Alice Roberts on the skeletons' secrets

Professor Alice Roberts examines the bones of those who died between five and ten centuries ago, solving the mysteries of how they lived and died.

Professor Alice Roberts wants us to listen to skeletons.

She's an anatomist and archaeologist who says that posthumous examination of our bones can reveal so much more than what someone might have looked like.

Whether it's about our health, our diet, what we did for a living, how we died, and whether that was a violent end — epic stories are written into our bones.

Recently Alice has been examining the bones of those who died between five and ten centuries ago to find out more about them. She's uncovered some amazing life and death stories.

There’s the sad and gothic tale of a medieval Anchoress, who was walled up inside a church in York for 28 years; the lives of the drowned sailors who died in the sinking of a ship called the Mary Rose, once owned by Henry the Eighth; and new revelations about a terrible massacre ordered by a King in the year 1004 AD.

This episode of Conversations explores death, anatomy, science, burial, history, origin stories, historic mysteries, ancestry, biology, ghost stories, Catholic Church, STIs, syphilis, medical history, early medicine, arthritis, strong bones, genocide.