African Skeleton Found in Ipswich Grave | History Cold Case UK

Uncover the incredible discovery of a 13th-century African skeleton unearthed in a medieval burial ground in Ipswich. Through forensic analysis, DNA testing, and historical investigation, this episode of History Cold Case UK reveals the life and untold story of a North African man who lived in medieval England.

History Cold Case UK S01 E01

0:00 – A Skeleton in Ipswich
6:18 – Uncovering African Origins
13:00 – Rare African Presence in England
18:46 – Historical Clues and Migration
25:31 – Scientific Proof of North African Roots
30:37 – Crusades and Migration to England
39:17 – A Spinal Abscess and Death
45:27 – A Friary and Medieval Medicine
50:14 – DNA and Ethnic Diversity
55:02 – Reconstructing His Face and Legacy

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Britain’s Finest unit for forensic investigation has a groundbreaking new Mission a mission that will put the full arsenal of modern forensics to the ultimate [Music] test for the first time the Cold Case team will strive to put a face to some extraordinary human remains from the long distant past it’s not the kind of face that children would happily look at it’s the kind of face that children would cry at and that’s quite sad for someone who’s so very young forensic anthropology facial reconstruction and painstaking research will open new windows on history as they reconstruct the lives of people not seen for centuries this historical research is allowing me to investigate people’s experiences at different times throughout history he certainly had nasty crack to the top of his head that must have been so painful so we’ve got the face the faal Reconstruction and we’ve added some textures fantastic that that is just super the team’s latest case surrounds a puzzling skeleton discovered in a medieval Christian burial ground in ipswitch the archaeologists who found the body believe the man is from Africa this is really important what what was he doing there what event could have brought an African to Medieval ipswitch and what led to his demise I think I made just a f a cause of death the investigation unearths evidence from the 13th century that will challenge the view of Britain’s ethnic past it’s amazing it’s just you know it’s what gets scientists excited is this skeleton irrefutable proof of an African presence in medieval England and if so who is [Music] [Music] he the center for anatomy and human identification at the University of Dundee the forensics team is about to start work on a curious skeleton presumed to be ale and African it was excavated from a medieval burial ground in ipswitch in the 1990s but his identity and his story are a mystery the first stage of the investigation is for head of unit Professor Su black to examine the skeleton along with her colleague Dr zany Mallet um excavation medieval bar burial s in Ipswich Al report on the site suggest the skull showed subsaharan African characteristics okay the they record every detail the size of that and Sue is immediately struck by what could be a clue to confirming the skeleton’s ethnic origin good grief okay gosh it’s very wide look at the W that huge palette you know that that that’s that’s a jaw flaring that Tom Cruz would be very proud of Y beautiful absolutely beautiful it was a I switch mhm but before tackling the complex issue of his possible ancestry they begin by putting an age to the man at time of death well we’re definitely in the adult category if you look at the sutures Yep they’re in the process of closing when you’re very young they’re quite far apart and you can see them really clearly and as you get older they they oopy and they sort of merge and fuse together and they’ve started to disappear round at the back here and that’s an indication of age so we definitely got a mature adult here we’ve not necessarily got an elderly adult but we’re at the older end of mature not 40s probably getting a bit older the archaeologists who discovered the skeleton classified it as subsaharan African and the shape of its jaw would seem to fit with that not an overly prognathic jaw but it is it is a little bit progne and I think we’d be very happy to to agree with a classification of subsaharan African the whole investigation will hinge on being able to ascertain Beyond any reasonable doubt where this man came from Skull shape is commonly relied upon to indicate ethnic origin although every skull is unique a prognathic or relatively prominent jaw is linked to skulls of subsaharan African ancestry over 3,000 M from IP switch bottom line is his skin was a different color to yours and mine and that’s fundamentally what we mean and when we look at him in terms of his position um inps which at that time he’d have been really different mhm absolutely and he’d have been really different because of the color of her skin the initial observation is confirmed that he was male between 40 and 60 years old and around 5′ 6 in tall but the cause of his death is still a mystery and there’s much more they’ll need to substantiate about his ancestral Origins he’s a very well-developed mature man so a lot of muscle development in there I think height-wise he’s not overly tall he’s sort of of middling height even by you know UK standards at that time he’s about 5′ 6 maybe 5′ 7 but he is I would say a 40 to 60y old male who may well be African in terms of his [Music] origin okay what we have today before further analysis takes place Sue and zany need to discuss the case with Dr Caroline Wilkinson she will oversee the facial reconstruction and is the team’s ancestry expert angles of of the job he’s got is interesting because that’s not something I know a lot about I know you’re much more comfortable with that than I am the only thing that that I picked up apart from the really heavy dense uh nature of the skull was the pallet pallet was very wide and very big teeth which was to me was a clear indication we’re not talking you know Anglo-Saxon kelt kind of dentition at all I think he’s going to have an interesting face I’ll be quite yeah pleased to