History series which sees skeletons of everyday people from across the ages analysed in staggering detail, opening new windows on the history of our Ancestors by literally revealing the person behind the skeleton.
Stirling Man:
This time the team open up the historical cold case of a mysterious skeleton discovered by accident in a series of forgotten rooms in Scotland's Stirling Castle. The history cold case team is drawn into one of the bloodiest periods of our history when Scotland and England were locked in a war for supremacy. The forensic trail leads to a unique and extraordinary 600 year old document and the team is shocked to discover the skeleton's likely identity.
Stirling Man:
This time the team open up the historical cold case of a mysterious skeleton discovered by accident in a series of forgotten rooms in Scotland's Stirling Castle. The history cold case team is drawn into one of the bloodiest periods of our history when Scotland and England were locked in a war for supremacy. The forensic trail leads to a unique and extraordinary 600 year old document and the team is shocked to discover the skeleton's likely identity.
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TVTranscript
00:00Britain's finest unit for forensic investigation is embarking on a new and groundbreaking mission.
00:15As experts in human identification, they use the full arsenal of modern technology.
00:23But now, for the first time, they're applying these skills to bodies from the long, distant
00:28past.
00:29It's very exciting for us to be able to take the skills that we use on a daily basis and
00:35apply them to look at historical skeletons, to see just how far we can go.
00:42Forensic anthropology, facial reconstruction and painstaking research will open new windows
00:48on history, as dramatic personal stories emerge from long forgotten bones.
00:56Facial research is allowing me to investigate people's experiences at different times throughout
01:00history.
01:01Probably a little boy, somewhere around about eight, and I have to say I've never seen anything
01:06like it before.
01:07So we've got the face for facial reconstruction and we've added some textures.
01:13Fantastic.
01:14That is just superb.
01:19This time, the team hunts for the identity of a mysterious skeleton unearthed at Stirling
01:23Castle.
01:24He certainly had a nasty crack to the top of his head.
01:30His body reveals new information about one of the bloodiest periods in our history.
01:34This is horrendous.
01:35That must have been so painful.
01:38When the Scottish and the English were engaged in total war.
01:44The forensic trail leads to an extraordinary document.
01:47It could be our man.
01:50Yes.
01:51Okay.
01:52History's cold case is a home, a face, a name.
01:58This is History Cold Case.
02:22Stirling Castle, perched on an extinct volcano and strategically placed near the gateway
02:31to the Highlands, was for centuries the front line during the Scottish Wars of Independence.
02:38Perhaps this offers us our first clue to unlocking a mystery that has remained unsold for six
02:43centuries.
02:49During 1997, archaeologists excavated a group of skeletons that had lain in a forgotten
02:55room underneath the castle for over 600 years.
02:59A find made more unusual and rare as it wasn't common practice to bury people within the
03:03walls of the castle.
03:06One of these bodies, a powerful man in the prime of his life, has unusual wounds to his
03:12skull.
03:13Now, the History Cold Case team will collaborate with Historic Scotland, the keeper of the
03:18to open an investigation into who the man was and why he was there.
03:24Could his story shed new light into Stirling's turbulent history?
03:32Dr Xanthi Mallet from the Centre of Anatomy and Human Identification is coming to collect
03:37the skeletons and meet Historic Scotland's chief archaeologist, Peter Yeoman.
03:43So this is our archaeology store where we keep all the finds from all the excavations
03:49that we've been involved with over the last 40 years.
03:51And all the Stirling material that we're looking at is just these.
03:55Okay, so some of it's quite fragmented then.
04:00Yeah, it's not in bad condition, but there's obviously lots of little bits.
04:07And also, I've got another thing to show you as well, a fascinating object that was
04:13found with the young man.
04:17It's an arrowhead.
04:18Yeah, absolutely.
04:19Not much is known about the arrow or the bones, originally dated as 14th or 15th century.
04:25It's time for the Cold Case team to get to work.
04:29It's fantastic, yeah.
04:30I think the team are going to be really excited to have a look at these and see where we want
04:34to go next with it and what we can find out.
