All language subtitles for The Cambridgeshire crucifixion.en

In the fenlands of eastern England,

archaeologists uncover
the ancient remains of 48 people.

It was just an ordinary field
in Cambridgeshire.

Hidden among the graves is one
particularly incredible find.

We've got an individual
with a nail through his heel.

We started to realise that this
really was something special.

The best preserved example of
Roman crucifixion ever unearthed.

This is a diamond find, so to speak.

Who was this person?
How did they live?

And why were they put to death
in such a horrific way?

It's such a brutal form of execution

that it's just almost impossible
to imagine.

Now, with cutting-edge modern
techniques, we unravel this mystery.

Presumably you've never seen
anything like this before? Never.

What kind of world did they inhabit?

People died. They were enslaved.

The Roman conquest
was bloody and violent.

How did they die?

The way these nails were inserted
does not suggest that you had a body

on a cross in the position
of the standard crucifix.

And in a world first,
we unveil the face

of a victim of Roman crucifixion.

This is by far the most
interesting skull

that I've ever worked on
in my career.

With pioneering science
and expert investigation,

we reveal the anatomy of
a Cambridgeshire crucifixion.

Working at Albion Archaeology
we have the fortune,

although it doesn't always
feel like that,

of working in a fantastic Grade I
listed church.

Dates back to the late
Anglo-Saxon period.

It's a beautiful building
to work in.

It's freezing cold in the winter
and too hot in the summer

and the electricity, I think,
was put in by Thomas Edison maybe

back in the 19th century.

But it has character.

A lot of people come in here

and don't realise it
actually is an office.

They think it's some sort
of storeroom or warehouse

or junk shop, possibly.

But you can build a fort
with the boxes. True.

Within this centuries-old church
in the east of England,

there are thousands
of archaeological treasures.

We're a commercial
archaeology company,

which means that we work where
there's going to be development.

The team excavate sites of potential
archaeological interest

before developers are allowed
to build on the land.

They have rescued countless items
from thousands of years

of British history.

But one job stands out -

the unearthing of a gruesome
3rd-century mystery,

and one of the rarest discoveries
of all time.

At the time of the Fenstanton dig,
I was the site supervisor,

which means I'm coordinating
the digging on site.

Fenstanton lies north-west of
the city of Cambridge,

near an old Roman road named
the Via Devana.

In 2016, archaeologists were
called in to inspect a patch of land

to the south of the village.

So there was a house-building
company that wanted to put up

85 new houses on the site.

It was just an ordinary field
in Cambridgeshire.

Nothing special about it at all.

And it was only teasing out
the story through the excavation

that we started to realise that this
really was something special.

Across two years of digging,
the team found huge quantities

of Roman pottery,

small personal items and jewellery.

Evidence of a significant
Roman roadside settlement.

And among the treasure trove
of Roman artefacts,

they found the people
who left them behind.

You suddenly see these patches
in the soil.

That's when you start to think,

well, maybe we've got some
human remains here.

On the edges of the settlement,

five separate cemeteries
were discovered

containing the remains of 48 people.

Every skeleton is drawn,
measured, located.

They are all given individual
numbers within the grave.

Among the remains was one
extremely special case -

skeleton 4926.

And it held a secret that
the initial digging did not unearth.

To be honest, on site,
there was really nothing to say

it was any different
from any of the others.

He was buried alongside
five other individuals.

It was just an ordinary grave.

But once skeleton 4926
was brought back to HQ,

something very strange was revealed.

We left it in the lab
for a couple of days

and then the person who was
washing the bones at the time

suddenly noticed
something slightly unusual.

A nail through the heel bone.

It went a bit quiet at that point.
People were asking each other,

"Have you seen anything
like this before?"

"Have you heard of anything
like this before?"

Silence.

Sort of joking, almost, "Oh,
it must mean he's been crucified."

We looked up online - "crucifixions,
archaeological evidence."

We all assumed that there
must be lots of evidence for that

because it's so well-known through
history, art, religion, literature.

And we drew up one example
from Israel from the 1960s,

and that was it.

At which point we started to realise
the significance of what we'd got.

A skeleton from Roman Britain

discovered with a nail
through its right heel bone.

If this person really was crucified,
it would be one of the most

significant archaeological finds
in history.

To try to solve the case,
the team calls in some expert help.

We are in my lab,

my tiny lab in Cambridge.

Dr Corinne Duhig teaches
at Cambridge University

and is an expert
in osteoarchaeology.

We can call ourselves
osteoarchaeologists

or bioarchaeologists,
but it all means the same thing,

which is that we are
examining human remains

to record them
and tell their stories.

And for 15 years I worked
with the police doing...

..investigations into crime scenes
or potential crime scenes.

Whether it's a forensic
or an archaeological investigation,

Corrine is an expert at unravelling
mysteries by studying bones.

So Albion Archaeology called me up

and there was this slightly wobbly
voice on the other end saying,

"We've got an individual
with a nail through his heel."

And there was a kind of pause
while we both registered that.

And then, "Could it possibly
be a crucifixion?"

Now, I'm very sceptical and my
immediate reaction to anything

that's dramatic like that is to say,
"No, no, it probably isn't."

We've got one instance only
in the whole world of...

..a definite crucified individual.

This is in Israel, and that is
because the nail became anchored

into the bone, because it curled,
it bent as it was going in.

