Ancestors: A prehistory of Britain in seven burials

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So I think then you're looking at other ways. And I'll talk about some of the innovative ways that bodies are being disposed of, at the moment, and innovations which have come from America. So we've got things like resomation, when a body is essentially liquidised. And then that the liquid can be used as a fertiliser. And I also talk about that kind of the difference between memorialising somebody's life, and disposing of a body. And I do think we're going to see more kind of a move away from a focus on the body. And also, the other thing for me is that I feel very much that it's rather like that idea that you should travel and you should experience other cultures, because that makes you look at yourself in an objective way. And it makes you look at your own culture in an objective way. And it also makes you realise that you have this commonality with humans the world over, you know, that we're all very, very similar. From 2009 to 2016 Roberts was Director of Anatomy at the NHS Severn Deanery School of Surgery [11] and also an honorary fellow at Hull York Medical School. [19] [20] But there's some really profound bigger picture stuff as well. It's quite a disruptive technology at the moment, because it's coming along and providing answers that we didn't even know were possible 10 years ago. But I think it will get to the point where it becomes an almost standard thing to do when you're analysing human remains, in the same way that we use radiocarbon dating to work out the date of any organic remains. I think that we'll be seeing genomes used much more frequently and much more widely.

Alice Roberts worked as a junior doctor with the National Health Service in South Wales for eighteen months after graduating. In 1998 she left clinical medicine and worked as an anatomy demonstrator at the University of Bristol, becoming a lecturer there in 1999. About the Author: Professor Alice Roberts is an academic, author and broadcaster, specialising in human anatomy, physiology, evolution, archaeology and history. In 2001, Alice made her television debut on Channel 4’s Time Team, and went on to write and present The Incredible Human Journey, Origins of Us and Ice Age Giants on BBC2. She is also the presenter of the popular TV series Digging for Britain. Alice has been a Professor of Public Engagement with Science at the University of Birmingham since 2012. And I think there was something else. I did believe very strongly in the capability of humans to make the world a better place, and to cooperate with each other, and to use these kind of best aspects of what makes us human. So capabilities like empathy, kindness, together with logic and rationality, and that these things together were kind of the best you could be as a human and would help you make decisions about your own life, but also about society more generally, as well. And then you get well actually, that is humanism.

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Alex Campbell (17 May 2013). "Uncovering the secrets of North America's Ice Age giants". BBC . Retrieved 27 May 2013. And so there's something there about collective memory, but also something about what it means for the living. I mean, tombs are all about the living really, they're not about the dead. And if you're a relative of somebody who's buried in that tomb, which is prominent in the landscape, then perhaps there's something about your land rights, and your right to live in that in that landscape and your own authority as well.

From the revered to the reviled: there’s another account of bones found in Cheddar showing definite signs of cannibalism: bodies skinned and gnawed by fellow humans, ‘smashing open long bones to get at the marrow; right down to fingers, which also showed signs of having been chopped off and munched on’. (Though, as Alice cautions, be very careful about drawing conclusions. We don’t know if these corpses were eaten as vengeful victory over enemy tribes; a respectful way of honouring deceased friends and relatives; or even as a result of desperate hunger.) Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed". BBC Two. 12 February 2021. Archived from the original on 12 February 2021 . Retrieved 19 February 2021. Perhaps one of the problems – certainly when it comes to British prehistory - is the paucity of written accounts before the arrival of highly literate Romans on our isle.

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And I think the first thing that we feel when we read about this, or even see the remains, as I've done, is a sense of quite intense disgust, actually. Which I think is reasonable, because we don't tend to go around eating each other nowadays. But again, we need to be objective: we need to think, right? Was it abhorrent to them? It obviously wasn't that abhorrent, because they're doing it. And you've got to think about all the reasons why somebody might have been eating someone else, you know. It could be nutritional, it could be that they're starving. I think the skull cups goes against that a bit. And there's also a bit of engraving on a radius too, so there's something more going on than just food. Roberts and Aoife McLysaght co-presented the 2018 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in London. [24] [27] She was president of the British Science Association for the year 2019–2020. [28] This is my first book by Roberts, and I had not realised that she was a TV personality (although I had seen her in BBC programmes on the Celts and Stonehenge), so she does play to this expectation in her writing some of the time. This did work for me, as it made the book more personal and engaging, especially her trips to Salisbury Museum and discussion of Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (there is material for another book there!).

In the first episode, Dr Alice Roberts looks at how our skeleton reveals our incredible evolutionary journey. There are some 25 known chariot burials in Britain, 11 of which have been sexed. Of these, three are female – nearly a third.a b Roberts, Alice; McLysaght, Aoife (2018). "Who am I?". The Royal Institution. Archived from the original on 10 January 2021 . Retrieved 19 February 2021.

Indeed the grave itself contained nearly a hundred items – including copper knives, gold objects, boars’ tusks and a shale ring – making it the most richly furnished grave from the period that had ever been discovered in Britain. The grave goods and the broken remains of five distinctive pottery beakers with a characteristic upside-down bell shape revealed it to be a Beaker burial. As Alice Roberts writes, the number of items and the care with which the grave had been created shows that “the Archer was a Very, Very Important Person”. And there are some findings as well that you write about that hint about a past we might prefer to forget. Like cannibalism.You have that whole idea about what makes us human, or what differentiates humans rather from other species. I think it's obviously a huge question and one of particular interest, perhaps to humanists, but also more broadly. And then I wonder also, if what we're talking about now, the kind of story and myth and legend, if that's another thing that might be differentiating. There's certainly a lot of that in what Alice was talking about. a b c d e f "Staff: Dr Alice May Roberts MB BCh BSc PhD". University of Bristol. 24 April 2009. Archived from the original on 14 May 2009 . Retrieved 29 May 2009.