do a reconstruction on him and if we’re going to do a facial Recon instuction we can do it from a laser scan so okay so you want in laser scan yeah and they will need to gather a lot more information you really need to go back and speak to the archaeologists I think we need to have some idea about where they were found what type of a site it was were there any other individuals around them are we looking High status low status is there anything known about that archaeological site um were there any artifacts I I think that’s a really important way to go excellent I think that’s all we can do y I think what what makes him interesting is the potential ancestry so the fact that we might be looking from somebody who’s subsaharan African and in I switch I think in medieval times that for me is is very interesting it might not be something that in a modern scenario if I was doing a forensic case would be in the least little bit unusual but I can’t help feeling that if we go back to Medieval Times this is somebody who would stand out zany leaves dunde to start her historical road trip her task is to hunt down any information she can that will help the team build up a profile of who the man was I’m very lucky in that I have been given an opportunity by the University of Dundee to construct a team and everybody who is in this department is handpicked for a variety of reasons Dr Wolf mea alenin is the team’s stable iceo expert he will analyze trace minerals found deep inside the ipswitch man’s skeleton which could tell us where he [Music] lived there is nobody else that I would trust for a forensic investigation he is the best that there is and he has not only a national reputation he has a huge International reputation in order to carry out his his isotopic analysis Wolfram needs samples of teeth and Bone the information it could reveal is [Music] vital a single Moler tooth could reveal where in the world the Ipswich Man spent his early [Music] years while a small section of his thigh bone could tell us where he was living in the last years of his life what we see here might overlap with the information we get from blooth or it might actually be completely different should the person have moved and since I understand the person was found in a grave in ipwi and you have information that he might be of subsaharan descent uh clearly he must have moved during his lifetime at some [Music] stage Zan has come to ipswitch where the skeleton was discovered in medieval times ipswitch which was a thriving Port situated on the river Orwell the town had connections across Europe and the route is still used for trading to this day medieval England is often thought of as an insula Society but in reality it was at the center of a network of globalized trading it’s not hard to imagine a means by which an African man could have got here in medieval times IP switch would have been a huge Port that would have been really very busy with trade and lots of international Crews would traveled up here from all over the [Music] world the berial site where the man was found is located near the river Zan’s hoping she can dig out some clues about his identity Zan’s enthusiasm and her her personality and her character makes her ideal for going out and asking people questions and she does that particularly well she’s meeting Keith Wade from suffk archeaology they excavated the bodies back in the 1990s before the site was built on as part of a new Housing Development before the flats were built we excavated the whole side and the last phase of activity was a cemetery and it lies within the precinct of a friy The Franciscan friy the gray friers and the Fri was built in about 1290 and then was suppressed in 1538 this shows all the features excavated on this site these burials a fairly all in single Graves he was where did you say approximately he’s up right in the corner okay I can show you a photograph oh is this actual burial yeah that’s the actual burial and as you can see it looks like a fairly standard medieval burial and why has he been dated at Medieval we have very little evidence other than the fact that’s the type of burials you normally see in the medieval period and one of them has a belt buckle which is late 13 for 14 Century so our ipswitch man was discovered in a burial ground next to a Christian friery two pieces of evidence suggest he is Medieval a belt buckle found among the 150 skeletons and also the Fri itself was only in operation between the mid-13th and the mid-16th [Music] centuries before the investigation can proceed there is an important question to answer just how unusual is it for an African skeleton to be found in a burial site from this time period to find out zanth has come to the University of London to meet medieval historian and migration expert Professor Jim Bolton nice to meet you we found uh a medieval individual who’s of African origin is that as unusual as my kind of gut instinct is telling me it is yes undoubtedly undoubtedly it’s very unusual indeed there is some written evidence I think of many of Africans in medieval England uh but to find skeletons I’ve not come across it before at all so what do we know about the history of migration to this country if you go back to the Roman occupation of Britain then you would expect to find Africans and people from the Middle East here as soldiers as merchants in particular and you would expect that because Rome is a is a multinational Empire then you get a huge gap and that’s between the end of the Roman Empire as it were and almost the 16th and 17th centuries when Africans begin to come into England because of the slave trade and as personal servants in great households and but between the fall of the Roman Empire which is 5ifth Century ad and about 15600 then it is rare to find Africans it’s very rare indeed and very rare that they should be in a friary as well because that assumes they’ve been given a Christian burial and most of the people I know who come from Africa or North Africa or Spain would be would be Muslim uh so I why would they end up in a Christian burial [Music] ground what Professor Bolton has told zany has raised the stakes in the investigation between the fall of the Roman Empire and the 16th century there are virtually no records of Africans in England this makes the ipswitch man so improbable that the team must be sure of their findings and the first thing they must prove scientifically is the age of the skeleton is he really medieval to find out a sample of the ipswitch man’s bone has been sent for carbon dating [Music] the bone sample is crystallized into a powder which is then combusted in a sealed glass tube and converted into a gas the gas is then converted back to solid carbon which can be analyzed and [Music] dated an accelerator Mass spectrometer analyzes the ratio of radiocarbon content which will acetate the age of the bones themselves it’s a vital part of the investigation but it will be 2 weeks before the team get the results Caroline Wilkinson is responsible for giving the ipswitch man a face she is one of the world’s leading facial reconstruction experts working on historical faces as well as contemporary criminal investigations her scientific background her artistic background and her intuitive nature when it comes to faces in particular is absolutely second to none so I’m very fortunate I have world-class leader in her field in this department she will perform a detailed examination of the skull with her colleague Caroline need them okay you want them separate for now wow if we’ve got some guttering and we’ve got quite rectangular orbits that would suggest more subsaharan African so you can see the mouth’s a bit further forward than you know the rest of the face yeah which again would suggest African mhm and really wide palette which again is another subar and African trait H interesting interesting face so I mean I’d say that it looks like it could be subsaharan African I would say the nose is not typical okay but not impossible and the shape of the cranium is not typical mhm but there’s quite a lot of other indicators although Caroline agrees that he is of African origin she thinks he’s likely to be North African from a country like Morocco or Tunisia she’s hoping that some of the team’s tests will help pinpoint his Origins whatever the results she’s in no doubt that he will be a striking individual we might get an indication of ancestry from DNA analysis and also we might be able to tell where the person has lived by looking at stabil isotope analysis and that might in itself indicate ancestry it’s quite a big robust and very muscly faced so it’s going to be quite an interesting skull to reconstruct I think he’s going to have a very uh individual face the first stage of the process is to create a laser scanned 3D model this will be used as a base for the layers of facial tissue but Caroline will need further historical and scientific evidence in order to recreate his face accurately [Music] for zanth the lack of knowledge of Africans in medieval England makes researching this case a unique challenge what was the African doing here and what would people have made of [Music] him zanti has come to the national archives in Q to meet a man who has single-handedly been trying to build an evidence-based picture of early African history in England Ona has been researching thousands of medieval documents and what he’s found is fascinating he has come to the conclusion that the African found in ipswitch would have been treated with more tolerance than we’ve seen during later periods of History the Africans who were here would have been here doing a specific skill or trade their position would have been determined by personal relationships that they developed right rather than based upon skin color there was not a scientific understanding of race that comes about in the 19th century the idea that human groups fall into different specific racial categories that was not present in medieval England how many individuals of African origin would you have found in the UK back in the medieval Peri that’s difficult for us to know yeah because during the medieval appeared there are not consistent um and substantial records there are few records of the population as a whole let alone of an African presence however having said that we have in the abito Doomsday Book of 1241 uh this African 1241 1241 so what does this mean now this is an African image an image of an African from an account for Derby the abbrevi of Doomsday Book was the 13th century version of the original Doomsday Book of 1086 the first survey of the English population this is one of the only known images of an African in medieval England but Ona feels it’s highly significant but the point is that there was an African that the or the idea of the African was known in 13th century England which is just the right time period just the right period for your African yes people draw pictures of them in image image wise yes and and therefore it is highly likely that Africans were part of medieval Society by the 16th century there are an increasing number of recorded African images in British history such as that of John Blan Henry VII’s favorite [Music] trumpeteer but among the 11 million documents at the National Archives is some extraordinary evidence that as the numbers of black people in England increased attitudes started to change this document created between 1595 to 1596 is a record of letters and proclamations created during the reign of Elizabeth the okay um this letter is addressed to the Lord mayors of the major cities and it says in the letters if you look it says the word blackamore you notice that word there says black and mo here and black and Moos there so this is another word for African individual black Mo right the word Mo by itself means black and black added on means essentially black black yes so it’s emphasizing what these people look like um but the letter reads an open letter to the Lord mayors of London and Yan his Brethren and to all other Mayors sheriffs and her majesty understanding there that there are of late diverse blackor B into this realm of which kind of persons there are