In four chapters, largely based on and illustrated with archaeological finds and sites, Neil Oliver explains how, as far | dHNfdUZNN3UxQjMyM0U
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00:00Barry Cunliffe first studied Dainbury over 40 years ago.
00:05These are iron spearheads. Now, look at that one.
00:09That's a mean thing.
00:11A long shank. Uh-huh.
00:13Very sharp point. Gosh, that's...
00:15I mean, that's been done by...
00:18You know, with the intention to kill.
00:20I mean, everything about it is violent.
00:22Yes, yeah, yes. Absolutely redolent of violence.
00:26And this is all coming from in here?
00:28Everything here is from within Dainbury, yes. OK.
00:32We've also got evidence from the human bones themselves.
00:35This is the real hard evidence.
00:37Here we are. We've got the skull.
00:40You can see the eye sockets there.
00:42And you see that hole there?
00:44And that's got the same section.
00:46It's exactly the same section as that spear.
00:48He would have cocked a spear
00:50directly through the top of his head there.
00:53But the fascinating thing about this guy
00:55is he also had a pretty hefty bash on the head,
00:58which has caved a bit of the skull in.
01:00And that's not been enough to kill?
01:02No, because if you turn inside,
01:04you see the damage that it's done inside,
01:06but it's all healed over.
01:08So he must have had a headache...
01:10That's so graphic. ..brain damage,
01:12but was still fit enough, presumably,
01:14to go into battle some months,
01:16perhaps some years later, to end up with that spear in his head.
01:20So he went into battle already knowing
01:23what it was like to face these weapons.
01:26He probably had been into battle many times, this guy.
01:29As, indeed, had many of them.
01:31See, we've got many more skulls here.
01:33Goodness. There's no end of it up here.
01:35No, no, no.
01:37Again, just close to where we're standing
01:39was a very large pit into which they'd thrown body parts,
01:43cleaning up after a battle, presumably.
01:45Large number of body parts, and some of these skulls came from there.
01:48So people are dying in significant numbers
01:50that they've not even been accorded burial.
01:52They're just being cleared away.
01:54Cleared away. You can see here a whole series of slivers
01:57taken off his skull there with glancing blows.
01:59Someone coming in? Yeah.
02:01He wouldn't have needed a haircut after that.
02:03But the coup de grâce was that.
02:05The great sword slash.
02:07For goodness' sake, and that has not been...
02:09That's not healed over.
02:11That was the end of him.
02:13And altogether, this shows what an incredibly violent life people lived.
02:17What a world they inhabited with the threat of this hanging over them.
02:21They would have been aware of it the whole time.
02:23You can imagine here in Danebury,
02:25these young guys coming back from battle with all their scars
02:28and living in the community with noses cut off, ears cut off,
02:32horrendous injuries.
02:34They must have been aware every moment of their day
02:38of just how violent life was.