The Viking Archaeology Blog is concerned with news reports featuring Viking period archaeology. It was primarily constructed as a source for the University of Oxford Online Course in Viking Archaeology: Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers. For news reports for general European archaeology, go to The Archaeology of Europe News Blog.
Thursday, 26 January 2012
The Viking death squads who got a taste of their own medicine: Mass grave shows how the Anglo-Saxons hit back at invaders
A mass grave found in Dorset contains the bodies of an elite ‘hit squad’ of invading Viking warriors, experts claim.
All decapitated and buried alongside their severed heads, the 54 skeletons were discovered in 2009 by workmen digging a road.
Archaeologists dated their bones to around the year 1,000 but had few other clues as to the identities of the men who met such a sticky end.
Now a researcher at Cambridge University claims to have pieced the story together in a documentary to be screened tonight.
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