04:36There's certainly lots of different forensic techniques we're going to be able to apply.
04:41So it's going to be really exciting.
04:43Open up for my own man.
04:51The investigation will be led by forensic anthropologist, Professor Sue Black, based
04:56at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, part of the University of Dundee.
05:01The case starts with an observation of the bones.
05:05There are sacrum in pieces, okay, that gives us an H clue.
05:14And she's already spotted something highly unusual.
05:17I don't know that you've seen what sits on the top of the skull.
05:23Ooh, ooh.
05:24He's, what do you think that is?
05:27That's, if you can see on the frontal bone here, which is just coming down the side of
05:31the forehead, there's a very deep groove.
05:35And that groove shows that the outer table, because the bones of the skull act like a
05:42sandwich.
05:43So there's an outer layer of bone, an inner layer of bone, and a bit of filling in the
05:47middle.
05:48And what's happened is that there's been damage to the outer layer, but it's not penetrated
05:52through to the inner layer.
05:53So we've not gone in and damaged brain or blood vessels or anything like that, but he
05:58certainly had a nasty crack to the top of his head.
06:01But it's healed, so this happened long before he died.
06:07Bones reveal that our man was between 25 and 40 years old.
06:12And there are more signs of trauma, this time to his face.
06:25Those teeth have had a rattle at some point or another.
06:28They've set up abscesses in there, so there's some form of an impact.
06:32Not enough to have broken a face, for example.
06:34But you get a smack in the front of your face, then both of these teeth are going to rattle.
06:39And that's what's happened.
06:40It's loosened the teeth enough that what happens is the bacteria can get into the space
06:45that it can't normally get into and sets up an infection, which is what you have in terms
06:49of the abscess.
06:50But although he was clearly a victim of violence, he was well-equipped to dole it out as well.
06:55But still, it's quite well-developed.
06:59So I think muscle-wise, he's got good sites of muscle development, lower limb, but they're
07:05exceptional upper limb.
07:09He's a big bruiser in that regard.
07:13When you look at the back of the scapula, the shoulder blade, you can see that there's
07:18a trough runs down there.
07:20That's because this bone is about surface area.
07:23That's about muscles attaching.
07:25And if you've got a bigger muscle, you need more surface area.
07:29So what you do is you undulate the bone, and you give the bone more surface area.
07:34And look at that trough.
07:36There's just a huge dip going in there.
07:38And I don't know that I've actually ever seen it this extensive.
07:42He's a big bruiser.
07:44Yeah, he's a big boy.
07:49He's got his story.
07:52We've just started to unravel it.
07:53I always say it's like a knitted jumper, that somewhere you've got to start and find a thread.
07:57If you can just keep going, you can unravel the whole thing.
08:09Sue gathers the other experts who will work with her and Xanthi on the investigation.
08:15We're going to start, first of all, with what we need to find out about him historically.
08:21OK.
08:22And his place of burial, the context of it.
08:25For his bones to show signs of such big muscle development means whatever this man did for
08:31a living, he had done from a very young age.
08:33So explaining his physique will be crucial.
08:37They also need to narrow down possible dates for our man's death.
08:41And Dr Caroline Wilkinson will painstakingly reconstruct his face.
08:46We can scan the skull, try and put it back together.
08:50We could also do a reconstruction of his upper body in relation to his head as well.
08:57OK.
08:58Because we've done it before.
09:00Dr Wolfram Meyer-Orgenstein will try to discover more about where our man lived and died from
09:05chemical signatures in his bones.
09:08I'd like to have a mid-shaft diathesis.
09:12Mid-shaft diathesis, femur.
09:14OK.
09:21Now the hard science begins.
09:23Bone analysis to find out what our man ate and where he was from.
09:29Bone scanning to begin the process of facial reconstruction.
09:36They also need to discover the significance of a tantalising artefact found with the body.
09:41A single arrowhead.
09:45His life was clearly interesting because he's got a number of incidents that have clearly
09:51happened to him throughout his life.
09:53He's got an intriguing period that says, how did he die?