already here too many considering how God hath blessed this land with great increase of people of our own Nation children Ona believes that the lack of mentions in records is simply because in medieval times people saw less need to comment on the color of a person’s [Music] skin so far the team has relied on anthropology and historical research to establish the origins of the ipswitch [Music] man but as they reassemble at the evidence board it’s time to see if these conclusions will be supported by some hard science was this man alive during medieval times and does he definitely come from Africa okay today we’re going back to ipswitch man um this is the subsaharan African male possibly medieval and that’s because there was a belt buckle with one of the individuals from that group that was a medieval belt buckle Sue has been sent the results of the carbon dating the material is human bone good and oh I like having knowledge that no one else has got so well the date that they have given us in terms of the range is going to be 1190 ad and 1300 ad so that’s coming in at 805 years plus or minus 30 before the present day have a white pant so the date of the Ipswich man is confirmed and Wolfram also has some exciting result um and and I have a better chance coming from Mars than this guy having come from from iwi because the two the two State definitely put him in a in a hot climate near Coastal near equatorial climate so that the south south is most point from a European perspective would be something like Portugal maybe southern parts of Spain okay uh but and then and then we have to move either into the Middle East or basically Northern Africa places like Sion Morocco okay that sort of thing the stable isotope testing of the tooth supports Caroline’s opinion that the skeleton is North African but the tests done on the man’s leg bone prove he died somewhere like the UK bone oxygen data is consistent with where he was buried okay in the both as possible sense we can’t really say it’s it’s absolutely pinpoint accuracy if switch but consistent with the UK and that that tends to be consistent that says this is at least 10 years in this c not more if not more it’s definitely inconsistent with anything that’s a on warm and near equator Coastal that he grew up in a in a warmy place and and the last a two there two different and and he must have lived in in that in that cold du line for let at least 10 years okay okay the scientific analysis is provided two vital pieces of information the team now have proof that the skeleton dates from between 1190 and 1300 ad and is likely to have come from somewhere in Northern Africa or possibly southern Europe but it does not narrow it down to an exact country nevertheless this information allows zanthe to focus her historical research and for Sue it opens a new line of inquiry you know at the outset we just wondered what was there an ethnic issue here oh but boy is there an ethnic issue there’s a real ethnic issue we have an African gentleman in ipswitch in the 1200s now there is no doubt so the science that’s come together with the history with the archaeology this is really interesting this is really important what was he doing there the man’s exact country of origin is still unclear but another scientist hopes that further analysis will reveal this information Ian Barnes from the Royal Holloway University of London has come to Dundee to take a sample of bone for DNA analysis he hopes to find a DNA sequence that could identify the exact origins of the ipswitch man he wears protective clothing to avoid contaminating the sample with his own DNA one of the concerns is that DNA from other individuals may actually get into the sample so in order to avoid having our real DNA from from the skeleton getting swamped out we try and work as carefully and as cleanly as possible and then hopefully we’ll be able to get a real sequence out of it that comes from that skeleton not from outside zanth is back on the historical Trail why did the man come here what brought an African from a life on the mediteran Anan to a burial next to an English [Music] fr the friery where the skeleton was discovered was built by Franciscan gray Friars who originally came over to England from Italy in 1224 the gray Friars were great Travelers spreading their word and converting people across Europe to their cause is this how the ipswitch man came to England did he come here as a frier [Music] zany has come to meet brother Philipe a modern-day gray frer to hopefully learn more about who our man was the F in ipswitch was founded in the first years of the reign of Edwood the first so it was certainly founded before 1298 because it was founded by a fellow called Sir Robert tipt and his wife unaa and Robert tipt died in 1298 so we know it was in the the rign of Edward the um probably the 1270s but absolutely certainly before the 1290s if he was found within the FY grounds who would have been buried there well that’s interesting because in 1250 Pope Innocent IV in a letter called Kum tamquam ver um gave to the friers the privilege to be able to bury the Friars and those of the family so those those people who serve the friers oh I see so the fact that he was in a frer a burial ground associated with a friery is indicative he was either a frier or he worked with the fries in support of them probably it it would be it would be certainly possible that he could be a frier I think on the other hand it could have been a um a person who was sort of close to the friers who who worked with them who who did a lot a lot for them or with them who was was bu there you know those would be I say the two strongest possibilities one of the individuals within the group had a belt buckle with them which is med evil so obviously that would be a personal possession wouldn’t it if he this was a group of friers would one of them have had personal possessions with them like that well the the fries themselves wouldn’t have been allowed personal possessions the the fries the Fri would have been buried in their habit and um the franciscans used a a rope to to