So to have something like this
appear with a nail in position

on the body,
if it were a crucifixion,

it would be the second only
that we know in the world,

it would be the first in Britain.

Corrine tries to think
of another explanation

for the nail through the heel bone.

There is evidence that some cultures
nailed down the deceased

to prevent their spirit
from wandering.

But when we examine the literature
from the Roman period,

we never find this kind of example
of a foot bone

actually being pierced in order to
stop that spirit from moving about.

She also considers whether the nail
was accidentally hammered

into the bone while a coffin
was being built around the corpse.

It's a bit unlikely, isn't it?

Because you would think
if you put nails through it,

you would surely stop

if you met the bone.

One explanation keeps
coming to the fore.

I'm beginning to get
the awful thought

that it could well be
a real crucifixion.

Crucifixion was a punishment
that the Romans developed.

It's a suspension punishment
in which a person is suspended

on a vertical post

or a post that has a vertical
and a horizontal component.

The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth

is undoubtedly the most famous
example of Roman crucifixion.

But this brutal punishment was used
for hundreds of years

before Christ's execution

and continued for hundreds of years
after.

I think the first reliable
references occur in Roman sources

at the end of the 3rd century BC,

and this brutal punishment
was still being used

all the way till 300AD.

That's 500 years of brutality.

Crucifixion was mostly used against
those deemed lowest in society,

like slaves
and traitors to the state.

It was meant to degrade the victims
and serve as a warning to others.

A passage mentions crucifying
bandits on a crossroads

so that people would see that

and be warned
against banditry and robbery.

I think it was also used
against slaves to warn them off

of slave rebellions.

During the Spartacus revolt,
the sources say

that thousands of people
were crucified

along the Appian Way into Rome.

According to the Jewish historian
Josephus,

the Roman general Titus
was crucifying

as many as 500 people a day
outside the gates of Jerusalem.

So you start adding up
these numbers,

it sounds like an awful lot.

Despite its use on thousands
of people,

Roman sources about crucifixion
are minimal.

The Romans were reluctant
to discuss crucifixion.

Cicero says even the word "cross"

should be far from a citizen's ear.

Gospel accounts of
the crucifixion of Jesus

are the most detailed account of
any crucifixion in the Roman world.

But it's also a bit frustrating
because they don't tell a whole lot.

Even rarer than written evidence
is physical evidence,

with only one confirmed crucifixion
case ever found

with a nail through bone.

If they did crucify at least
100,000 people or more,

and I'm convinced that they did,
then where are all those nails?

One explanation could be that
victims were more often simply

tied to the cross using ropes,
and if nails were used,

either as extra fastening
or to inflict greater pain,

it seems Romans didn't let them go
to waste after the victim was dead.

They simply remove the nails
and use them for other purposes,

for other crucifixions
or to build a house.

So uncovering a nail still in the
heel bone of a crucifixion victim

from Roman Britain
is a truly remarkable discovery.

And there is something else
that makes 4926 not just special,

but unique.

One of the wonderful
aspects of this discovery

is that you have
a complete skeleton.

I mean, this is a diamond find,
so to speak.

As the best preserved example
of Roman crucifixion ever uncovered,

we can analyse not only
this person's death,

but their life, too.

Who were they?
Where were they from?

Rich or poor?

Slave or free?

And why did they meet
such a brutal end?

In order to start unpacking
these mysteries,

Corinne is taking skeleton 4926
for a very special treatment...

There we go. We tuck him in there.

..a state of the art CT scan.

Try one, four. Yeah, let's go.

MACHINE BEEPS CONTINUOUSLY

My name is Alan.
I am the imaging manager

here at the Spire Cambridge
Lea Hospital.

And I'm Iacopo.
I'm one of the radiographers

at Spire Cambridge Lea Hospital.

Normally speaking,
we scan patients that are alive

and can talk back to you.

MACHINE: Take a breath in.
Or don't!

MACHINE BEEPS

There's the head.

But this is something that I thought
was going to be interesting for me

and my colleagues to do.

And by scanning 4926,

Corinne will be able
to study the remains

in more detail than ever before.

There is the nail...

..going back into the nail hole.

Yeah, that's a good spot.

It's a nice sort of
logical division, isn't it?

OK, right. We can start that.
Going to start that? OK.

We take some pictures
with an advanced machine,

which still uses X-rays technology.

But we take so many X-rays
that we should be able

to see axial slices of it
instead of just a flat picture.

We can take some 3D volumes

and then do all sorts
of cool stuff with them.

The image quality that we got
today was superb.

We've created some great images
for the scientists

to have a look at,
and try and dig a bit deeper into

who this person was and what
actually happened to them.

The scans are handed over
to a digital imaging company,

who use them to create

a cutting-edge 3D virtual model
of 4926.

Now, Corinne can perform
a ground-breaking virtual autopsy.

And an old friend
will be helping her out.

I first met Corrine when
I was an undergraduate.

Over 20 years ago now, and I still
remember that first time we met.

Ben Garrod is now a professor
in biology and expert in anatomy,

and he credits his former lecturer
Corinne with first inspiring him.

Corinne helped me understand
the study of bones

has a really strong and integral
place within the study of science.

It's great to come together again
to look at what

can only be described
as a very important discovery.

