NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND—The Guardian reports that researchers from Historic England recently examined bones removed from a Roman-period cemetery in a soil block in 1991 and determined they were the remains of a man who had been buried face down with a flat stone in his mouth. Marks on the bones around the mouth suggest that he suffered from an infection, perhaps from the removal of his tongue. “The fact that he’s buried face down in the grave is consistent with somebody whose behavior marked them out as odd or threatening within a community,” said skeletal biologist Simon Mays. The man may have suffered from mental health issues and severed his own tongue, or it may have been cut out as a form of punishment, but no records of such a punishment have been found in Roman Britain. Other burials in Roman Britain have contained stones or objects in place of missing body parts, however. “It could be an attempt to complete an incomplete body,” Mays said. “Or it could be an attempt to replace part of a body with something obviously inanimate, like a stone or a pot, to prevent the corpse from being complete.” For more on archaeology of Roman Britain, go to “A Villa under the Garden.”