to bind themselves and they didn’t have belts so having a belt buckle would indicate that this was somebody who was not a Franciscan frer um but but possibly a a lay helper or or somebody else who been who would have been buried in the um graveyard yeah although the belt buckle may not have belonged to the ipswitch man its presence in the burial ground challenges the idea that he himself was a frier but to be buried next to a PR he would have needed to be a Christian at a time when most of North Africa was predominantly Muslim and when Muslims and Christians were at War the friy was built by a man called Robert tiptoft in the 13th century this was when Europe and the Middle East were consumed by the Crusades a series of ferocious Wars fueled by the clashing ideologies of Islam and Christianity Dr Adrian Bell from the University of reading has been hunting for records that could link the ipswitch man with the friy could he have come to England as a result of the Crusades we know that Lord tipto um actually built the ferar didn’t he so I understand that there may be a link between our individual and tipt yes and he established F sometime in the 1270s and he’s actually buried there and we know that from this actually in the F ground itself yes itself yeah and uh we know this from this uh book uh called Weaver monuments uh which he was is an antiquarian historian in the 1600s who goes around churches writing down what he seesing them and here he describes the gray frery at ipswitch uh where he says the gray friers founded by Lord tipt in which they buried Sir Robert tipt Knight and his wife yeah the interesting thing is that Robert tipt himself travels to the Holy Land as part of the Crusade oh really uh led by the Lord Edward that’s future Edward I first um from 1270 to 1271 uh and they stop at various places uh including Tunis the ninth Crusade is commonly seen as the last major mission to the holy [Music] land on their way the Knights of Prince Edward stopped at Tunis with King Louie of France who was renowned for converting Muslims to Christianity accompanying Edward was Robert tiptoft we actually have evidence that tiptoft did go on Crusade uh it could be found in the pipe roll uh which is basically a government document showing expenditure and it actually shows here that it’s paid out to Robert tiptoft uh for his service with six Knights that’s himself and five others and they’re paid 100 marks each uh for that surface it’s Latin that’s in Latin yes so these original pipe rolls a collection uh uh showing who was paid and there’s 225 knights in total paid here 100 marks each for their crusading activity for their crusading activity so we have evidence here here that tipto who was buried in ipswitch who actually developed the F in ipswitch went on these crusading activities to North Africa was it any evidence to show that Africans were actively brought back to England as part of this Crusade yes there is because in the uh flor’s histor arum we have an entry for 1272 uh where it actually says that um after their Voyage from the Holy Land uh a number of nobles including Thomas of Clair or Thomas declair who is also with Robert tipt on Crusade um brought back four uh captive sarens uh and in that sense Sison is a word that’s used to describe Muslim or someone from North Africa so he could have been converted and then brought back during one of the Crusades yeah I mean that that seems a likely story for the the 1270 Crusade one of the knights accompanying tip off on the Crusade Thomas declair is recorded as having brought four sarens back to London with him whether they were prisoners trophies or free men will remain a mystery but this makes it plausible that tip Toof himself also brought back Africans such as our switch man from Tunisia to England says that yes so yes um he’s dead by although the evidence is over 700 years old it has finally provided an explanation for how the ipswitch man traveled from Africa to England they probably carry off I mean obviously we’re never going to know exactly why this individual was an IT switch but what’s interesting is we’ve actually found a documented case of how people were being moved around the world from North Africa to the [Music] UK back in Dundee Caroline is starting the facial reconstruction using a 3D scan of the skull she begins to layer on the muscle and build up the foundations of our man’s face in theory you shouldn’t need to know the ancestry of an individual to reconstruct their face because the majority of the standards that we use apply to all ancestry groups and if somebody has a a narrow nasal aperture for example they’re always going to have a narrow nose regardless of the ancestry group that they come from but there are fine details that are reliant on knowing the origins of the individual and they will make small difference to the face Caroline might have to make a best guess about the man’s skin tone and eye color well those details will be reliant on knowing whereabouts the individual is from which is obviously slightly problematic for us already a distinctive face is emerging I think because it was quite a robust skull with that was very large with heavy brow ridges and clearly a very large neck and had this preconceived idea that he was going to be quite big and Butch which he is but he’s also got a very nice balanced features that um mean that he’s a lot more attractive than I thought he was going to be with both the historical and scientific evidence having made good progress the team reassembles at the evidence board historical evidence points to the man possibly coming from Tunis in North Africa but will Ian Barnes be able to confirm this with the DNA testing Hi Ian hi Hi how are you yeah I’m right yeah how um we’re surviving it’s a sunny and very warm day in Dundee which doesn’t happen very often no be outside probably in in bikinis but it would it would scare the horses so we won’t do that um what have you got for us right so um we’ve got some DNA out sample at any rate basically we find it today uh on both on the North and South Shores of the