Publisher's Synopsis
Signed by the author
Funerary rituals show us what people thought about mortality; how they felt about loss; what they believed came next. From Roman cremations and graveside feasts, to deviant burials with heads rearranged, from richly furnished Anglo Saxon graves to the first Christian burial grounds in Wales, Buried provides an alternative history of the first millennium in Britain. As she did with her pre-history of Britain in Ancestors, Professor Alice Roberts combines archaeological finds with cutting-edge DNA research and written history to shed fresh light on how people lived: by examining the stories of the dead.
'Buried is a tender, fascinating act of listening –– of listening to the tales the dead have to tell us about the landscapes we share with them, the histories we have constructed around them, and the futures we imagine for ourselves. Lucid and illuminating, Alice Roberts here opens new perspectives on to first-millennium Britain, from the appearance of churchyards in the sixth century, to Romano-British 'decapitation' burial practices. I learned so much from this book, and hearing my description of Alice's excavations and investigations, my nine-year-old confirmed absolutely his ambition to become an aDNA (ancient DNA) scientist when he grows up.' - Robert Macfarlane