And having a set of remains
like this can give us a snapshot

in time showing us what his
or maybe her life was like,

and ultimately how that life ended.

Ben and Corinne begin by looking
at the basics -

the sex and age of 4926.

But when dealing with
a centuries-old skeleton,

nothing is straightforward.

The big question for me,
first of all, is - male, female?

It's not always easy.
It's not always easy.

We've got to do it by lots of
different features around the body,

and we're looking primarily
at the pelvis

because that's
primary sexual dimorphism.

In other words,
that's what changes at puberty.

So this area here, this is called
the sciatic notch,

because this is where
the sciatic nerve passes through.

In a male it will stay
in the narrow form,

as you would find in a child.

But in a female
it grows at puberty, opens out

to make the pelvis bigger.

I remember you teaching me years ago

that it's something to do with the
actual angle, and you can measure it

against your fingers
at a very loose estimation.

If it's a certain angle, it's male.

If it's slightly bigger,
it's female.

In females, the angle
will be more than 90 degrees

and can be very, very large indeed.

What we're seeing here is a little
bit smaller than a right angle,

only just a bit smaller.

It is slightly more
in the male area of his pelvis.

OK. So that's a good start for us.

But that's not the whole picture,
as you say.

The skull is very important for
helping determine male or female.

So, first of all, let's look at
his frontal bone

immediately above
the root of the nose.

And you can see that you've got this
heavy bulge on the frontal bone.

So this is the real sort
of Arnold Schwarzenegger brow ridge.

So I would typically
have a brow ridge,

being a big, dominant, strapping...
Dominant primate. Yes.

And you wouldn't typically see one
as accentuated or even present

in yourself, for example.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.

And in fact, I have no brow ridge,

having seen my own X-rays.

You've said male a few times.

Are you confident this is a man?

Absolutely confident. He's coming
out as male or probably male

in every one of the features
that we can score.

Corinne and Ben
are confident 4926 was male.

But can they be as certain
of his age?

Can we tell approximately how old
this person was when he died?

All his bones have stopped growing
and are fused together.

So we say he is skeletally adult.
Mm-hm.

So from then on,
everything that we look at

is about deterioration.

I can see, I think,
some signs of wear and tear

around his lower back here.

So you can see it very, very well
in this image here.

So these little nodules here,

this backside of the vertebra
should be smooth.

When we get past about 35 years old,

we start getting these little
nodules developing

because the discs are deteriorating
and it prompts this bone growth.

In this case, this guy has got

just a little bit
of this new bone growth.

So we're saying he's over 35.

Narrow it down,
he's probably 35 to 40ish.

Skeleton 4926 was a male,

aged mid to late 30s
at the time of death.

But there are more complex questions
still to answer.

Where was he from,
and when and how did he live?

Radiocarbon dating of the remains
gives us a range of time

when 4926 lived and died.

Taking the midpoint of that range
and cross-referencing with certain

artefacts found on the site
suggests that he most likely lived

sometime around 250CE.

So a key question is -
what was life like

in 3rd-century Roman Britain?

By the turn of the millennium,
Rome had evolved from a republic

into an empire.

It held control over
the entire Mediterranean

and in some places had already
done so for hundreds of years.

It was THE unquestioned
dominant power of its day.

But in the early 1st century,

Britain was still
an unconquered land.

Britain, in terms of the wider
Roman Empire,

is of course at the border.

In the Mediterranean mindset,

Britain is a distant,
barbarous, wild land.

We get a sense that Britain
is something that is difficult

to encounter because the Channel
is conceptualised as an ocean.

The ocean is the limit
of the known world.

To go beyond the ocean is to
expand the limits of empire

beyond the known world.

Britain had been in contact
with the Mediterranean world

for centuries,
trading with the Carthaginians,

Greeks and Romans.

But it wasn't until 43CE

that it became part
of the Roman Empire.

Britain is conquered because
Claudius needs military prestige.

So for an emperor like Claudius
to do that

is a powerful part of how
you frame yourself as an emperor.

Before the Roman invasion,
Britain was living in the Iron Age.

Most of the indigenous population
lived in tribes,

in simple homes,
surviving off the land.

But Roman rule brought changes.

It became a province of the Roman
Empire, with towns and temples

and forts and industry,
and all the rest of it.

A province in which indigenous
and Roman operated side by side,

not always comfortably.

But as the period progresses,
you see different elements

become more and more important.

So there are large numbers of
Britons who serve in the Roman army

on the Rhine and the Danube.

The Romans ruled over Britain
for more than 350 years

and the remnants of their
occupation can still be seen

throughout its lands.

4926 lived during the later
Roman period.

But what was his place
in this world?

Was he a wealthy invading Roman?

Or a poor, lowly worker
native to Britain?

Corinne and Ben want to establish
this man's origins and his status.

We're talking about a time when
people were working on the land,

people had a much more
physically demanding lifestyle.

We know people of the area,
of the time

must have been working hard,
if only on agricultural work.

Looking at 4926's limbs,

Corinne and Ben can see some signs
of physical exertion.

And, analysing his skull,

signs of tooth loss and painful
infections throughout his life.

This is typical of all the
population uncovered at Fenstanton,

whose bones also showed high levels
of physical injury,

arthritis and disease.

