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The Bone Cave
Alveston Gloucestershire
1 March 2001
A tiny entrance to a cave in the village of Alveston, Gloucestershire, leads to a grisly archaeological discovery. For 10 metres down, beyond a narrow, winding shaft, the rock opens out to form a natural underground chamber. Here two local cavers found the floor littered with animal – and human – bones. In fact, they found bones from at least three different people, together with pottery that they took to be Roman. Who were these people? How did their bones get there? And what do their bones tell us about their deaths?
Carenza's diary
Mud, bones, confined spaces – and a teletubby outfit. Read Carenza Lewis's diary of the Alveston Bone Cave.
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Quiz
Try our quick quiz on cannibalism.
VR gallery
Take a virtual trip around the excavation with our 360-degree panoramic VR clips.
Photo gallery
Photos, finds and reconstructions from the dig.
Them bones
The human bones at Alveston were found by local cavers three years previously. The cavers called in the local police, who soon decided that this was a matter for archaeological rather than criminal enquiry. Dr Mark Horton, an archaeologist from Bristol University, took up the investigation, and he in turn called in Time Team.
The cavers' finds included a large number of bones: animal, including many dog bones, and human, including a skull and femur. These were to be added to by similar bones unearthed during Time Team's excavation. Some showed the distinctive signs of having been butchered at around the time of death. Others showed clear signs of the people they belonged to having been suddenly and violently killed.
A cannibal cave?
One of the on-site experts brought in by Time Team for the programme was Britain's first forensic archaeologist, Margaret Cox, of Bournemouth University. She was convinced that the deaths occurred during one terrible event. The bone remains were then tipped into the cave, which was later sealed by a rock fall – until now.
'There was some amazing trauma on the bones that came out of the hole,' said Margaret. 'Somebody had clearly been hit extremely hard on the skull, a blow that would almost certainly have killed them. Also we found a piece of femur, which was split longitudinally. You can't split your femur that way accidentally – you have to remove the bone from the body and deliberately set out to split it. The only reason to do this is to extract the marrow.'
'It's the sort of thing you see in very early material, from the Palaeolithic era, which has been interpreted as cannibalism, but this is extraordinary as it's very late – probably late Iron Age or early Roman,' she added.
As the finds began to emerge at Alveston, so the theories of the Team's experts began to take shape – theories that led to the conclusion that these people from around two millennia ago had indeed met sudden deaths and had indeed then been butchered and eaten. With radiocarbon dating of the bones from the cave suggesting that they were all buried around 2,000 years ago, at the very end of the Iron Age or beginning of the Roman occupation, Time Team was looking at evidence for the most recent case of cannibalism yet found in Britain by archaeologists.
Why were the bones in the cave?
Clues as to why these bones were placed in the cave came from the other finds. These included numerous dog bones, as well as the occasional cattle bone, a possible vertebra of a bear and wooden twigs. Mark Horton, who hopes to resume excavations at the cave, said: 'This was a highly structured deposit that can only have got there as a result of some form of ritual activity. This region was an important centre for underworld cults during the later Iron Age, some of which survived into the Roman period – in particular the Celtic Hound God, Cunomaglus, was represented as a dog guarding the underworld in local temple sculpture.'
Archaeologists have suspected the existence of Iron-Age cannibalism for some time, because of the distinctive cut marks seen on some bones found in rubbish pits. These are caused by the use of blades to remove flesh from the bone and cannot be confused with natural weathering or other marks, such as by animals. But this is the first time that strong evidence has been found for the practice. Roman sources describe human sacrifice among the Celts, but do not mention cannibalism.
With about 5% of the bone deposits excavated by Time Team, the remains of at least seven individuals have been identified so far. At least one had been murdered, as the rear of the skull was first pole-axed and then smashed inwards; another bone showed evidence of a deformity; and a third showed traces of Paget's disease. Mark Horton believes that the sheer scale of the deposits, and the identical radiocarbon dates from the bones, might suggest a single great massacre and feast, perhaps involving over 50 individuals, whose remains were then placed in the cave.
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