09:57Was this arrowhead that's found in association with him part of the death?
10:02Then what's happened to him afterwards is also interesting.
10:06So that why was he buried where he was?
10:09Was that an indication of his status?
10:11So he's one of those individuals where all three parts of that process are going to tell
10:17you something interesting and something different.
10:20Who was he in life?
10:21How did he die?
10:23Why was he treated the way he was?
10:33Xanthi's job is to try and add to the profile of our man through historical research.
10:39First step, back to the place where his body was found.
10:43Archaeologist Gordon Hewitt has been fascinated by the Stirling Man ever since he discovered
10:48him here in 1997.
10:52The castle itself could provide crucial clues.
10:57But what about the body?
10:59Is it still there?
11:01Is it still there?
11:03Is it still there?
11:05Is it still there?
11:07Is it still there?
11:09Is it still there?
11:12The trail begins in Stirling's Great Hall, built for James IV in around 1503.
11:20This is the Great Hall.
11:21Wow.
11:22Stirling Castle.
11:23It's beautiful, isn't it?
11:24It's massive.
11:30At the front line of repeated English invasions in the 13th and 14th centuries, Stirling Castle
11:36changed hands many times during the sieges and battles of the Scottish Wars of Independence.
11:43Many sort of festivities, as well as the works of government, were re-enacted here.
11:48And these tapestries give an indication of the kind of lavish quality of the court.
11:54Would they have had tapestries and things hanging on the walls?
11:56I think so, very much so.
11:59Underneath the rooms of the 18th-century kitchens, Gordon found the remains of a long-forgotten building.
12:11And here we are in one of the rooms of the Governor's Kitchen.
12:17He thinks this area could be the remains of what was once a medieval chapel.
12:22This is the area where the actual mature male body was laid.
12:26Where the actual mature male was buried.
12:29When you actually look at the photographs...
12:31Oh, fantastic. You can see the injury on the skull there.
12:33That's right, that's right.
12:35Why would he have been buried here?
12:37In normal circumstances, a burial would be completed preferably at the parish church from whence they came.
12:44They would only have been buried here in exceptional circumstances.
12:49But our cold case wasn't alone.
12:51Ten other bodies, including a female, were unearthed at the same site.
12:55It's hard to imagine your average man-at-arms or household servant being buried here.
13:00So they wouldn't have been just anyone?
13:02To be buried in here, they would have had to have been of relative significance to the family?
13:06I think that's fair to say. That's right.
13:10To be buried in a chapel inside Stirling Castle, our man must have been of high status.
13:16Taken along with his physique, could he have been part of an elite fighting force?
13:26Warfare medieval style was led by knights on horseback.
13:31The elite warrior class of Europe.
13:33Knighthood wasn't just conferred by the monarch, it had to be earned on the battlefield.
13:38Knights lived and died by the shared values of the chivalric code.
13:43Courage, piety, and loyalty to your king.
13:47In Dundee, the team is taking samples of teeth and bone from the skeleton.
13:55One goes for carbon dating, and another goes to Dr. Wolfram Meyer-Orgenstein,
14:00the team's stable isotope expert.
14:05The team is also looking for a new way of collecting carbon.
14:08The team is looking for a new way of collecting carbon.
14:11Another goes to Dr. Wolfram Meyer-Orgenstein, the team's stable isotope expert.
14:18These are ancient remains, so there are no guarantees.
14:21But Sue is confident.
14:23There is nobody else that I would trust for a forensic investigation.
14:27He is the best that there is.
14:30And he has not only a national reputation, he has a huge international reputation.
14:37Wolfram will be hunting for trace minerals in the molar tooth,
14:41which is formed in the first 15 years of life.
14:45These could reveal where he spent his early years,
14:48and samples from the thigh bone, which regenerates during a lifetime,
14:52could tell us about his diet as an adult.
14:55Next, to the local Ninewells Hospital for a CT scan to see inside the man's bones.
15:08The scan might yield valuable information about his life and death.
15:12It will also provide the accurate data needed to reconstruct his face and body.
