The recent discovery in St John's College of a mass burial of mostly young adult males with severe perimortem blade trauma has prompted the suggestion that these may be related to the St Brice's Day Massacre in Oxford on 13th November AD 1002. Three radiocarbon determinations suggest that a date in the tenth century is more likely. We have nevertheless undertaken an isotopic study of the bone collagen (d 13 C and d 15 N) and dental enamel (d 13 C, d 18 O and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) in an attempt to answer the question 'were these individuals of Danish descent?' Our conclusion is somewhat ambiguous, but the bone collagen suggests a diet more like other Scandinavian populations than that of local groups, and the enamel isotopes point towards a Scandinavian rather than a lowland English origin. Comparison with Oxford Archaeology's recently excavated Weymouth Ridgeway mass burial suggests, however, that the execution of a captured raiding party is more likely than the slaughter of Oxford inhabitants of Danish descent.introduction The recovery in 2008 in the grounds of St John's College, Oxford, of up to 37 human burials, all male (with the exception of two undetermined immature individuals), mostly aged between 16-25, exhibiting severe perimortem trauma, and deposited in the top of a major Neolithic earthwork ditch, led the excavators to speculate that they might be attributed to the historically attested St Brice's Day Massacre. This was the killing of Danes on St Brice's Day (13th November) in AD 1002 in England, as ordered by King Aethelred the Unredy (978-1016) and recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The massacre in Oxford and the subsequent rebuilding of St Frideswide's Church (now Christ Church Cathedral) are described in a royal charter granted by Aethelred to St Frideswide's in Oxford and dated 7th December 1004:For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape

In questo lavoro viene descritta Miettiella vespertilio n. gen. n. sp. dei Monti Lessini veronesi (Veneto, Italia); per l’insieme dei caratteri risulta appartenere alla “serie filetica di Boldoria”. Infine, vengono forniti dati inediti su Monguzziella grottoloi.

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