‘Sprouting Like Cockle Amongst the Wheat’: The St Brice's Day Massacre and the Isotopic Analysis of Human Bones From St John's College, Oxford

Abstract

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

Finding Vikings with Isotope Analysis: The View from Wet and Windy Islands

“…That very similar strontium and oxygen isotope results were obtained from these two Viking males at Westness and the Viking male 223 from Dublin (two places of recognized Viking colonization and settlement), and several of the unaccompanied male skeletons from Weymouth and Oxford in southern England, suggests a similarity of origins among the men in these geographically distant and very different graves. It therefore provides further support to the conclusions (Chenery et al 2014 [this volume];Pollard et al 2012) that members of the groups of males buried in Weymouth and Oxford were indeed of Scandinavian origin despite the absence of characteristic Viking grave goods or burial rite.…”

“…Clearly some burial groups in Britain and Ireland, such as those with predominantly or completely male interments at the grave-field in South Great Georges Street, Dublin (O'Donovan 2008, Simpson 2005, Heath Wood, Ingleby , Repton (Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 1992), Oxford (Pollard et al 2012), and Weymouth (Chenery et al 2014 [this volume]), are not cemeteries normally associated with settlement. The presence and cultural impact of these individuals on the surrounding populations may have been fleeting.…”

“…To date, a number of small studies have been carried out on skeletons from sites at Adwick-le-Street (Speed and Walton Rogers 2004), Cnip , Repton (Budd et al 2004), Riccall (Hall et al 2008), Oxford (Pollard et al 2012), and Weymouth (Chenery et al 2014 [this volume]); These results will be combined with new data presented in this paper from Viking Age burials from two prime locations of Viking influence in the western seaways: Westness, Orkney, and Dublin, Ireland (Fig. 1).…”

Detection and Strain Typing of Ancient Mycobacterium leprae from a Medieval Leprosy Hospital

“…Aliquots of 1–2 mg of collagen were weighed into tin capsules and sent for analysis. Isotopic analyses were carried out according to the method outlined [45]. Samples were combusted on a Carlo Erba 1108 elemental analyser system coupled to a Sercon Geo-20/20 gas source mass spectrometer operating in continuous flow mode.…”

Finding Vikings in the Danelaw

“…) and inferred for some Scandinavian migrants in Britain as a result of isotopic analysis (Barrett and Richards ; Pollard et al . ; Montgomery et al . in press).…”