The Alice Roberts Trilogy: Ancestors, Buried and Crypt

 I picked up a copy of Crypt in the excellent Cogito Books in Hexham without realising that it was the final part of a Trilogy.  I had never read any of her work previously  but I liked it so much that I bought the other two books.  So effictively I travelled back in history rather than starting with prehistoric times; that was a completely fine way to explore these three time periods.  History certainly does not need to be treated sequentially as each period relates to what came before and what followed from its own perspective.

This volume deals with the period from 1000 CE to 1500 CE.  Alice's background is an interesting one; she studies medicine and had a short career in that before teaching anatomy in a medical school setting and then moving on to archeology and now has a specialism in biological anthropology.  This is effectively a melding of the expertise acquired through the succession of her careers.

The threads of genetics (and more particularly and currently genomics), osteo anatomy and microbiology run through the book and these I found particularly fascinating.  Archeology, particularly in its contemporary form that uses very recent scientific tools creates hard evidence that adds to the history that we understand from written commentators who may not be entirely objective or accurate.  She describes how these current scientific tools can be used to confirm or refute medical diagnoses from this mediaeval period when diagnoses had to be made on the basis of symptoms and signs alone when medical knowledge was primitive and biased by unhelpful influences.  So we see the hard evidence from the archeology coming up against the written record on many occasions.

The writing style is very easy and Alice uses contemporary turns of phrase in a very measured way; it is on the one hand chatty but also very authoratative.  She builds in a nice touch of humour that adds a lot to the appeal.  It left me feeling that I would very much like her as a person; this is something that we already know of course from her television appearances.

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The next volume that I read was Buried, partly because it dropped through my letterbox next and partly as it involved moving back through history.

This deals with the first millenium in Britain.  It gives fresh insights into how people lived in the Roman period and that which followed.  What comes through quite strongly is a thread of elitism that followed the departure of the Romans as Britain entered the early mediaeval period.

Again current scientific methods are discussed and amazing as the way that DNA can give us answers about contemporary questions, it is even more amazing the ancient DNA (aDNA) can be retreived and sequenced from skeletons dating back to this period.  I was fascinated by the way that it is sourced from the petrous temporal bone that lies in the base of the skull - words that hark back to my student days !  Not only does Alice describe aDNA from skeletons but DNA from bacteria such as Yersinia pestis the bacterium causing plague can be identified.

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The final volume that I read, the first volume  in the series deals with the prehistoric period, going backwards in time from 0 CE.  This is Ancestors.

The anecdotal style creates a personal atmosphere within which the hard facts sit comfortably.  For example "We're in the Crick Institute. It's like a cathedral this place. Or a monastery. ".

The old debate as to whether the spread of ancient cultures resulted from the spread of ideas or from the movement of populations is being resolved through genomic studies and other recent scientific processes such as stable isotope analyses which can reveal which geographical area came from: teeth provide useful evidence as the apatite crystals in the enamel contain markers indicating regions of origin.

Close examination of bones has revealed what happened to an individual not only in life but also after death.  And some macabre conclusions are reached !

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In summary, these have all been a wonderful read with rigorous scientific detail wrapped up in a very accessibale package.