15:23Caroline Wilkinson has drafted in her colleagues a new DNA sample.
15:27It's a sample of a male.
15:29It's a DNA sample of a male.
15:31It's a DNA sample of a male.
15:33It's a DNA sample of a male.
15:35It's a DNA sample of a male.
15:37It's a DNA sample of a male.
15:39Caroline Wilkinson has drafted in her colleague, Caroline Needham,
15:43to produce a full body reconstruction of the man.
15:46To begin, they examine the skull.
15:50At the moment, I'm just assessing the skull to see how much of it is here,
15:55how much of it we're going to have to reassemble,
15:58and when we've done that, how much will be missing still that we can remodel.
16:03Actually, it looks like there's quite a lot here.
16:06There's more than it looked like on the images because we've got a lot of fragments.
16:10Messy as that looks, we can actually manage to put most of them back together.
16:14We can reassemble the skull in the computer,
16:17so we can take scan data from this skull
16:21and import each fragment into the computer and then reassemble it.
16:24The beauty of the computer is there's no gravity,
16:27so you can put a skull piece there and it'll stay, it doesn't fall.
16:30We can tell by looking at this jaw.
16:32This is a big, strong, hefty jaw.
16:34It's got very strong muscle attachments here,
16:37so he would have had a big, square jaw, heavy-duty face, lower half of the face.
16:43But then we've also got quite strong brow ridges at the top,
16:46so he's going to have a heavy brow, more deep-set eyes.
16:49It's a very typically male skull.
16:52Oh, I love skulls like this, lots of bits.
16:55It's my favourite thing, reassembling them.
16:58Each of the fragments has to be individually and painstakingly scanned
17:02using a small mobile scanner.
17:05With the hospital CT scan, these measurements will make a complete skull.
17:12The face that Caroline foresees
17:14seems to fit perfectly with Sue's assessment of the body.
17:18Heavy-browed, muscly, square-jawed,
17:21a man perfectly formed to live and die by the sword.
17:26The first test results are coming in from the labs.
17:29Radiocarbon dating is the key dating test for bone.
17:33One type of carbon, carbon-14,
17:36deteriorates at a constant rate once it is laid down in the bone.
17:41Measuring the amount of decay establishes the age of the skeleton.
17:46It's a difficult process that isn't always successful,
17:49but this is the first test result.
17:52It's a difficult process that isn't always successful,
17:55but this time, the team have a clear result.
18:00The Stirling Cold Case died between 1290 and 1400.
18:04That means he lived during the height of the Scottish Wars of Independence,
18:08when the English were repeatedly trying to conquer the country
18:12and the Scots were driving them back.
18:18From Stirling Castle, perched on a steep cliff,
18:21Scottish armies could survey the fields below.
18:25Ten miles north of here,
18:27the powerful River Forth marks the beginning of the Highlands,
18:30so the castle and the open fields around it saw the bloodiest conflict.
18:36Xanthi is meeting medieval warfare expert Scott McMaster.
18:41This is a picture of his crania.
18:43Now, you can quite clearly see there,
18:45that's a healed sharp-force trauma to...
18:49Yeah, absolutely, at the back of the head.
18:51Yeah, I mean, is that kind of wound you'd recognise?
18:54Yeah, that's very common in the medieval period.
18:56This could be an axe or a sword, perhaps, or even a club.
18:59He's obviously perhaps been a knight or a man-at-arms, anyway,
19:03judging by the weaponry.
19:04He was very robust, in his upper body especially, very robust.
19:07Right, OK, well, it's quite common for bruisers, so to speak, in this period.
19:11Yeah, that's how I kind of imagined him.
19:13The Scots, sometimes supported by the French,
19:16managed to defeat the invading English army on a number of occasions.
19:20But the victories of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce
19:23weren't enough to keep them permanently at bay.
19:25Stirling Castle was occupied by English forces
19:28at least eight times during our man's lifetime.
19:31The castle certainly changed hands over this period several times.