They were showing some signs
of environmental stress,

which might have been
iron deficiency anaemia

or it might have been
possibly malaria.

All this implies that 4926
and his peers

were poor, lower-class workers.

So who were this mysterious
community found at Fenstanton?

Locals to the area?

Or workers shipped in from
another part of the empire?

To solve this mystery, we'll have to
dive into the world of ancient DNA.

My name is Dr Christiana Scheib.

I am a research fellow
at the University of Cambridge.

I study ancient human DNA,

so particularly people
from the medieval ages,

but also looking at
the Roman period,

the Bronze Age, Neolithic.

As a leading expert
in ancient DNA,

Christiana Scheib is the perfect
person to analyse

the population uncovered
at Fenstanton.

She tested 20 individuals
from the site,

but even with plenty of samples,
when dealing with ancient bones,

there's little room for error.

With ancient DNA, you have this
time-stamped window into the past.

However, it comes with caveats.

Over time, DNA degrades.

And so if we want to find something
that's authentically ancient,

you need to have really strict
contamination prevention measures.

People who go into the ancient DNA
lab have to cover their hair,

their skin, wear masks,
wear specialised suits

to prevent getting their modern DNA

into our ancient sample
that we want to look at.

Every time I work on a new
individual or a population,

I always think about this sample
as a person, you know.

Who was this person?

How did they live their life?
What did they experience?

After processing the samples
from Fenstanton,

Christiana is able to compare
the genetic make-up

of that population against other
samples from the same time period.

Her conclusions are revealing.

So the population of Fenstanton
from a genetic perspective

looked a lot more like other
individuals that we've sequenced

from the UK from that time period.

So you could say
they were probably local.

We didn't find any individuals
who looked more genetically

like somebody from North Africa
or the Middle East,

as has been found in some of the
other sites from this time period.

The ancient DNA tells us
that the people found at Fenstanton

were local to the area.

But to be really sure,
4926 is getting some further tests -

tests that will not only confirm
where he's from,

but even reveal things about
how he lived and what he ate.

My name's Jane Evans.
I'm a geologist.

My particular responsibility is,
in fact, to look at collaborating

with archaeologists.

70 miles north of Cambridge

at the British Geological Survey
in Nottinghamshire,

Professor Jane Evans
is a leading expert in isotopes.

Most people will be familiar with
the idea of elements -

calcium, iron, oxygen.

But those elements sometimes have
slightly different forms

caused by having different
weights or masses.

And so an isotope is the name
we give to the different types

of a particular element.

When you get a situation
where you've excavated an individual

and you know nothing about them,
isotopes can really start

to give you some constraints
and control

on who they were
and where they come from.

By taking tiny samples from
ancient tooth and bone,

and analysing the isotopes within,

Jane can recreate the lives
of long-dead people.

And she's worked on
some unique cases,

including analysing a tooth
of King Richard III.

We can, with a single tooth,
do analysis for carbon, nitrogen,

sulphur, lead, strontium and oxygen,

which can tell us
about a person's diet,

where they lived, the levels
of pollution they were exposed to.

Strontium is an interesting element
because its isotope composition

is related to ultimately the rocks
on which our food supply was grown.

And we can map those variations
across Britain.

Oxygen isotopes are derived or
picked up from the water you drink.

Sulphur is an interesting
and quite new element to be used.

If you're living in an area
of swampy land

where the conditions are very wet,

the plants pick up an
interesting sulphur signature.

Strontium, oxygen
and sulphur levels can reveal

where a person lived,

but nitrogen reveals more
about HOW they lived.

Nitrogen basically tells you
how high up the food chain you are.

So people with a high-meat diet
will have higher nitrogen values

than, say, vegans or herbivores.

It's time to find out what
4926's isotopes tell us about him.

Well, he had a fairly elevated
nitrogen value, which suggests

that there was a significant
component of meat in his diet.

And the carbon isotopes show
that also there was a slight shift

over towards a marine component.

This, again, is quite typical
of the Roman populations

who make use of fish sources
and this kind of thing.

A typical Roman diet.

And when it comes to where 4926
was from,

the isotopes reveal
something striking.

This map enables us to enter
the isotope data

and to reject any areas in Britain
that don't match it.

So I've marked Fenstanton
where the individual was found

on the map here, and if
we start with the oxygen,

you'll see that we exclude
the western area of Britain

as a place where he could have
spent his childhood.

If we add to that the strontium,

this further reduces the possible
childhood origins of the individual

into the south-east area of
Britain.

But if I then add
the sulphur isotopes,

this really reduces
it to a very small area.

This is where he was found
and these orange areas

represent the areas where he could
have spent his childhood,

based on the isotope composition
of his teeth.

Clear evidence that 4926
was local to Cambridgeshire.

I've done a lot of these studies
and this study is particularly

interesting because of how well
we've been able to pinpoint it.

This is by far and away
the best location of an individual

that we've achieved.

Jane's analysis also shows
that 4926's isotope levels

barely change over
the course of his life.

I would say this guy is really
quite sedentary, quite static.

4926 was a local Cambridgeshire man
who never left the area.

But it's clear there was
a Roman influence in his diet.

So how else did the empire
influence his life?

Did it affect his home,
his lifestyle, his work?

And what exactly might
that work have been?

The virtual autopsy offers Ben
and Corinne a tantalising clue.

