Book info

• Title Buried
• Author Alice Roberts
• Year 2022
• Genre Non-Fiction

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.

Thoughts

Alice’s second book about the history of Great Britain through the lens of burials moves from ancient history to the slightly closer Roman empire and ‘dark ages’. Just like the previous book, it’s really well written and accessible for someone that doesn’t know a lot about archaeology. It’s always interesting to see what we can and can’t tell from the finds, and I love Alice’s continued warnings to try not to layer modern thinking to previous civilisation. Just endlessly fascinating.

Rating: 4 / 5