19:35So whether he was, you know, this individual in particular
19:39was maybe perhaps involved in a siege,
19:41or if he was actually, you know, he died later on of wounds, perhaps,
19:45during one of these battles, it's a very strong possibility.
19:52It's not clear yet which side our man was on.
19:57English, Scottish or even French.
20:01But he was definitely part of the conflict.
20:10But what about the other bodies found with him?
20:13Can they shed any light onto the investigation?
20:24Sue and Xanthia are about to examine one of them.
20:27The only woman found among the bodies,
20:29she too has mysterious wounds on her head.
20:33OK, so...
20:39What are these?
20:41Two of them. You've got one there and you've got one there.
20:44You've got...
20:46That is approximately the same shape as that there.
20:53What on earth are they?
20:59They're very square.
21:02That is incredibly clean to go through there.
21:06So that whatever it was, was a significant amount of force
21:10with a sharp edge? Yeah.
21:12Otherwise it would have shattered.
21:14So I think you need to find someone who knows something about this,
21:18cos I know absolutely nothing. No, not me.
21:21It doesn't make sense.
21:24Sue and Xanthia have no idea
21:26what the two puncture marks in the skull could mean.
21:32But Dr Joe Buckbury, a biological anthropologist
21:35from Bradford University, is an expert in skull trauma.
21:41What's really interesting is a rectangular hole
21:45penetrating through the skull.
21:47And the edges are quite clear.
21:49There's a little area in here that's just sort of spalling away,
21:53which could have been caused by a weapon coming out.
21:56And then on the inside, what you might be able to see
22:00is that the hole is actually much larger on the inside.
22:03That's called internal bevelling.
22:05And that's a really strong indication
22:07that this happened around the time of death.
22:09I immediately thought this was quite interesting
22:11and could well be battle trauma.
22:13But I think there was also some more trauma
22:15to the side of her head in here.
22:17If I take these pieces of bone...
22:21..they actually fit...
22:24..quite tightly.
22:28And I think there's been another blow around the time of death in here
22:31with a radiating fracture from the force of the blow coming up around here.
22:35I wonder whether or not she was hit on the side of the head
22:38with quite a blunt object, fell to the ground,
22:41and then after that the two square injuries
22:43were sustained on the top of her head.
22:46Jo thinks she knows the kind of weapon that killed the Stirling woman.
22:50Well, the weapon I'm holding now is a 16th-century flanged mace
22:54that a member of staff at the Royal Armouries has given me
22:57because it's got quite a rectangular cross-section,
23:00which might possibly match the injury we're seeing on this skull.
23:04Jo demonstrates that the marks on a florist's sponge made by the mace
23:08are identical to those on the woman's skull.
23:17Were the wars of Scottish independence so overwhelming
23:20that women were caught up in the conflict as well?
23:35Xanthe has come to Dunbar on the east coast of Scotland
23:39near the remains of the town's medieval castle.
23:46She's meeting historian Chris Brown,
23:49who's not surprised by the wounds in the woman's skull.
23:55This is the woman I've come to talk to you about today.
23:59And these are the injuries to her skull.
24:01What we're looking at here is the back of her crania,
24:04so the back of her head.
24:06And you've got two distinct injuries here.
24:09So are these the kind of injuries you'd expect to see in battle,
24:12and if so, on a woman?
24:14Absolutely. Totally typical injuries.
24:16Exactly the sort of wound you'd expect to get.
24:19And no reason to assume that women are in any way
24:22completely isolated from war in the Middle Ages.
24:25Here at Dunbar in the 14th century,
24:27the Countess of Moray defeated a violent English attack.
24:30Black Agnes, as she's known,
24:32was a fearless defender of her castle.
24:35This is probably the clearest and finest example
24:39of a woman engaged in war in Scotland in the Middle Ages.
24:43The woman in question is called Agnes of Dunbar, or Black Agnes,
24:47and she commanded a siege here for five months.
24:49Oh, really?
24:5019 weeks, solid siege, right where we are.
24:53She was in her mid-20s, about 25, 26 years old.
24:56Her husband wasn't present, the Earl of Dunbar.
