Archaeology Magazine - November/December 2013 - 48

outside the Danelaw (where a massacre would have been
unlikely), but no one knows just how many people died. Politically, the order achieved little for the king. Its main outcome
was the alienation of Danes working for him and, the following
year, a brutal retaliation by Forkbeard.
According to later literary sources, Forkbeard was particularly enraged by the death of his sister, her husband, and their
child in the massacre. The story goes that they and other fleeing Danes had sought sanctuary in St. Frideswide’s Church in
Oxford (now Christ Church Cathedral). As Æthelred recorded
in a royal charter, “When all the people in pursuit strove,
forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set
fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its
ornaments and its books.” Those who did not die inside, sources state, were killed by their pursuers as they tried to escape.

A mass grave found on the grounds of St. John’s College
at the University of Oxford in 2008 presented a medieval
mystery. Could the dead have been victims of a notorious
massacre a thousand years ago?

Danes farmed, traded, and even intermarried with the AngloSaxon population, and their cultural influence can be seen in
language, place names, and surnames that persist in England
today. Some historians argue that there weren’t all that many
Danish settlers and that they assimilated many local traditions
and beliefs. But there was likely some tension and resentment
between the Danish settlers and the Anglo-Saxons (who, ironically, were also descended from continental invaders).
Relations between Wessex and the Viking superstate of
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark had deteriorated by the time of
Æthelred’s reign. Peace was purchased with tens of thousands
of pounds of silver—protection money called Danegeld—paid
to the Viking king, Sweyn Forkbeard. The threat of more raids,
armies, and conquests from the Viking homelands continued
to vex Æthelred. In 1002, rumors reached the king, who would
come to be known as “Æthelred the ill-advised,” stating that
the Danes were planning his ouster. According to the AngloSaxon Chronicle, a somewhat biased tenth-century account, “it
was told the king, that they would beshrew him of his life, and
afterwards all his council, and then have his kingdom without
any resistance.” His reaction was to order the death of every
Danish man on the island’s soil.
Contemporary historians believe that the massacre was
limited to recent migrants and members of the Danish elite
48

lmost exactly 1,000 years later, archaeologists
in England discovered two mass burials containing
the remains of dozens of young men who had been
slaughtered or executed. Are these bodies the first archaeological evidence for the St. Brice’s Day Massacre? Or are they
victims of another sort?
The first mass grave was found in 2008 by archaeologists digging on the grounds of St. John’s College. One of
the University of Oxford’s richest and oldest colleges, St.
John’s was about to build new student accommodation, and
since British planning regulations require an archaeological
assessment ahead of new construction, a team from Thames
Valley Archaeological Services (TVAS), directed by Sean
Wallis, was called in.
The team first found the previously unknown remains of
one of Britain’s largest Neolithic henges, almost 500 feet in
diameter. The find immediately changed the perception of
prehistoric Oxford from a rather insignificant ford across the
Thames to potentially one of the most important ritual sites
in southern England. The henge’s eight-foot-deep ditch had
become, by the medieval period, a dump for waste, including
broken pottery and food scraps. It was there, in the garbagefilled ditch, that the team found the remains of 37 people.
All the bodies in the grave appear to have been male
(though two were too young for their sex to be determined),
and most were between 16 and 25 years old. As a group, they
were tall, taller than the average Anglo-Saxon at the time,
and strong, judging by the large muscle-attachment areas of
their bones. Despite their physical advantages, all these men
appear to have met violent ends. One had been decapitated,
and attempts at decapitation had seemingly been made on five
others. Twenty-seven suffered broken or cracked skulls. The
back and pelvic bones of 20 bodies bore stab marks, as did the
ribs of a dozen others. A number of the skeletons had evidence
of charring, indicating that they were burned prior to burial.
Bone specialist Ceri Falys of TVAS began piecing together
the fragmented skulls and skeletons. Osteologists such as Falys
employ the skills and techniques of forensic pathologists, and
can tell from damage done to bones not just how people died,
but also how they were attacked, from what direction, and

ArchAeology • November/December 2013

Archaeology Magazine - November/December 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - November/December 2013