Today's News, Tomorrow's Lesson - January 16, 2014

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” the Monty Python team
famously asked in The Life of Brian.

Well, new archaeological research from England suggests that as well
as aqueducts, sanitation and straight roads, the Roman Empire also left
behind evidence of a gruesome enthusiasm for violence and beheadings.

Improved forensic techniques have been used to re-examine 39 skulls,
first unearthed in London in 1988 – and the results have provided the
first physical evidence of gladiatorial action having taken place in
London.

Archaeologists believe the finds are connected to a Roman
amphitheater that once existed at the site. Some of the skulls may have
belonged to gladiators or common criminals killed for the entertainment
of the Roman public.

Others could have come from enemy soldiers slain in battles in what
is now Scotland. But the new evidence suggests that whoever they were,
they lived brutal lives and died very violent deaths.

“We believe that some of the heads may be people who were killed in
the amphitheater,” Rebecca Redfern, from the Centre for Human
Bioarchaeology at the Museum of London, said. “Decapitation was a way
of finishing off gladiators, but not everyone who died in the Roman
amphitheater was a gladiator. It was where common criminals were
executed, or sometimes for entertainment you'd give two of them swords
and have them kill one another.

“Other heads may have been brought back by soldiers from skirmishes,
probably on the Hadrian or Antonine Walls – again, it would have taken
weeks to bring them back, so not a nice process.”

Even more gruesome is the suggestion that Roman “head-hunters” could
have gathered the heads for public display. Dr. Redfern notes that the
skulls were found within the walls of the old Roman city of London,
where corpses were not supposed to have been buried.