24:59He's busy fighting the English in other parts of Scotland,
25:02and the castle comes under siege.
25:04She's on site. Of course, she's in charge.
25:08Black Agnes' battle was just one in the long and bloody war.
25:12It seems that Scottish men and women took up arms
25:15and died to defend the cause of their independence.
25:18But was our sterling cold-case friend or foe?
25:22Did he defend the castle, or did he attack it?
25:26Can his bones yield any more clues?
25:29Sue and Xanthi take a closer look at the skeleton.
25:33What else have we got?
25:35Ooh, he's definitely got problems on his left ankle.
25:38If you look on the talus, heel sits like that, talus sits on top.
25:43If you look at the talus, there's a very well-defined area of damage,
25:49so that that would have been filled with possibly pus.
25:54But certainly enough space-occupying tissue to cause bone damage.
26:00It will have not been pleasant to walk on,
26:02because the entirety of your body weight
26:05passes down through that ankle joint.
26:08That's painful.
26:10But the injuries don't stop there.
26:13There are some vertebrae that are a little bit unusual,
26:17but I don't think those are normal ageing changes.
26:21I think those are trauma-impact changes.
26:23And if you open that one and look at it,
26:26can you see that ridge that runs around there?
26:29That's not normal.
26:31No, so he's had some sort of trauma, something's happened to...
26:34Yeah.
26:36Episodes of damage have occurred, whether that's as a result of activity.
26:40It's not a systemic disease,
26:42because that's not something that's been evident throughout this.
26:45But there's localised and little focal areas
26:48where bone is damaged, broken down, showing it's trying to repair itself.
26:52Not fracture, necessarily.
26:56So, back trauma and an abscess on his ankle.
27:01When you put these injuries together with his physique,
27:04what are they telling us?
27:07When you've got somebody who is obviously very well-developed, like he is,
27:11but not symmetrically so in the top and the bottom half of his body,
27:15so he's doing something different with the bottom half of his body
27:18compared to what he's doing with the top half of his body.
27:21So, for example, the obvious thing would be,
27:23if we think he was a knight, for example, is he's sitting on a horse?
27:26And I think, quite justifiably, that would be something that we could look at.
27:31As the historical research and the science start to converge,
27:35a clear profile is emerging of a strong man somewhere between 25 and 40,
27:41a survivor of heavy blows to the head,
27:43of sufficient rank to be buried within the walls of Stirling Castle.
27:47But Sue needs more historical research to tie up the evidence.
27:51She wants to prove he was a knight,
27:53a member of the military elite of medieval Europe.
28:05The rituals of medieval knighthood weren't buried with them.
28:09Jousting tournaments, lavish displays of might, wealth and skill
28:13were almost as dangerous as the battlefield.
28:21Xanthi is meeting David Mitchell and Jeremy Richardson
28:25of the Knights of Royal England, who are keeping these rituals alive.
28:29Right, this is a chainmail top.
28:31OK, we won't ask you to put it on.
28:33I don't know how you want to... If you could put your arm out a little bit.
28:36Right.
28:40Oh, bloody hell.
28:42This is really heavy, isn't it?
28:44Yeah. Now, of course, at that time, there would have been very little armour around,
28:48so all your protection really would have come from the chainmail.
28:51Right.
28:52Let me give you a helmet. Right.
28:54A metal helmet. This is actually a tilting helmet.
28:57That's pretty heavy as well.
28:59It's metal. It's really going to take a blow to the face.
29:02Yeah. So this is going to build up all the muscles down your neck,
29:05across your shoulders.
29:07He's been training with armour and chainmail since he was sort of 15, 14, 15.
29:10Oh, really? So even as his muscles and bones were developing,
29:13he would have been carrying this kind of weight.
29:15Absolutely. Well, try the helmet on.
29:17Just see what your vision's like in the helmet.
29:19I've got a guess that it's not going to be very good.
29:21It's not the best, but it will protect you.
29:24OK, I can't see anything, really.
29:26I can't hear you. Sorry.
