* * * * *
Using old bones and
science to answer historical questions and, perhaps, ask new some
ones.
(This review is
based on a free review .pdf from the publisher via Net Galley UK.)
This book tells the
story of Wessex, Mercia and then England in the five centuries or so
leading up to the reign of William Rufus, through modern attempts to
literally unscramble bones mixed up by an act of sacrilege another
five centuries after that, in THE English Civil War. Along the way,
reference is made to other English civil wars and numerous Viking
raids, occupations and two actual conquests. Which by itself shows
how much more complex our history is than our general understanding
of our own history.
As well as showing
us what science can tell us about the fairly distant past, this well
written and well-researched work shows us which kinds of historical
question science cannot answer: science can tell us whether a
traditional account or even a contemporary record is possibly true
and it can sometimes tell us when it definitely isn’t true. But
that isn’t the same as knowing what really happened in any detail
not evident in the long-term consequences of an historical event.
Whilst nearly all of
the evidence cited here was found in Winchester, the case cited to
best exemplify the limitations of forensic science as well as its
power comes from the discovery of the bones of King Richard III under
a car-park in Leicester. Because, even though the DNA evidence
(popularly supposed to be the gold standard of forensic evidence in
modern criminal cases) is actually a bit open to question, pretty
well ALL the circumstantial evidence favours the bones discovered in
Leicester being those of Richard III, not least the fact that the
body was more or less exactly where one researcher had already
predicted it might be (and the first place she looked), based on
years of work with available records. The body was on its own, it had
been buried with no reverence whatsoever, the deceased had suffered
from the right sort of long-term skeletal health problems and had died in battle not wearing a helmet and suffering more than
one potentially-lethal injury. Possibly several enemy soldiers had
gone for the same man at the same moment, which suggests that either
they were running out of targets, or he was the target that would end
the war!
Despite all that,
this work does tell us which Saxon and Norman-era legends and myths
might well be actual history and gives some clues as to which might
well be fabrications. What it does NOT do, is apply the same patient
methodical analysis to the Civil War-era accounts of the desecration
of the bone chests and Winchester Cathedral, upon which the whole
narrative is hung. That’s not so much a failing as an opportunity
for further study and further questions:
If you chuck bones
that are between two and five centuries old at stained-glass leaded
lights of any quality, do those bones retain anything like the mass
and density (“ballistic coefficient”) to actually wreak anything
like the destruction claimed?
If men inside the
cathedral break the windows by any means whatsoever, how does the
glass end up mingled with the bones, also inside the cathedral?
Parliamentary
soldiers systematically and habitually desecrating OTHER cathedrals
and churches hurled (and shot) much more effective projectiles than
very old, almost certainly lightweight and friable human bones!
Wouldn’t a more
likely scenario have been something more like the Parliamentary
soldiers doing what they had some considerable practice at doing:
smashing the windows and doors in from the outside in order to
concentrate the broken glass in the space used by (kneeling, if
non-Puritan) worshippers before coming inside to see what else needed
to be smashed?
How likely is it
that the bone chests were actually the LAST thing the Parliamentary
soldiers set out to desecrate (definitely the hardest objects to
reach, not immediately obviously important), thus explaining why
their officers became impatient and called a halt before ALL the bone
chests were broken up and their contents thrown around inside the
cathedral to mingle with the broken glass?
Might the old and
friable bones have done so little damage that soldiers simply got
bored with throwing them at things which didn’t break in a
spectacular way? Or had they already broken every available glass
object by other means?
Using old bones to
answer long-standing questions is applied science.
Real science is
using the evidence (old and new) to ask new questions.
The Bone Chests,
Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons, by Cat Jarman is published
by William Collins on the 14th of September 2023.