You've got red for the really
heavily dense areas

and then greens into
less dense bone.

And you're seeing a distribution
of density across the skeleton here.

We could look at his arms

and see whether there's
any substantial changes there.

There is here. He's got greater
density in his right forearm

than his left. Hmm.

So that suggests there might
have been some kind of

specialist activity that he was
constantly doing.

Seeing this in the medieval
and later times,

rope makers who are constantly
making the same twisting movement

over and over again
with their forearms.

We're not seeing it in the humerus
here, so we're not seeing manual,

he's not chopping with an axe.

It's rather nice seeing
that disproportion, isn't it?

It's amazing. We start to recreate
not only his age and his sex,

but suddenly maybe what job he did.

We already know that the remains
from Fenstanton showed signs

of degeneration and disease,

implying the people there
were lower-class workers.

And now we can say 4926 likely did
some kind of manual job.

But before we can determine
what that job was,

first we need to know more
about the place where he worked.

So what was this settlement
uncovered at Fenstanton?

A grand Roman town?

A humble farmstead?

Or something else entirely?

To help visualise what the
settlement may have looked like,

archaeologist David has come to
Butser Ancient Farm

near England's south coast.

Here, recreations of ancient homes
have been painstakingly built

by a team of experts.

We think that the settlement
at Fenstanton started off

in the Roman period,
in probably the 1st century AD.

Fenstanton was
a roadside settlement,

a specific type
of Roman settlement -

it would have been like a village.

The site that we excavated was on
the southern edge of the village.

But at the northern edge
there are bits and pieces

that have been excavated
in the past

suggesting that there's
a Roman villa there.

The building that I'm standing
next to is the sort of building

that you might have seen at
the northern edge of Fenstanton.

Villas, although they
were quite grand to us,

they were essentially farms.

You've got clusters of them around
some of the larger Roman towns

and Roman cities where they needed
to supply the cities with food,

grain, meat and so on.

Somewhere like Fenstanton, it would
have been a local aristocrat

living there who would have
looked after the local countryside.

It's probable that 4926's
settlement was overseen

by a wealthy landlord or custodian.

And as Butser's replica suggests,

his villa would have been
a statement of his power.

Roman villas
were very much luxurious,

opulent, lavishly decorated.

It was to display your wealth.

They'd have invited
other local aristocrats around,

public officials, to demonstrate
how well they'd adopted

the Roman lifestyle.

Britain was one of the furthest
outposts of the Roman Empire,

but Roman villas would have been
a reminder to anyone living

in Roman Britain that they were
still part of this empire.

Villas became increasingly popular
in Britain in the 3rd century,

but the average native,
like 4926,

wouldn't have experienced
their comforts.

Most Britons were probably
still living in homes

similar to the ones their
ancestors had lived in

before the Roman occupation.

Somewhere like Fenstanton,
even though we know there's a villa

on the northern edge of the village,
most of the buildings around there

would have been peasant structures,
native structures,

possibly still the roundhouses.

And Butser's Iron Age village
helps bring to life

the broader settlement
and the kind of house

that our crucified man
may have lived in.

We think the Roman population
of Britain had round about

80% to 90% of people living in
rural, low-level,

low-status houses where people
would have also worked,

carried out their
business, slept,

done everything all under one roof.

We are beginning to build a picture
of 4926's existence.

He lived in a large
roadside village,

probably in a humble dwelling
such as an Iron Age roundhouse,

and in the shadow
of a nearby luxurious Roman villa.

His would have been
a tough existence.

It would have been
a hard life for them,

there's no two ways about that.

We found lots of signs of illnesses
and injury on the population

of the cemeteries that we excavated.

It was a very physical life.

You had to work for your living.

You were there to produce
the sort of profits, surpluses

for whoever owns the settlement,
or for the state.

If 4926 and his peers
were working for a wealthy landlord,

what work
were they being made to do?

The answer lies in the animal bones
uncovered on site.

One fascinating snapshot that we did
have of industrial life there

is that we had a huge number
of cattle bones

coming out of the excavations,

and a very high percentage
of those had been split.

We think they were doing this
to extract marrow, grease, fat,

that sort of material
out of the bones,

specifically to process that
for making cosmetics, soap,

possibly tallow for candles.

We think they might even
have been importing carcasses

of pre-processed beef
from nearby Roman towns,

perhaps such as Godmanchester,
Cambridge.

So it's not a self-sufficient
settlement,

it's part of a much bigger network.

4926 could have spent his days
doing specialised industrial work,

extracting marrow from bones
for processing,

which could well explain
the increased density

spotted by Corinne and Ben
in his right forearm.

A simple man worked to the bone
as part of a vast empire.

But other items found at Fenstanton
complicate the image

of a simple, poor working village.

To show this, archaeologist Kathy
has assembled

some of the artefacts uncovered
at Fenstanton.

Dr James Gerrard is an expert
in Roman material culture

and is analysing the items
to help better understand

the place where 4926 lived.

I've worked on a lot of rural sites
and certainly there's fancier,

nicer, a greater quantity
of metalwork than we would find

on a standard Romano-British site.

It's a really nice little
assemblage, isn't it?

I love these objects.

Let's start with this one.
I think this is beautiful.

We call these toilet spoons,
which sounds a bit grim,

but they're really
sort of cosmetic instruments.