Mediterranean yeah so all the way from Spain uh going east uh through Italy Greece and then on the sunsh we find it in Morocco and in Egypt um and then we find it in turkey that ties up with what my conclusions were EXC on the on the geographic origin from what I got from the teeth so what you are seeing from the DNA seems to fit very nicely with the stabilizer to thanks very muchan thanks you bye bye although the DNA analysis agrees with wolfram’s stable isotope results it’s not narrowed down the skeleton’s origin to a specific country but Sue wants to bring all the data together the anthropological study of his bones the stable isotope tests and now the DNA results can all three disciplines work together so we’re still happy about the African ancestry in some regards what we’re less happy about is subsaharan label that was given at the outset yeah and there are areas that Ian has suggested and that your Isotopes have also suggested that it could be that we’re less happy with because it doesn’t fit with the anthro yeah but the area where the anthro the Isotopes and the DNA all come together that they’re happy as along the North coast of Africa that’s true yeah the conclusions are compelling ipswitch man is likely to be of North African origin this supports the idea that he started his life in Tunisia before being brought back to the UK during the 9th crusade to have those three areas all pin andp pointing you down to the same part of the world in scientific terms is huge it’s big it’s amazing it’s just you know it’s what gets scientists excited we know what he’s going to going to look like we know where he’s come from but what we don’t know is why he’s there and ultimately what it was that killed him we don’t know that either so he’s a little bit out of focus [Music] still Sue wants to know how he died she decides to take another look at the skeleton do the bones have anything left to reveal about the end of this man’s life there’s a general principle in policing which says once you get to the point of a cold case where a case goes as far as it can and it doesn’t come to a conclusion the best thing you can do in terms of policy is go back to the beginning and start again look at it again in a slightly different light maybe with other questions foremost in your mind it’s a good it’s a good principle good forensic principle even the smallest detail could transform the investigation [Music] as she looks at the spinal column something grabs her attention I think I made just to find a cause of death it’s a thrilling Discovery what is is interesting which was missed the last time is the fact that it looks like he’s got a spinal abscess so that perfectly round hole is p formation so that we’ve got an infection that’s going into the spinal canal what that will do is that will compress the spinal cord this is at the level of the the ninth thoracic vertebrae so that’s going to be affecting lower limb Mobility so that’s going to knock out um a significant number probably of the sensory and the motor fibers the lower limb that there’s a lot of pain in that tremendous amount of pain and a level of pain that you’d probably want to find some assistance to overcome I mean you know the question is could that kill him well the bottom line is any form of an infection at any time pre penicillin can kill you it may be something as simple as a as a skin scratch or an abscess on a tooth but an abscess into the spinal cord then we’re going to be talking about a serious amount of infection an infectious level so that yes that could well have contributed to his death that’s a large sack of pilled abscess if it’s at that level there then the chances are spread throughout the rest of his body you don’t have penicil and you don’t have a means to combat those bacteria the body system just shuts down in what could turn into an extraordinary twist in this tale it appears the ipswitch man was disabled and infirm in the last months or years of his life it also gives the team a probable cause of death the Holy Grail of any forensic [Music] investigation so the team has a profile of where the ipswitch man came from they know why he might have come to iips switch and even how he might have died but what they still don’t know is why he was buried by a friy what was he doing there [Music] he was discovered with 150 other skeletons zany is Keen to see if any of the other bodies Can Shed further light on the events surrounding his death who were they and why were they all buried together Sue Anderson carried out the original bone study of the skeletons at the St Nicholas center next to the site of the medieval burial ground 12 of the skeletons found near the UPS switch man have been laid out so this is our burial population from the gravite just up the road isn’t it so what are we looking at here we’ve got 12 12 individuals laid out yeah what’s unusual about this population then it’s got a quite a high proportion of um pathological specimens and um also quite a high proportion of men and older individuals it quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary group of skeletons this is probably probably something called diffus idiopathic scal hyperostosis oh got some pathology here got areas of infection and inflammation on his legs he had quite an enlarged um frontal bone so oh so he would have looked unusual as well yeah this would be a result of a number of disease processes wouldn’t it there’s basically no cavity there is there for the white blood cells at all that’s weird and Bone should not look like that should it you’ve got three vertebra completely fused here another pretty unhealthy individual he’s got uh a disease called padet disease um almost all the Bodies exhibit signs of debilitating disease or injury finer it’s got very large abscess formed here so she’s got a spinal absis now that’s interesting because the individual that we’re looking at had a spinal absis yeah certainly that one isn’t healed no no no so this would still have been active at the time of death yeah so none of these people are healthy are they there’s nobody here that