Other websites

Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.

Burials and bones

Spoilheap
www.spoilheap.co.uk
Useful website, with information about British archaeology, pottery and other ceramics, burial archaeology and human skeletal remains. The website contains well-presented information about burial archaeology and human bones. Why excavate human bones? What can we learn from studying them? These and other questions are answered, along with introductions to palaeopathology and different techniques of ageing, sexing and otherwise analysing bones. The section on burial archaeology deals with burial practices by period, the legal aspects of burial archaeology, archaeological techniques, and interpretation and conclusions. Good bibliographies are also provided.

Forensic Archaeology and Human Skeletal Archaeology
http://archaeology.about.com/cs/forensic/
Forensic archaeology is about applying archaeological methods to the investigation of crime. The methods used by archaeologists in excavating human remains from the distant past are now widely recognised and adopted by law-enforcement officers (including human-rights investigators) investigating more recent murders and other crimes. The Forensic Archaeology website offers some of the best all-round information on forensic archaeology on the web, with detailed information on bone pathology, taphonomy, geophysics, odontology and environmental archaeology. Promised soon are pages on university courses and the law. Also contains an excellent set of links to related websites.

Deserted villages

Wharram Percy: The Lost Medieval Village
http://loki.stockton.edu/~ken/wharram/begin.htm
This website tells the story of a deserted Yorkshire village, which was the subject of archaeological digs every summer for 40 years. It was once thought that medieval villages were 'deserted' due to the effects of the Black Death in 1349. Research at Wharram Percy (and a few other villages), however, has shown that there are more than 3,000 such villages in England and that most of them were depopulated as a result of economic forces in the 15th century. The Wharram Project, which began in 1950, has shown that many of these sites were inhabited for centuries before the Middle Ages. The evidence gathered at Wharram Percy has added immensely to our knowledge of English medieval peasant life.

For links to other websites, either on archaeology generally or specific to the periods and subjects covered in the programme, see our extensive section on Archaeology websites.

Text only