Mass grave in Dorset contains stays of executed Viking warriors

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The captives, all well built immature men in their late teenagers and early 20s, were herded to the place of execution. Fifty-four in total, their heads were hacked off and built orderly in a pile. The bodies were tossed in to a array where they remained a mixed of limbs and headless torsos until archaeologists following the lane of a new highway stumbled opposite the stays last year.

Not the murdering fields of Iraq or the Balkans but the Ridgeway, nearby Weymouth, an really old lane opposite the right away tranquil Dorset countryside, where one thousand years ago a prolonged lost electrocute took place.

The victims, a poser when the find of the mass grave was initial suggested in The Times, have been identified. They were Viking raiders who had come to Britain in poke of slaves and plunder.

The discovery, during building a whole of a service highway for sailing events in the 2012 Olympics, led to a host of theories. At initial it was thought they were Iron Age warriors killed by the invading Roman Legions during fighting for Maiden Castle, Britains largest mountain fort. That speculation was ruled out when air wave CO tests antiquated the skeleton to in in between AD910 and AD1030, a thousand years later.

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Now tests on isotopes in the finish of their teeth has found the men came from serve afield. They had sailed opposite the North Sea from what is right away Scandinavia. At slightest one of the Norse men had lived most of his hold up inside the Arctic Circle.

Study of the skeleton has suggested the savagery of their deaths. Their heads were not clean split from their shoulders with the pitch of an executioners axe, but hacked off with swords as the exposed warriors attempted to urge themselves with their unclothed hands.

Ceri Boston, an consultant in really old skeleton who carefully thought about the remains, said: It was not a true one cut and head off. They were all hacked at around the head and jaw. It doesnt see similar to they were really peaceful or the executioners really skilled.

We think the decapitation was disorderly since the chairman was relocating around. One man had his hands sliced through. It looks similar to he was perplexing to grab hold of the long knife as he was being executed.

Archaeologist hold the men were from a prisoner raiding celebration and were taken to the site by Anglo-Saxons fortifying their land for the specific role of putting them to death. Ms Boston added: The place is a standard place for a Saxon execution site, on a main highway and a bishopric range and close to antiquated burrows.

Teeth from ten people were carefully thought about by Dr Jane Evans and Carolyn Chenery at NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory in Nottingham. Dr Evans said: Isotopes from celebration H2O and food are bound in the finish and dentine of teeth as the teeth are shaped in early life. The isotope interpretation we performed from the funeral array teeth strongly prove that the men executed on the Ridgeway originated from a accumulation of places inside of the Scandinavian countries.

These formula are fantastic, this is the most appropriate e.g. we have ever seen of a organisation of people that obviously have their origins outward Britain.

The scientists goal to expose some-more sum of the lifestyles, activities, ubiquitous health and diets of the warriors as the research continues.

Vikings raiding parties struck all around Britain and Europe in in between the eighth and eleventh centuries. They colonised piece of northern France right away well known as Normandy.

David Score, from Oxford Archaeology, that excavated the grave, said: Any mass grave is a comparatively singular find, but to find one on this scale, from this duration of history, is intensely surprising and presents an implausible event to sense some-more about what was function in Dorset at this time.

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