Bianca Chiacchia | University of Calgary
In the laws of King Æthelred (r. 978-1013), the punishment for a second offence of theft is that ‘He [the offender] shall not be able to make any amends except by his head’. Laws prescribing execution, mutilation, and burial in unconsecrated ground are common among tenth and eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon law codes. Over one hundred such clauses exist, and of these, sixty-nine specify the execution of an individual following the formulation ‘[he] shall be slain’ or ‘[he] shall forfeit his life’. Within these, five law-codes specify decapitation as a method of execution, such as Æthelred’s law above. These laws are all examples of how Anglo-Saxon administrative officials dealt with deviants in society. Other documentary evidence, such as charters, also provides evidence as to how other deviants or ‘others’ in society were treated in death and burial. Decapitation, as a method of execution, is also reflected in the archaeological evidence we have for this period. In recent years, this execution method has been discovered in the Ridgeway Hill mass grave.
In 2009, during the construction of the Weymouth Relief Road in Dorset, a mass grave was discovered; all the individuals had been decapitated. Forty-seven skulls were found deposited on one side of the burial pit, and fifty-two headless skeletons on the other. Originally, it was thought that the burial represented a prehistoric or Roman burial context; however, after testing of the bones, it was revealed that the remains dated between AD 970-1025, the late Viking Age. Further bone testing determined the individuals were all male and had all originated from Scandinavia and the Baltic regions. It has been most generally accepted that these individuals represented a Viking group that met a tragic end. We may never truly know who these men were, or what led to their unfortunate deaths, but the evidence we have of their death and burial reveals they were treated as deviants by their executioners.
Deviants existed on the outskirts of society both in life and death. As criminals or individuals who went against the social norm, deviants were often seen as ‘others’ and were treated as such by the Anglo-Saxon people and laws. Deviants could not be buried in consecrated ground, meaning they were often buried instead on the peripheries of society and landscapes. Also called ‘heathen burials’ in many contemporary charters, these burials referred to burial sites of capital offenders or others prohibited from Christian burials. Of the ‘heathen burials’ referred to in the Anglo-Saxon charters, twenty-three of them lie on the boundaries of Domesday hundreds; it appears that this was the preferred location for these burials, especially in the south of England, and boundary locations have become one of the defining features for these heathen burials among archaeologists today.
The burial location of the Ridgeway Hill victims indicates to us that these individuals were viewed as deviants by the local population. The grave was discovered on the crest of Ridgeway Hill along an old Roman road and Parish boundary. It was also within view of Maiden Castle and nearby prehistoric monuments, making this location a likely important focal point in society. Prior to the tenth century, there was little evidence to suggest burial in a churchyard was expected, but law codes dating to the period reveal this practice had become more normalised. These laws also specified that felons and executed individuals, such as the Ridgeway Hill victims, would be excluded from these conventional burial practices. Deviants were to be separated from normal societal burials, which is why the grave is located near the parish boundary and not within it. Whether it was their criminal or social status, they were viewed as deviants and therefore could not be buried on consecrated ground.
Theft appears to be the most common offence warranting execution, specifically decapitation as a method of execution. King Æthelred outlines this several times in his laws. The punishment was the same for freemen or slaves accused of theft. If they were found guilty, regardless of their status, ‘he [a freeman or a slave] shall not be able to make any amends except by his head’. While there is also reference to general loss of life as punishment for crimes, such as in the formulations ‘[he] shall be slain’ or ‘[he] shall forfeit his life’, Æthelred’s laws regarding punishment for theft specifically is decapitation. This is most clear in his third set of law-codes in Clause 4.1: ‘if then he is proved guilty [of theft], he shall be struck such a blow as shall break his neck’. If this man is later proven innocent by a kinsman, ‘he shall remove his kinsman from his grave in unconsecrated ground’.
Prior to the discovery of the Ridgeway Hill mass grave, within the corpus of Anglo-Saxon execution burials in England, there are only fifteen sites in which decapitation is present. These sites have a wide distribution across England, but decapitation as a method of execution is most common in the south, particularly in the local hundred of Hampshire which borders Dorset.
