The Amesbury Down ‘flesh eater’: a Roman stone sarcophagus (Webinar with Jackie McKinley)

Join leading osteoarchaeologist, Dr Jacqueline McKinley, for this #WednesdayWebinar as she reveals how a fascinating sarcophagus burial on Amesbury Down was discovered and its content analysed.
Wessex Archaeology has been undertaking excavations around Amesbury Down for over 25 years, revealing a total of eight Romano-British cemeteries. In 2007, excavations uncovered a rare sarcophagus, of which only around 200 are known in the UK, which offered Jackie and the team an exciting opportunity to understand more about this fascinating burial practice.
Find out more about the site here: www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work...
Watch the excavation of the sarcophagus here: • Recovering a Roman sto...

[@chrisforrest9482]

Absolutely outstanding! Your talk, Jackie, made everything wonderfully clear and interesting. Wessex Archaeology, please do more of these online talks. You're taking history out of the text books and showing it on a human scale. Thank you very, very much.

[@549RR]

This was so lovely to stumble on today - I wish I had when it was broadcast!

[@BogusDudeGW]

We have a sarcophagus sat outside our local church, there is little known about its origin but the church is celebrating 900 years of its first official record, we also have Nostell Priory (pre Henry I), Monk Bretton Priory and Pontefract Priory all within a few miles. It has supposedly been labelled as Roman but i couldn't find a Roman one that looked like it, the only identical one i've found is the one found under Lincoln Castle, only we have no lid and ours includes a carving of some sea shells, thats late Saxon. My main grievance when told it was Roman was that i'd seen the Roman graves found under Nostell Priory car park which just had stone slabs and didn't believe a Roman sarcophagus of that quality could be found in our area. Late Saxon early Norman could easily be associated with historical figures of the area.

[@arcboutant]

Hi Jacquie, interesting video. Thanks. Can you tell me please, from the ‘cemetery’ drawing I see some bodies were placed on their left, some on their right. Is this a Male or Female reason? Thanks

[@ladyflimflam]

Recognized Jackie in the thumbnail from the boots. 😉

[@phoule76]

I bet the lid was lowered (or slid) onto the sarcophogus once the funeral attendees had left, anyhow, so no one would've noticed the misfit until Jackie did 2k years later.