Dr Cat Jarman is a bio and field archaeologist specialising in the Viking age, Viking women, and Rapa Nui. She uses forensic techniques like isotope analysis, carbon dating, and DNA analysis on human remains to untangle the experiences of past people from broader historical narratives.
She has contributed to numerous TV documentaries on the BBC, Channel 4, History, Discovery, and is the author of the bestselling book about the Vikings, 'River Kings'.
Cat will give a talk on the gripping new history of the making of England as a nation, told through six bone chests which have been stored for over a thousand years in Winchester Cathedral.
In 1642, William Waller and his Parliamentarian army came to Winchester, where they forced entry to the magnificent cathedral and began to smash things.
In the cathedral’s holiest place, ten beautiful mortuary chests rested as they’d done since the 7th century. In search for treasure, the soldiers ripped open the lids and when all they found were bones, they flung them at the great West Window, destroying the 14th-century-stained glass with its sacred images of the Virgin Mary and St Peter.
The desecration was total – blood, glass, bayonets, bones all scattered underfoot. The chests housed the mortal remains of West Saxon kings, saints and bishops; of Queen Emma of Normandy, William Rufus, Harthacnut, Edmund Ironside and Edward the Confessor. As the soldiers left, local people picked through the damage, gathering the glass and hiding the bone chests for safekeeping.
Six of the chests remain today. In 2014 they were opened for the first time. Since then, cutting edge science, including isotope analysis, carbon dating and DNA analysis has revealed astonishing new insights. In her new book, 'Bone Chests', Cat Jarman builds on evidence from these bones of the men and women who witnessed and orchestrated the creation of England, fuelled and fortified by the actions of invading and settling Vikings, to tell an unforgettable new account of this early period of history.
This is Anglo-Saxon history in technicolour, with an important revisionist take on the role of women.
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