You've got a little scoop there,
perhaps for make-up or medicine,

and a little pointy thing there for
doing a bit of scraping and poking.

And that's a real change
we see from the Iron Age.

This interest in personal grooming
that comes with the Roman period,

and that seems to go quite a long
way down the social hierarchy.

And this is part of that package,
isn't it?

Even on a little rural site
like this, there are people

taking care of their appearance.
Yeah, definitely.

It's a very tactile object as well.
Yeah, it's lovely.

There's that sense, isn't there,
this is an object that people used.

Even if it was for scooping out
their ears. Indeed.

THEY BOTH LAUGH

This is a lovely object, isn't it?

Maybe you can tell me
a bit more about this,

because I've never seen
one of these before.

As I understand it,
it's a little votive object.

So I think one of the theories is
you would put a candle in it.

And you'd have that
in your household shrine

for your household gods or whatever?
Yeah.

Beautifully decorated with that
enamel. Just really nice objects.

It appears that even among simple
communities like this one,

Roman culture had
a strong influence,

adding flourishes to their personal
appearance and to their homes.

So, brought a selection
of some of the nicer,

more whole bits of pottery
that we had from the site.

These are lovely.
I love a good pot.

And, as you say, it's really nice
to see almost intact vessels.

And if you look really carefully,

you can see the potter's
fingermarks. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That's amazing.

So they're the fingerprints
of a Roman potter.

I would think this one's probably
3rd-century drinking vessel.

Hold it in your hands,
probably for wine or beer.

The beer could have been made
locally, but the wine, probably

in the 3rd century,
more likely from the Rhineland,

perhaps German white wine, you know.

Beautiful object.

Even an apparently lowly
community like this

would have had access to food and
goods from across the Roman Empire.

This is one of the differences
between the Iron Age

and the Roman period,
is these Roman populations

just have access to more stuff.

But the cattle bones found on site
act as a stark reminder

that life at Fenstanton would have
been far from luxurious.

The idea that these animals were
being slaughtered somewhere else

and then the limb bones transported
to the site to be processed,

it must have been a pretty grim
experience. Yeah.

What you're looking at is
animals being processed

for the last scraps of everything.

And this is typical of the Roman
world, this intensive exploitation.

We've now been able to paint
a picture of 4926's life.

He was probably a low-status man
who never left Cambridgeshire,

who spent his days engaged
in manual work.

A tiny cog in Rome's vast machine.

That's how 4926 lived.

But what about his death?

How and why was this man crucified?

Every part of the skeleton
tells its own chapter of a story.

But I think this particular skeleton

had an unexpected twist.

And it's with this - it's this huge
nail that was driven into the heel,

which for you, the first time
you saw it,

must have been incredible, right?
It was incredible.

I spent a couple of years
trying not to believe it.

So presumably you've never seen
anything like this before? Never.

This is the heel. This is taking
a lot of the bounce when we walk.

So back of the heel,
back of the foot there,

incredibly weirdly shaped,

quite a solid bone in some respects,
isn't it?

It is.

But it actually has a very
interesting composition. Mm-hm.

So it's got a thin
but dense outer coating.

And so in order to put
anything through it,

because it's very soft inside,

you'd have to send something in
with a lot of energy.

Otherwise you would simply
crush the bone.

Whereas in this case,

it looks as though there's been
one swift, hard blow

which has taken it through
in one moment.

There is a little notch in here,
though, which isn't part

of the bone, typically.
Do we know what's happening here?

I can only guess
that this was a misfire.

So somebody who's not so experienced

starts driving the nail through

and it's the wrong angle
or it's a bit more difficult.

So they have another go.

Which is really indicating
that this isn't accidental.

This is a very intentional,
heavy blow.

I'm feeling quite reverential,
quite respectful

to a digital image right now
because of something

that someone has gone through
that is unimaginable to me.

So we always...

..respect the remains
that we work with.

And particularly when I started
researching crucifixion

and thinking harder about
what it was like as a torture

as well as a mode of death.

Yes. Your word, "reverential",
I give him more reverence

because of what he went through.

I think that word, "torture",
is very apt here.

This isn't just a man
who was killed.

This is a man who was tortured.

BIRD CAWS

Christian iconography has given us
a particular impression

of how crucifixion
may have taken place.

But the brutal truth is this
punishment took many dreadful forms.

Josephus does mention the Romans

using different forms
of crucifixion.

There is a very famous legend
that Peter, one of the disciples,

was crucified upside down.

There are reports of Roman soldiers
crucifying victims

in a variety of positions
to amuse themselves.

So what do 4926's bones

tell us about the specific way
he was put to death?

To help shed some light on this,

Corrine and Ben are joined
by Dr Piers Mitchell.

He is the only person in the world
to physically examine

both 4926 and the only
other confirmed remains

of a crucifixion victim.

So, yes, I was very fortunate
that when I was a young researcher

in my 20s,
when I was out in Jerusalem,

I had the good fortune
to see the original remains.

The crucifixion case from Israel
was uncovered in 1968

when a collection of bones was found
in a 1st-century ossuary,

a box for preserving
skeletal remains.

As with 4926, a nail
was found through a heel bone.

When I heard that we found one
from Roman period

in Cambridgeshire, I thought, wow,
a long way away, different century.

