The Roman massacre that never happened
Archaeologist is accused of inventing AD43 battle after digging up skeletons of ancient tribe
‘Epic myth slain by ugly facts’
IT was written into the history books as one of the nation’s most dramatic and horrific battles.
But the tale of a Roman assault on Dorset’s Maiden Castle in AD43 was invented by an archaeologist with a flair for storytelling, research claims.
For decades, the clash has been described as the massacre of a tribe of Ancient Britons by a Roman legion led by future emperor Vespasian.
A colourful account was first written by archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler after he excavated the site with his wife in the 1930s – and found what he said was a ‘war cemetery’.
He claimed British warriors had been hurriedly buried – some with terrible injuries including arrows through the centre of their skull. English Heritage, which runs the hillfort site on the outskirts of Dorchester, still encourages visitors to believe the account – though it concedes that those who died may also have done so in ‘local skirmishes’.
However, Dr Miles Russell, Professor of Archaeology at Bournemouth University believes the battle tale is ‘misleading’.
He said: ‘Most archaeologists know there is absolutely no evidence for such a “great battle” at Maiden Castle, a site which in any case had been largely abandoned a century before the arrival of Rome… another case, I guess, of not wanting an epic myth to be slain by ugly facts.’ Sir Mortimer wrote the first report on Maiden Castle in 1943. Dr Russell, in the latest volume of the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, said that since then ‘countless books, papers and television documentaries have treated a speculative Roman assault upon the hillfort as definitive fact.
‘The account of a furious but futile defence of property, family and land by the local tribe of the Durotriges, leading eventually to their slaughter or enslavement, is undeniably powerful and remains one of the more potent stories relating to the demise of British prehistory.’
Maiden Castle was excavated by Sir Mortimer between 1936 and 1937. He wrote that he found ‘skeletons in tragic profusion, displaying the marks of battle and making actual one of the best-known events in British history: the Roman conquest’.
But Dr Russell said a series of studies shows the idea the bodies were dumped hastily in the graves, was false as in fact they were carefully laid in position.
Although 74 per cent of the 52 bodies found had died of violent deaths, there was a great variation in date ranging from 100BC to 50AD ‘suggesting the population had lived through multiple periods of stress, competition and conflict’. The ‘most damning finding of all’ Professor Russell said was that by 43 AD Maiden Castle ‘had largely been abandoned’.
English Heritage declined to comment.