A History of Celtic Britain | show | 2011 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

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In four chapters, largely based on and illustrated with archaeological finds and sites, Neil Oliver explains how, as far | dHNfdUZNN3UxQjMyM0U

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00:00Barry Cunliffe first studied Dainbury over 40 years ago.

00:05These are iron spearheads. Now, look at that one.

00:09That's a mean thing.

00:11A long shank. Uh-huh.

00:13Very sharp point. Gosh, that's...

00:15I mean, that's been done by...

00:18You know, with the intention to kill.

00:20I mean, everything about it is violent.

00:22Yes, yeah, yes. Absolutely redolent of violence.

00:26And this is all coming from in here?

00:28Everything here is from within Dainbury, yes. OK.

00:32We've also got evidence from the human bones themselves.

00:35This is the real hard evidence.

00:37Here we are. We've got the skull.

00:40You can see the eye sockets there.

00:42And you see that hole there?

00:44And that's got the same section.

00:46It's exactly the same section as that spear.

00:48He would have cocked a spear

00:50directly through the top of his head there.

00:53But the fascinating thing about this guy

00:55is he also had a pretty hefty bash on the head,

00:58which has caved a bit of the skull in.

01:00And that's not been enough to kill?

01:02No, because if you turn inside,

01:04you see the damage that it's done inside,

01:06but it's all healed over.

01:08So he must have had a headache...

01:10That's so graphic. ..brain damage,

01:12but was still fit enough, presumably,

01:14to go into battle some months,

01:16perhaps some years later, to end up with that spear in his head.

01:20So he went into battle already knowing

01:23what it was like to face these weapons.

01:26He probably had been into battle many times, this guy.

01:29As, indeed, had many of them.

01:31See, we've got many more skulls here.

01:33Goodness. There's no end of it up here.

01:35No, no, no.

01:37Again, just close to where we're standing

01:39was a very large pit into which they'd thrown body parts,

01:43cleaning up after a battle, presumably.

01:45Large number of body parts, and some of these skulls came from there.

01:48So people are dying in significant numbers

01:50that they've not even been accorded burial.

01:52They're just being cleared away.

01:54Cleared away. You can see here a whole series of slivers

01:57taken off his skull there with glancing blows.

01:59Someone coming in? Yeah.

02:01He wouldn't have needed a haircut after that.

02:03But the coup de grâce was that.

02:05The great sword slash.

02:07For goodness' sake, and that has not been...

02:09That's not healed over.

02:11That was the end of him.

02:13And altogether, this shows what an incredibly violent life people lived.

02:17What a world they inhabited with the threat of this hanging over them.

02:21They would have been aware of it the whole time.

02:23You can imagine here in Danebury,

02:25these young guys coming back from battle with all their scars

02:28and living in the community with noses cut off, ears cut off,

02:32horrendous injuries.

02:34They must have been aware every moment of their day

02:38of just how violent life was.

A History of Celtic Britain | show | 2011 | Official Trailer

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