just I don’t know fell over and hit their head and died these are all people who have had some longterm pathology disease that’s showing that they’ve had long enough that it’s showing in their skeleton exactly yeah so it’s not something that’s killed them quickly no they’re an interesting population aren’t they yes I’m not an archaeologist by training I don’t go out every day looking at archaeological populations and burial sites but but to me this seems a very unusual population my first impression of this group is that we’re looking at a group that have been buried together for a reason this is not a a natural kind of demographic of a barrel site that I would expect to see so my response when I see all of this together evidentially is that we’re probably looking at an infirmary population people who are being cared for and buried there as a result of their disease or other pathology processes this site was a final resting place for the profoundly [Music] sick but why how would a friery have ended up associated with a graveyard full of the diseased and infirm was this in fact a medieval Hospital [Music] [Applause] Angela Montford has written a book that explores the link between friars and Medicine in the medieval period zanth has asked her to come to dundi to see the ipswitch [Music] skeleton the franciscans in particular were known as apothecaries oh really they would grow grow herbs for medicine in the infirmary the frari infirmary garden and we know that uh the FAS used to um give medicine charitably to people it’s is it likely the friers would actually have been taking care of these individuals on site there are quite close links between the fries and medson when St Francis first told his fras uh to serve the poor he was expecting them to visit the sick the the whole view of medicine and life generally was that it was all um one integral part and that the medicine of the Soul was also important as the medicine of the body and so a medical fra could treat both of them and in fact some friers were called The Physicians of the Soul at a time when religion and Medicine went hand inand the Friars were helping to treat the sick not just with prayers but also with what was then state-of-the-art medicinal knowledge would their treatments have been used to help treat the UPS switch man as he succumbed to the Pain and Disability of his spinal absis Dr TIG Lang is a herbalist who has studied the use of herb in medieval medicine what are we going to be making well we’re going to be making an ointment that would have been used for paralysis it’s mentioned in a herbal called of the vertues of herbs or Maca floridus on the virtues of herbs and this herbal was around in the period that we’re talking about with with your skeleton and the recipe itself reads this ointment will wonderly help to the pulsy that that means it will wonderfully help to heal paralysis what it actually is isn’t an ointment it’s a rubbing oil what they’re basically intending to do is massage they say here if the patient is often with this ointment rubbed with I love this bit in the English with hundes sell harder which means with with somewhat hard hands so they’re obviously dealing with somebody who’s massaging quite firmly and this ointment will make all his body supple and easy oh okay so what we have here is dried Petry okay and Dr Lang is demonstrating how the herb Petry could have been used by the friers some oil we’ve got some oil which is olive oil so literally just just put a few handfuls in and we’ll see what happens when we stir this on the gas often in later recipes certainly you you find the instruction to boil it for as long as it takes you to say the PSTA which is a lovely way of timing if you think if you haven’t got a clock that’s boiling in the oil now that’s boiled long enough I think to to bring the virtues of the herb into the oil I couldn’t really smell the herbs but that smells fantastic it’s gone beautifully green that’s quite nice and Petry does have a warming effect oh does it so so that it would make the skin M so it’s medieval alic something called of of hand cream I I know yeah but it’s quite nice isn’t it we’re going to get hot hands obviously this is not going to help somebody with paralysis but you know could may have brought some level of comfort at least yes I think given that his paralysis is leading from a spinal absis no amount of what they do to his limbs is going to do him any good at all but it’s we can’t say they did use this ointment on him but it’s an ointment which was available at the time which they may have used in an attempt to bring Comfort to the patient or even even in their way of an attempt to bring cure to the disease because they wouldn’t have known about the absis MH I think what’s nice now is we know that this individual had quite a serious spinal absis and I also now know that they they grew herbs and they produce some sort of medicinal herbs for treatment of paralysis so it’s nice to know that even though they couldn’t have done anything to assist with the absis specifically he may have been getting some sort of Pala care that may have at least eased his discomfort because this would have been a really uncomfortable painful condition the picture emerging is of a middle-aged African man living out his final years in England receiving care from a friy he lived in the UK in the mid- 13th century and Analysis of his bones has proved that he was here for at least 10 years before he died he could have enjoyed years of good health before ending up in the infirmary did he settle here set up a home have a family we can never know but zany has heard of an exciting new study that suggests our shared ethnic history goes back further than we think and it’s written in our [Music] DNA St pankas international railway station a modern day symbol of the Global Travel that has has helped create our ethnically diverse Nation she’s here to meet Dr Mark jobling a geneticist from Leicester University his studies on the male why chromosome could help support the idea of an early African presence in the UK what would you