines).
Maev Kennedy, the writer of the Guardian piece, maybe got this from personal contacts rather than a press release - she is an archaeology writer and FSA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maev_Kennedy
That makes the vagueness of the scene setting ('the march north to Hadrian's Wall') worse rather than better of course, and the lack of links out to official sites all the more regrettable. But there it is - that's sources for you. :)
QuoteMaev Kennedy, the writer of the Guardian piece, maybe got this from personal contacts rather than a press release - she is an archaeology writer and FSA
Well that blows the excuses out the water. Could do better, as my school report used to say.