Secrets of the Dead

This programme is interesting and very informative.It seeks to uncover the cause of death and surrounding circumstances of various ancient burials. Modern technology like carbon14 dating, computer enhancement and chemical analysis plus many other techniques are combined to uncover the secrets behind these deaths. The edition that investigated cannibalism in Britain was particularly good. They demonstrated in great detail how the bones they had unearthed were the remains of someones meal. They showed how the meat had been stripped from the bones after cooking and had left particular marks on the bones. The programme about burials from after the War of ...  Read the complete review

Secrets of the Dead is a brilliant concept for a show - take a body or group of bodies from history and use modern technology and as many experts as you can find to try to disentangle what happened. It sounds fascinating, and for the large part it is, but some shows are definiely better than others. The first show that I watched was about a battle during the War of the Roses. They showed skeletons who had clearly been hacked in the head with swords and recreated their faces. They noticed that right forearms were strangely thickened and investigated this - proving that extensive archery can result in these thickened bones. All in all a very ...  Read the complete review

This is one of the few programmes recently that have actually inspired me to switch the television on! They've investigated the remains of canibals - and managed to demonstrate in considerable detail how they stripped the meat from the bones before eating it. They looked at the body of an Anglo-saxon found at Stonehenge (from a period of history when they had previous thought the site was abandoned) and manged to show how he had been killed by a single blow the back of his neck. They've looked at all sorts of other remains and shared the results of modern forensic techniques coupled with archaelogial knowledge. To put it ...  Read the complete review