Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain

Alice Roberts' Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain' is technically brilliant. Her story of unrelenting attachment to solving ancient burial mysteries is a superb, coherent narrative. The tomb site chapter-style storytelling is worth the time. Roberts repetitive weakness (IMHO) is extrapolating a Roman/Dark Age/Medieval cultural interpretation from burial and anatomical evidence by applying a 21st-century Humanist worldview. The problematic histories of Bede and others seldom reflect the mind's eye of the temporal inhabitants. However, Beowulf in its OE context influences Dark Age and Medieval OE/ME context, as did Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chaucer, Dante, Boccaccio, and the far more extant fragments of village-oriented poetry/storytelling. A modern, self-described Humanist, Roberts is out of context, attempting to impute humanism to an age before the invention. In an early example, she questions the interpretation regarding why 1/3 of the heads of the dead are cut off. Sounds shocking. But, it isn't. In the context of the period, the headless corpse is an Occam's Razor from the era's worldview. Ghosts and spirits were not a matter of opinion. Ghosts and haunting spirits were expert facts. The Bible tells of the supernatural. The authorities of kings and religion agreed. To not agree, was heresy. The dead likely agreed in life and likely participated in the village decapitation burial ritual. Removing dead heads, as frequently as it is observed, is easily understood as a community service to the departed to ensure they don't return, as they surely were seen to do, to haunt family and village. Did disemboweled Egyptian mummies represent anything different? Headless burial meant no ghosts. Gutless mummies represent a trip to Duat sans haunting spirits. Is it a wonder that the buried might later be dug up, staked, bricked, or cremated years later as the period literature describes? Medieval literature in all surviving texts presents a belief in an extracorporeal human spirit and afterlife within both the Christian and Pagan traditions. There is no evidence from the period of a humanist worldview. Roberts suggests a Hellenistic philosophical tradition using Epicureans to deduce a classical knowledge transference into North Sea paganism, Britonic paganism allowed by Romans (not so much the Druids themselves), and later Roman Xtianity. Several of the graveyards she investigates began as a cult of dead saints. People wanted to draw near the saints in death and were buried in proximity for medieval-minded reasons. The first historical evidence suggesting a non-haunted British world is expressed in the mid-16th century as Enlightenment began to question the supernatural and evil spirits. The study of language, runes to Old English, and the body of poetic literature from the era reflect a human thought paradigm utterly foreign to 19-20th century. These are the graves of people holding a worldview we might likely never comprehend. I was reminded in several passages of 'reading list' supplement. My list would include the academic work of CS Lewis in 'The Discarded Image'. Hana Videen's "The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English" for a sense of word images and 'The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe' by Michael Pye to consider a 10,000-year trading lingua franca.

As long as the professor was talking about the actual processes and science involved, the book was a great read. However I noticed modern political and social opinions and attitudes creep into the work and writing. In one chapter she (without any strong evidence) seemed to have wanted to "will" a set of crumbling remains into being a female warrior, even though admitting the they had eroded so badly that they crumbled upon being excavated. Later she brings up Brexit....why? Finally in the Postscript she, after spending pages and pages talking about Anglo Saxons, talks dismissively about the term Anglo Saxons even continuing to being used (even while admitting to it being an ancient term) because of course, you guessed it ...modern white supremacy...and....you know, because languages and words change. The book was enjoyably chugging along fairly well, with a couple blips of her personal politics and a barely hidden distain of religion, and then that let down at the very end in the Postscript. I was going to buy the Professors book "Ancestors". But after reading in the reviews that needlessly bringing up modern social, political, and religious dogma is even far more prevalent, I'll probably pass on it. I buy a lot of books on forensics, human genomes, DNA, deep ancestry, and archaeology, that's what I want to read. Not an authors modern social and political opinions or dogmas, but science...not the authors "truth". All that being said, I gave it a 4 star. (Note: I'm not, British, nor religious, my opinions are based on the book)

Very interesting book. Alice Roberts has the gift of writing scholarly information in a manner that appeals to laymen/women.

A great book on funerary rites from the first century in Britain based on archeological finds. I would recommend this to everyone who likes history.

Ho già letto un altro libro di questa autrice (comperato insieme a questo) e posso dire con cognizione di causa che sono entrambi noiosi. Purtroppo l'autrice riempie i suoi libri con infinite digressioni e ripetizioni degli stessi concetti che si ritrovano tali e quali non solo all'interno di un libro, ma anche in libri diversi. Che noia! E pensare che gli argomenti sarebbero interessanti se trattati in modo meno pesante e più scientifico. Metto tre stelle perché comunque il libro qualcosa di interessante lo dice scremandolo da tutte le rimuginazioni dell'autrice.

I pre-ordered this on Audible and ordered the book too. I’d just listened to (and read) Alice Roberts’ previous book, Ancestors, which I had loved and really couldn’t put down. I’d expected Buried to be similar to Ancestors - it does, after all, continue where Ancestors left off. I didn’t actually find it to be like that and there were times that I found my mind wandering a bit while listening to it. There are burials inspiring and underpinning each section, but this book seems to have much less ‘story’ to it and much more ‘lecture’. I spend much of my day reading academic papers and I enjoy listening to something a bit more visual and, dare I say it, entertaining, while I’m working outside. Buried is, as all Prof Roberts’ work is, well researched and beautifully presented and read. I just got a little turned off by the way certain points were given so much emphasis and such a large proportion of the book. I’d have liked there to have been more of the book relating to the finds and archaeology and less of it telling the audience how they should be thinking. Still, it’s a good book and I will probably read the hardback copy I bought and see whether that feels different. I’d really like to have been able to award this book five stars - Ancestors was definitely a five-star book - but I just can’t quite do that, based on my first listen.

Soldi buttati. Libro scritto coi piedi.