This distribution suggests that in England’s south, decapitation was the preferred method of execution, accounting for a higher than fifty per cent decapitation rate within execution cemeteries in the hundred of Hampshire. This could also account for the hundred per cent decapitation rate at the Ridgeway Hill mass grave. As mentioned above, theft warranted decapitation as a form of punishment, but it is almost impossible to know if these laws constitute the reason for the high decapitation rates in the south.
Another possibility comes from a law-code within a peace treaty between the Anglo-Saxons and a Viking group dating to AD 991. This peace treaty outlines the terms of peace between King Æthelred and Olaf Tryggvason of Norway following the Battle of Maldon. Clause 5 in the law-code outlines the law if an Englishman slays a Danish slave and vice versa, and if they are a freeman rather than a slave. Clause 5.2 notes that ‘if eight men are slain, then it is a breach of the truce, within a borough or outside’. This is then followed by the consequences for this in Clause 6: ‘If the breach of the truce is committed within a borough, the citizens are to go themselves and take the slayers, alive or dead - [or] their nearest kinsmen - head for head’. It is particularly interesting and significant that this clause ‘head for head’ describes justice, suggesting that taking one's head is the only way to lawfully ratify the situation. Therefore, it is possible that this clause could explain the decapitations that took place at Ridgeway Hill. If an occasion had occurred in which fifty-two Englishmen were killed, then killing fifty-two men of Scandinavian origin would be necessary for justice by law. Perhaps Viking activity in the area had caused the deaths of Englishmen, and in response, the local English population killed the Ridgeway Hill victims. The specification in this clause that the borough's citizens must carry out this justice could point towards this possibility.
The Anglo-Saxon laws of the late tenth century did not stop at decapitation regarding their treatment of deviants. Next to ‘heathen burials’, heafod stoccan, or ‘head-stakes’, is the next most frequent term to appear in Anglo-Saxon charters as a reference to a judicial context with deviants. There are several charters that mention head-stakes, with a concentration of them appearing in the south of England, corresponding with the pattern of judicial decapitations. In a restitution charter from 854 AD from King Æthelwulf to the church of St. Peter and Paul, Winchester, the boundary of the land is marked by ‘immediately afterwards up to [the] head-stakes... from [the] head-stakes... along [the] street’. Another example is in a land charter from King Edward in 909 AD to Frithestan, bishop of Winchester: ‘by [ the] army road to [the] head-stakes’. More contemporary to when the men at Ridgeway Hill were killed, a charter marking the bounds of Wanborough and Little Hinton, Wiltshire in 1047-70 AD, describes a boundary ‘from the ditch in among the head-stakes’.
The Ridgeway Hill grave includes five individuals left ‘wanting their head’, as there were fifty-two headless bodies and only forty-seven skulls, meaning five individuals are missing their heads. Head-stakes were another physical manifestation of the treatment of deviants after death, meaning that it could be an explanation for the five missing heads. Perhaps the ‘missing’ heads of the Ridgeway Hill grave were simply missing over time from grave disturbance, but it is impossible to know for sure. What is clear, however, is that the Ridgeway Hill victims were treated as deviants in the method of execution and burial, meaning the use of head-stakes could be a possibility.
We may never know for sure what the circumstances were that led to the brutal killing of the individuals buried in the Ridgeway Hill mass grave. The burial location, method of execution, and missing heads all suggest the Ridgeway Hill individuals were viewed as deviants in the local society. Contemporary law codes and charters also support these individuals’ treatment as deviants. Perhaps it was their deviancy that landed them in this situation. All we know for certain is that Ridgeway Hill is an unusual burial that requires further investigation to uncover the secrets and truth of this mass grave.
Further Reading:
Andrew Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Alice Roberts, Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain (London: Simon & Schuster UK, 2022)
Lorraine Evans, Burying the Dead: An Archaeological History of Burial Grounds, Graveyards, and Cemeteries (Barnsley: Pen and Sword History, 2020)
Dawn Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society, and Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006)
Bianca Chiacchia is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Calgary. She received her MA in Medieval Studies from the University of York in 2022 with her dissertation titled, '"They led him out of the town and sent him to hell with his head smitten off": An analysis and reassessment of the Ridgeway Hill mass grave'. Her current PhD project is an interdisciplinary study of ritual interconnections with Vikings from AD 750-950. Her work examines how ritual was imagined and enacted through material objects and landscape to establish and maintain networks of exchange across the Viking world.
X: @chiacchiabianca