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

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During the course of archaeological investigations in advance of a business and residential development, an unusual structure was discovered. The site is located on a silty clay-capped terrace of the River Kennet immediately to the north-west of Hungerford, Berks, (SU 334692).The structure, initially thought to be a round house, comprised a ring of seven equally spaced pits in a 6 m diameter circle. At its centre was an area of fire-reddened clay over 1 m in extent. Two shallow scoops cut this burnt area (fig. 1). The pits were generally bowl shaped, 60–80 cm across and 15–30 cm deep. Some of the pits had clear evidence for the presence of small posts. These posts had been burnt and replaced on more than one occasion. There was no evidence for an encircling ditch or a covering mound. A single 14C date of 3360 ± 40 BP (BM–2737) was obtained on oak charcoal from pit 5008, which is consistent with the Early Bronze Age date of the pottery.

Excavation on the Thames floodplain in London revealed traces of Early Neolithic occupation and burial on a sand and gravel bar beneath alluvium. A large expanse of peat also buried by alluvium was recorded between these finds and the modern river Thames suggesting that the occupation was situated on or close to the foreshore. A single grave cut into the natural sand contained a poorly preserved crouched inhumation, possibly of a woman. The burial was accompanied by a fragment of carinated bowl, a flint knife, and other struck flints. A radiocarbon date from an oak retaining plank within the grave of 5252±28 BP (4220–3970 cal BC: KIA20157) makes this burial one of the earliest from the British Isles and the earliest known for London. A scatter of struck flint and pottery predominantly of Early Neolithic date was recovered from adjacent areas of the sand. A nearby hearth contained fragments of Early Bronze Age pottery pointing to later prehistoric activity nearby. Charred plant remains indicate both the collection of wild plant foods and cultivated cereals in the Early Neolithic. Radiocarbon dating of the adjacent peat deposits indicated their rapid growth within the Middle Bronze Age with a marked decline in woodland cover at the start of the sequence and a rise in grassland and herb species. Cereal pollen then briefly became a significant component of the sequence before declining to more modest levels.

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