Bringing Up The Body

The bones of a woman who lived 2,000 years ago, and found in a bay off the Isle of Wight, are to be gifted to Island’s museum.

Brothers, Hubert and Graham Smyth discovered the skeletal remains as they set a string of swinging boat moorings at Fishbourne Beach at low tide on 9 March 2015. The bones were in the silt which is under the waterline when the tide is in.

Graham Smyth, who is a radiographer, gently lifted out one of the bones and was confident it was a human radius, so he left the rest of the skeleton in situ and called the police.

The remains were dated to AD 28 to AD90 – almost 2,000 years old and from the Late Iron Age.

read more here @ On The Wight

Boudicca - the Celtic Queen of the Iceni

Ancient Origins:

Boudicca, sometimes written Boadicea, was queen of the Iceni tribe, a Celtic clan which united a number of British tribes in revolt against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in 60-61 AD. While she famously succeeded in defeating the Romans in three great battles, their victories would not last. The Romans rallied and eventually crushed the revolts, executing thousands of Iceni and taking the rest as slaves. Boudicca’s name has been remembered through history as the courageous warrior queen who fought for freedom from oppression, for herself, and all the Celtic tribes of Britain.

History Extra:

A freedom fighter, the woman who almost drove the Romans out of the country, Boudica is one of the most iconic queens of Britain. Despite being one of the first ‘British’ women mentioned in history, there is no direct evidence that she even existed. Instead, we have to rely on the accounts of two classical authors, Tacitus and Cassius Dio, both writing decades after the alleged battles between Boudica’s rebel army and their new Roman overlords. Their accounts were constructed with a specific political agenda, and a Roman audience, in mind but they are the only references we have. We don’t even know her real name: Boudica derives from bouda, the ancient British word for victory.

Further Reading:

The Boudican Revolt: Countdown to Defeat by Grahame Appleby

Internet Classics - The Annals by Tacitus

Bill Thayer's website - Tacitus - The Annals & The Histories

Bill Thayer's website - Cassius Dio - Roman History

Women of History - Legion of the Damned