The Unknown Warrior by Richard Osgood

Author:Richard Osgood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

UNKNOWN WARRIOR 10

A postern gate was located on the eastern side of the citadel at Basing House in Hampshire. As we have seen, this building, held by the Royalists, was besieged and taken by overwhelmingly superior Parliamentary forces in 1645 – a decisive year of the Civil War. Archaeological work to a gully inside this gate in 1991 produced a fascinating discovery within the gully’s fills: a human skull and two cervical vertebrae and fragments of a third were recovered (see Colour Plate 11). Although some of the right side of the head was missing, the majority was intact and enabled investigators to make several observations. The head was almost certainly male and probably of someone 18–25 years of age (judging from the attrition of the teeth). The man suffered from quite severe dental pain, and the wear on the teeth suggested that this led to him favouring the use of the left side of his mouth to avoid having to use his right teeth. Allen and Anderson (1999: 99–100) suggested that the high levels of dental caries in a young individual might indicate the increased carbohydrate consumption of post-medieval populations. The skull also indicated that the young man suffered from iron deficiency anaemia.

The skull itself had a severe wound to its top – a 40mm-long lesion caused by a blade weapon. Although there is no evidence for this wound healing, it would not have been enough to have caused death, although blood loss could have been severe. The authors believed that the most likely scenario was that the man may have been rendered unconscious by this blow, and was then decapitated – hence the presence of only three vertebrae (ibid.: 100).

What set this man’s skeleton apart from those of other individuals is that it both displays weapon injuries and comes from a securely dateable context, to a most violent single event in the English Civil War. Unfortunately, apart from the skull, there were no other elements of the skeleton that would enable further statements about the individual, though the material recovered revealed much.

UNKNOWN WARRIOR 10

One of the victims of the 1645 siege of Basing House, Hampshire

The remains of a man found in the destruction layers of Basing House, stormed and razed in 1645 during the English Civil War. The man was probably killed in hand-to-hand fighting by decapitation following a blow to the head. There is no evidence to suggest whether this is the head of one of the defeated Royalist defenders or of a Parliamentary attacker – the latter also lost many men in the fight for the house (Harrington, 2004: 10).

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