say the the normal view of ancestry in England the UK is well I think the history books are dominated by the stories we all know about Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and Romans before them and then maybe Kelts and PS and so on so there isn’t much of a place for Africans in that story so what is the actual ancestry this pale skin is it kind of hiding a more complex ancestral past well it certainly in our study uh we find that that it does hide a bit of a more complex past yes so what we were interested in doing was studying a piece of DNA that’s passed down from father to son the Y chromosome and the nice thing about that is it Associates with surnames and we found that we can look at some surnames and find in them a signature of an African lineage could you see this as a visual or was it just hiding in the jeans absolutely not so the man who carried this lived close to our lab and so we brought him in and talked to him about it and he’s a white ordinary British guy with no um history in his family of any contact with Africa so he was completely surprised about this so he’s a Yorkshire UK resident uh pale skin typically British looking but he’s got an African Heritage he has yes specifically he has an African Y chromosome so this is the piece of DNA that passes down from father to son so it means back in the past at some point he has a paternal ancestor who was an African who came probably from Northwestern Africa what this could mean is that the British population has been multi-ethnic for far longer than we might think could our rips switch man even have contributed himself to this African ancestral signature seen in our DNA today so the individual that we’ve been investigating is of African origin we know that and he’s buried in ipswitch is there anything that you know have that could suggest any information that he could have been mixing with the population is far back as the medieval period Well there could have been from our evidence at the moment we can’t say that but we could imagine finding other cames where we can trace the history back into the medieval period And I think if we had large enough sample sizes we could probably do that I think what we found by finding this this African individual in ipswitch is that possibly the multi-racial society that we think of as a very modern construct we think of Britain as very ethnically diverse now but only recently whereas it seems that this this African individual at ipswitch may represent a much longer history of multi-racial Britain that nobody really knew about this extraordinary case is reaching a conclusion using the mod arsenal of forensic science and historical detective work the cold cas’s team has painstakingly reconstructed a story that could have stayed buried forever possibly born a Muslim in 13th century Tunisia our man could have come to England during the 9th Crusade converting to Christianity before living here for some time as he succumbed to the pain of a spinal absis in later life he was very possibly nursed to his death by Franciscan friars leaving behind IR refutable proof of an African presence in medieval [Music] England Sue brings the team together at the evidence board for the final time to confirm the cause of death so we actually missed a spinal abscess so given where this is occurring which is it mid to lower thoric level we have somebody who is really disabled in their ability to to move around and to be able to look out to themselves and it’s time for the final piece of the jigsaw to fall into place Caroline is ready to reveal the face of the skeleton for the first time in 800 years let’s have a look at him this may be my favorite okay switch man here we go oh there we go he’s a bit of a Bruiser isn’t he Yeah well yeah he’s definitely got this big strong robust head and neck um hair obviously I like the lips actually yeah ear are fantastic hair we don’t know he could have had quite delicate compared to the rest he could have had a full beard he could have had lots of hair he could have gone Bal we have no idea so which is why we haven’t given him any of that and we’ve also got this quite massive neck as well he was very well he I think he’s quite beautiful actually he’s got a great face yeah what is interesting is that the the historians are saying there there is evidence that that we have African individuals in the UK and in England in specifically from you know Roman times we’ve certainly got them in the medieval times we’ve even got a situation in history where in tutor times Elizabeth the first is saying you know actually we’ve got too many we we need to stop this we need we need to send them back and and how do you go from a small number of individuals to a community to such a point that you’ve got the monarchy saying this is too much we have to be able you we have we have to stop this happening and I think that’s interesting and there’s no doubt that the historians are saying this hasn’t been researched and I think it should and if nothing else what we’ve done has said here’s one absolutely here’s one you know we find it excuse me um all the rest maybe it was maybe it wasn’t this one is start with this one ran discovered in an unmarked medieval grave could now change the view of our ethnic history the first impressions I think of this case were not very exciting is the honest truth and we should learn from that we really should learn from that that it’s always a case that the ones that look as if they are the most boring often end out to surprise the heck out of us and become really some of the most interesting stories we have scientifically identified beyond all Reasonable Doubt which is all any court in the land will ask of us is that this individual is of African ancestry we’re happy with the age we’re happy with the sex we’re happy with the stature and we’re absolutely confident on the ethnic or geographical origin of this individual that’s rare that’s very very rare to get to that point of certainty on ethnicity and in terms of human history migration patterns this is terribly terribly important [Music]