THE EXECUTIONER'S MOAT (Interesting Discoveries in the dirt)!

Archaeological Institute of America ^ | Volume 57 Number 2, March/April 2004 | DAVID KEYS

[vannrox]

The remains of at least 60 criminals executed during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were found in a medieval moat at Oxford Castle.



Excavations in a medieval moat around Oxford Castle have so far yielded the remains of 60 to 70 criminals, mostly men in their twenties, executed during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Archaeologists believe that dozens more await discovery. "This excavation has given us a much greater understanding of the way in which the bodies of executed criminals were treated in postmedieval England," said Andrew Norton, the field archaeologist running the dig.

The victims, all of whom are thought to have been hanged, seem to have been denied a Christian burial. They were interred in unconsecrated ground, and some 20 percent of them were buried face down or on their sides. Most were not buried in a traditional Christian east-west alignment, thus depriving them of the opportunity to rise from the dead facing Jerusalem on the Day of Judgment.

A number of dead had been used for medical instruction or experimentation after death. Three skulls were found with their tops skillfully sawed off, while the neck of another individual had been carefully cut through the seventh vertebra. The bodies may have been used for flesh or muscle dissections, but no archaeological traces have been identified so far. Two sawn-off crania--but not the skulls they were once attached to--were also unearthed.

Historians believe the dissected victims were used by anatomy schools at the University of Oxford's Christ Church College or at the old Ashmolean, most likely under royal license granted during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, or Charles I. At that time the Crown allowed four executed criminals a year to be used for academic purposes.

Archaeologists have discovered moving evidence of the pain suffered by the executed. In many cases, their hands were tightly clenched. Two individuals had held onto their own clothes with such tenacity that in one case a button and, in another, a fragment of clothing was found inside their clenched skeletal fists.

Death on the gallows generally occurred by slow strangulation; it would have taken up to a half an hour for a person to die. (Instant death through hanging, by the use of a drop through a trapdoor that broke the condemned person's neck, was only gradually introduced in the late eighteenth century.)

In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, death sentences were passed for everything from theft and burglary to treason and murder. Apart from holding political prisoners and debtors, prisons were usually used to detain people while they awaited trial; prison sentences were rarely given as punishment. The accused were acquitted about half of the time; of those convicted, half were flogged and the rest hanged.

Interestingly, a few of the executed were female. These women, mostly in their late forties or early fifties, may well have been hanged for witchcraft. Archaeologists have also found the remains of a child about 12 years old who appears to have been hanged and buried face down with the bottom half of his legs bent back as if they had been tied to his upper legs.

[miele man]

Would you please explain surrogate baptism? First time I've ever heard of this? What church or religion practices this?
Thank you.

[blam]

GGG

[.38sw]

I think surrogate baptism is practiced by the LDS Church. I was raised Lutheran, and we didn't have any such practice or belief.

[PAR35]

Would you please explain surrogate baptism? First time I've ever heard of this? What church or religion practices this? Thank you.

Latter Day Saints (Mormons). I think that they call it "Proxy Baptism"

[Verginius Rufus]

There was a long list of offenses for which a person could be hanged, but sometimes criminals were transported to the colonies instead. See Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, part of which is set in colonial Virginia. Sometimes the criminal would choose hanging over transportation.

[Oatka]

Rough justice indeed. I wonder if there would be any value in collecting survivable DNA and building a database - for what I don't know.

I understand that until the railroads were built, people stayed pretty close to home, which probably meant some inbreeding or at least a very narrow gene pool.

[technochick99]

Sometimes the criminal would choose hanging over transportation.

Why is that?!?

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.

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[Verginius Rufus]

Life expectancy in 17th-century Virginia and in some of the other English colonies was very short, especially in the early decades of settlement. Things got a little better later, but living and working conditions were terrible for indentured servants. A criminal may have decided he was better off being hanged than dying on board ship or soon after arriving in America.