But they still seem to be doing it
in an extremely similar way.

The actual alignment of the nail,
the one we find here,

enters and crosses from
the outer side of the heel

to the medial side of the heel
in just the same way that we see

in the example from Jerusalem.

The way these nails are inserted
does not suggest

that you had a body on a cross

in the position of
the standard crucifix. You're right.

Both these cases do have the heels
on the outer side of the post

with the nail coming from
lateral to medial into the post.

The evidence shows that,
whether as additional torture

or to ensure he didn't escape,

4926's foot was nailed
to the side of the crucifix.

The rest of his limbs were probably
fastened with ropes,

and, exposed to the elements, he
would have been left to die slowly.

I think the greatest misconception
of crucifixion

was that it was a quick death.

It's such a brutal form of execution

that it's just almost impossible
to imagine.

What could 4926 have done
to warrant the cruellest

and most degrading of punishment?

What could his crime have been?

Crucifixion is a terrible way
to die.

It's a form of torture and execution
rolled into one

and it's very public.

One of one of the reasons to crucify
somebody is to instil terror.

The public nature of crucifixion
was crucial.

The Romans used it to deter lower
members of society from rebelling

against their master's rule.

They're particularly intolerant
of any form of treason, sedition -

that's punishable with crucifixion.

If 4926 was some sort of rebel
fighting or plotting

against his Roman masters, it would
have been grounds for crucifixion.

And there is evidence
that uprisings were common

throughout the Roman occupation
of Britain.

There were a number of rebellions,
so Boudica is a good example.

There are others,
Brigantes in the north.

People died, they were enslaved.

The Roman conquest
was bloody and violent.

Unrest in Britain continued
into the 3rd century.

So could 4926 have been
part of a failed uprising

in Cambridgeshire that led
to his crucifixion?

At the beginning of the 3rd century,

there had been a series
of military problems in the north,

so with the Caledonians in what's
now Scotland, and they were crushed

more or less by Septimius Severus.

For the rest of the 3rd century,
we tend actually to think of Britain

as being quite quiet.

There is no strong evidence
of an uprising around Fenstanton

in the 3rd century.

So if 4926 wasn't a rebel,

why else might he have been
crucified?

In Latin they call crucifixion
the servile supplicium,

the servile punishment.

So it's a punishment used
particularly for slaves.

So if he was a slave, then
he could have been crucified

for nearly any reason.

Unlike citizens, slaves
had no legal protection.

Their masters could,
in theory, crucify them

for even small misdemeanours.

This could mean that 4926
was a slave

who somehow displeased his master.

But in the Roman world,
things were not that simple.

In the 1st century AD, Roman
citizenship was really important

legally, so certain things
couldn't happen to you.

If you're a Roman citizen,
in normal circumstances,

you wouldn't be crucified.

Before the 3rd century,
citizenship was enjoyed

by a minority in the empire.

It granted privileges
and protections.

But during the 3rd century,
that all changed.

So the date usually given is 212AD.

We have something called
the Constitutio Antoninian,

or the Edict of Caracalla,

which gave citizenship
to the majority of people

in the Roman Empire.

No-one knows for sure why
Emperor Caracalla did this.

Some ancient authors say
that Caracalla only gave everybody

citizenship because it increased
the number of taxpayers.

Whatever his reasons, Caracalla
made more people citizens

than ever before.

But that did not mean that
life became better or safer

for the poorest in society.

We start to see this really
important legal distinction

between the so-called honestiores,
the honest men,

and the humiliores, the humble men.

People of a higher status
and people who are more humble,

to give a sort of
literal translation.

We have accounts of people
undergoing examination

in Roman courts, and often those
examinations will start with,

"What is your status?"

The humiliores, almost all
of their punishments

are unpleasant and physical.

And now actually humiliores,
who could be citizens,

can also suffer
something like crucifixion.

By the 3rd century, both slaves
and citizens of low status

could be crucified,

and no evidence survives to tell us
which 4926 was.

But in the later Roman period,
the number of executions

across the empire increased.

As we go through the Roman period,
the empire becomes

increasingly autocratic
and the judicial punishments

become increasingly savage.

And that's probably the sign
of an empire that is struggling

to enforce its will.

Evidence suggests the 3rd century
in Britain was relatively peaceful,

and yet more executions
were taking place.

The empire was becoming
increasingly brutal,

with far more crimes
punishable by death.

So whether free or enslaved,

a low-status man like 4926

could have been executed
for even a minor crime.

You have a legal system,

but who has access
to that legal system?

And is the legal system fair?

It's a legal system in which
confessions are only admissible

if they've been achieved
through torture.

Governors can make decisions
in arbitrary fashions.

They can choose to execute people
even if the law says they shouldn't.

Who's going to stop them?

4926 lived on a wild edge of empire.

He could have been crucified
for being a rebel,

or he could have simply
displeased a sadistic master.

The real reason for his death
will forever remain unknown.

Though 4926 met
a horrible and tragic end,

there is one final mystery

that might point to something
more hopeful.

Something I find very intriguing
about this is,

this man has been subjected to
this horrendous death and torture,

and yet he was obviously given over
to his population afterwards

to have an absolutely normal burial.

Some texts imply
that after crucifixion,

victims were left to rot
or dumped in a common grave.

And yet it seems this was
not the case with 4926.

