Interesting

A gruesome and seemingly unique mutilation has emerged from a Roman Britain burial site in Northamptonshire – the skeleton of a man whose tongue had apparently been amputated and replaced with a flat stone wedged into his mouth.

The man had been interred face down, perhaps amid fears that his corpse would rise to threaten people once again, archaeologists believe.

The burial site, at Stanwick near the river Nene, dates from the third or fourth century, when people would have lived in small farming communities. It was discovered in 1991, but only now has research been conducted by archaeologists and other specialists at Historic England, formerly English Heritage.

Simon Mays, Historic England’s human skeletal biologist, told the Guardian that such a Romano-British mutilation was thought to be unique. He said: “This isn’t something that’s been identified so far in the archaeological records. So it’s identifying a new practice … The fact that he’s buried face down in the grave is consistent with somebody whose behaviour marked them out as odd or threatening within a community.”

Ageing techniques are imprecise, but the man is believed to have been in his 30s at the time of his death.