I've read of cases in the antebellum South where slaves were offered their freedom on condition they would go to Liberia, and they preferred slavery to what seemed a death warrant.

[U S Army EOD]

I wonder if any of the bodied in the pit were lawyers.

[farmfriend]

I wonder if any of the bodied in the pit were lawyers.

LOL!

[Alouette]

Most of these death sentences for "petty" crimes were repealed in the 1800s

After the discovery of Australia...

[piasa]

Come to think of it, their teeth DO look too good to be average Brit criminal class.

[dighton]

It is interesting.

One small mistake. In England, the long drop was introduced in the late nineteenth century (1800s), not eighteenth.

William Marwood + long drop

[Fedora]

This will sound strange, but it sounds to me like some of these burials were associated with medieval beliefs about ghosts and vampires. It's not discussed much, but towards the tail end of the Witch Hunt, there was also a widespread Vampire Hunt in Europe, which lasted as late as the 18th century in some areas. In light of that, note this detail:

> the neck of another individual had been carefully cut through the seventh vertebra

Which is one way certain traditions advocated laying a vampire to final rest.

To shed some light on ancient beliefs about such things, here's something I was reading recently in a book about Celtish archaeology (Daithi O Hogain, The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland, Chapter 2, 45ff)--note the parallels with the above:

". . .there was a general belief that buried treasure was guarded by spirits of animals. . .It was commonly believed that buried treasure was guarded by a human spirit, and indeed several stories are told of a person having been deliberately put to death upon the burial of a trove, so that his ghost would act as guardian. . .hostages could be treated with great cruelty in early Ireland. . .

". . .The notion that the head or bones of a dead person continued to have some kind of power is illustrated by a very special type of motif. . .Eoghan Beal. ..ordered that a red javelin be placed in his hand, and that he be standing upright and facing northwards against the Ulstermen, 'for they will not go to battle against Connacht while my grave faces them and while I myself are arranged in that manner'. His northern foes are reported to have later set aside this impediment by exhuming his body and burying him in another place, with his face downwards. . .Inherent in this tradition was the idea that the spiritual part of the individual survived death, and that in this way the dead person could still be a force to be reckoned with. . .That special properties were believed by the Iron Age Celts to reside in buried heads is clear from the archaeological record. There was a common custom in Celtic Britain to behead bodies before interring them, and many skulls have ben found under the foundations of buildings of the period. The discovery of some decapitated bodies, and of human skulls unaccompanied by other bones, in burial sites in Ireland indicates that such practices were known here also. There is also strong confirmation of a related rite in accounts of the Continental Celts. . ."

[night reader]

If you ever get to London, visit the London Dungeon it talks about crime and swift punishment in old England. Maybe we should use this sort of rule--hang or flog criminals and let them go--save momey on prisons. Or we could send them someplace--the English used Georgia--we could use---say Haiti?

I beg to differ, Ma'am! Georgia was a debtor's colony, not a penal colony. And after 231 years, we still haven't out of debt.

I believe Australia, Tasmania, and possibly New Zealand were truly penal colonies.

[night reader]

Would you please explain surrogate baptism? First time I've ever heard of this? What church or religion practices this?
=====================================
That would be us Mormons or as we actually prefer, Latter-day Saints. But we didn't originate the practice. Paul mentioned it is his First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 29.
Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?

[Elsie]

There is one verse in the NT that mentions this:

1 Corinthians 15:29 NKJV
Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?

Click this to see the LDS' organization's writings about 'baptise' and 'dead'.

http://scriptures.lds.org/query?words=baptism+dead&newsearch=ok&BM=1&DC=1&PGP=1&TX=1&SM=1&search.x=27&search.y=7

[Modernman]

Latter Day Saints (Mormons). I think that they call it "Proxy Baptism"

It's pretty controversial- the Mormons got a lot of bad PR for 'baptising' Holocaust victims a little while back.