Some part of the community
was interested in giving this man

a respectful burial.

We know that you could petition
the person in power

who ordered the execution to collect
the corpse of your loved one

or friend or whoever.

You know, the most famous
example of crucifixion,

the crucifixion of Jesus,

Joseph of Arimathea
petitions Pontius Pilate

and collects the body
and gives the body formal burial.

We're probably seeing
something similar here.

Friends and family
have collected this body

and given it a respectful burial.

Does his burial suggest
that despite his awful

and humiliating execution,

4926 still had people who cared
about him in his community?

DNA analysis from
the other Fenstanton graves

could provide insight.

In the 20 individuals
that we looked at from Fenstanton,

we found evidence of
two close genetic relationships.

One was a first-degree relationship

and the other was
a second-degree relationship.

First-degree relationships
are a parent or an offspring

or full siblings.

Second-degree relationships
are maybe a grandparent

and their grand offspring
or an aunt, uncle.

The evidence shows Fenstanton
was a very local population

and some of the people found there
were related.

This could suggest
a tight-knit community,

one that cared for 4926
after his dreadful end.

Whatever he did in life
and whoever punished him,

he was accepted in death.

He sort of went back
into his community after death.

So I think
that's quite moving, really.

Joe Mullins is a forensic artist
and professor

at the George Mason University
in Virginia.

As a forensic artist,
most of my work

comes from law enforcement.

That is, these are
active investigations

of unidentified skeletal remains.

Across three decades,
Joe has worked with law enforcement,

reconstructing faces from skulls,

which helps to identify
victims of crime.

Over the course of my 24 years,

there's been hundreds
and hundreds of skulls

that I've helped
law enforcement with.

But today, Joe is helping
in a world first -

reconstructing the face
of a victim of crucifixion.

I think I've got the coolest job
in the world, and this is by far

the most interesting skull that
I've ever worked on in my career.

For forensic identification,
I want to get crime scene photos,

clothing was found with the victim,

as much information I can get
to paint that picture

of what this individual
looked like in life.

That same process applies
to historical cases.

I want to get as much information
as I can on the front end.

If there's DNA isotopes, phenotypes
to give me information

on hair colour, eye colour,
skin tone.

Joe was given information
from Corinne,

isotopic details from Jane Evans

and insights from Christiana Scheib,
whose DNA sampling

determined 4926 most likely
had brown hair and brown eyes.

As far as the information that I got
for this particular case,

it really is fascinating to me
because I was basically able to get

just as much or more information
for this case

that's thousands of years old,

than I would for an active case that
I'm working for law enforcement.

Now, the problem was this skull
was, it was fragmented.

There's no other way to explain it.

It is putting together
a couple-thousand-year-old puzzle.

Your skull is the foundation
that your face is built on.

Doesn't matter how old
the skull is, all that information

is going to be laid out
in front of us.

When the pieces are all together,
here's what we come up with.

So I have the foundation
to start building the face.

Now we've gone from our 3D software
into really applying

the photographic elements
to the face.

Based on all that information
we got -

mid 30s, brown hair, brown eyes,
not exactly a healthy individual.

Now we have indication for where his
lips are, the corners of the mouth,

his irises, his eyebrows,
the hairline, the brow ridge,

all those details.

It's like a digital Mr Potato Head.

So as I'm clicking through
the layer, as you'll see

some decisions that were made,
like hairstyles, you know.

As we add some more
graphic elements,

we're applying that,
the sunken cheeks,

all those things that would have
naturally taken place

under these harsh conditions.

Piece by piece, Joe is able
to give this crucifixion victim

a kind of resurrection of his own.

It's not just a skull any more.

I'm staring at a face
from thousands of years ago.

And staring at this face is,

it's something I'll never forget.

More than five years
since the dig at Fenstanton,

Corinne and David
are in Northamptonshire,

ready to tell 4926's story to
a roomful of fellow archaeologists.

But before they do, there's a final
piece to add to their presentation -

Joe's reconstruction,

which they're about to see
for the first time.

Isn't this wonderful,
seeing it develop?

SHE GASPS

That's never what
I would have guessed.

THEY BOTH LAUGH

That's really impressive.

It is such a brilliant
reconstruction, isn't it?

It's just so living.

Those details are wonderful.

It really marks him out
as an individual,

not just skeleton 4926
as he's been up until now.

Yeah. He just looks like someone
that I used to work with

in the health service years ago.

Ancient people and modern people,

there's no taking us apart,
is there?

No, exactly.

This looks like someone
you could meet

on the streets of Fenstanton today.

This man had such
a particularly awful

end of life, that it feels
as though seeing his face,

we can give more respect to him.

It's fantastic that we've been able
to use the DNA evidence

and the osteological analysis
that you've done, Corinne,

and build this picture together.

We can bring him back to life,
almost, nearly 2,000 years on.

It's always a real joy to work
with other osteoarchaeologists,

just to start with.

But I love it when we can have
multidisciplinary feedback

to and fro.

So it's been a wonderful opportunity
to put a lot more time in

and talk to people
all over the place.

So it's just been tremendously
enriching for me.

Whenever you see archaeology
portrayed on the screen,

it's always exciting,
world-shattering events.

Most of what we do is very prosaic,

and this is just something
that you don't find.

It's the sort of find of a lifetime.