29:28Yeah, funny there. I can't even see.
29:32Right, weapons.
29:34This is a jousting shield, so you'd wear that on your left arm.
29:37And then we've got a lance for you.
29:39Oh, you are kidding. OK.
29:41Mind you, don't bang him on the head.
29:43And that lance would cross over the other side of the horse,
29:46so you try and attack your opponent.
29:48You try and have your opponent coming on this side of you,
29:54because you've got the shield on that side,
29:56so that will be the protection.
29:58I don't think I'd have been very good at this.
30:00Right, let me take the lance from you.
30:05The sheer weight of armour and weapons designed to be used on horseback
30:09explains the muscle imbalance between the upper and lower torso.
30:13But can our jousters explain the mouth, ankle and back injuries?
30:17He would have had trouble walking, that would have been in some discomfort.
30:20How he developed that, I don't know,
30:22but it was showing in both the ankle bones and the lower leg bones.
30:25Well, presumably, having done it,
30:28presumably that would be a fall, a horse going down.
30:31If your foot stays in the stirrup,
30:33the actual stirrup itself damages your ankle.
30:36OK, the other injuries that he had,
30:38he'd had a knock to the front of his mouth here,
30:41so his teeth were loose.
30:43Yeah, you're nodding here. Had that?
30:45We've done that once. Yeah, OK.
30:47I would probably say a lance in the face.
30:50And the back injury is sort of an interesting one.
30:52Yes, it could have been a fall,
30:54there could have been something that happened with the fall,
30:56but also excessive riding does your back in.
30:59Yeah, so all of these injuries are consistent with him being a horse rider
31:03and also a knight in jousting and taking part in these types of events.
31:10He is more robust in the right-hand side,
31:12so that may be a result of the jousting and the sword play,
31:15everything active and kind of overt,
31:18so the right-hand side defensively,
31:20he's well built on the left-hand side because he's got the shield.
31:23So it all fits with the profile that we've got
31:26and I'm happy now to think that he is a knight on horseback.
31:49Back in Dundee, Sue summons the team.
31:53Wolfram, you've got some new dietary information.
31:57The first results of Wolfram's isotopic testing have come through
32:01with surprising results.
32:03It looks like our cold case wasn't the meat-eating carnivore
32:06that we might expect from a medieval warrior.
32:14When we looked at the bone,
32:17we found 30% marine-derived protein intake or food intake
32:22and 70% terrestrial.
32:24He's eating a lot of saltwater fish,
32:26a much higher proportion than we eat today,
32:28and yet Stirling Castle is miles from the sea.
32:31For God's sake, the man's in Stirling.
32:34It's not on a coastline.
32:36It has nothing to do with coast.
32:38But why is he eating fish then? It's Stirling.
32:41No, I mean, Stirling is not so far away from the fort.
32:44It's not, but it's still in the distance.
32:46It's not something you necessarily expect fish to be a major part of the diet.
32:50Yeah, but you find fish influence in English diet
32:53and in non-near coastal regions.
32:55OK, I think we need to go and look at that.
32:57OK.
32:59It's kind of ridiculous, to my mind,
33:02in that we're getting an isotope signature that's saying
33:05there's a high proportion of marine fish.
33:08Stirling isn't on the coast!
33:10You know, I might expect freshwater fish,
33:13because there are rivers around there and some very pretty ones too.
33:16But it's not exactly a coastal community.
33:19It's not Aberdeen.
33:24The forensic evidence and the historical research
33:27indicate the Stirling cold case was a warrior on horseback, a knight.
33:31But Wolfram's isotope data says that he ate a lot of saltwater fish.
33:37Xanthi is now following a lead that could just explain
33:40the relationship between these two seemingly unrelated facts.
33:50In Southampton, one of Britain's most important ports in the Middle Ages,
33:54Xanthi is meeting food historian Professor Chris Walgar.
33:58Hi, Chris.
34:00And this is Xanthi.
34:01Hi, Xanthi, nice to meet you.
34:03He's treating Xanthi to a tasting menu of authentic medieval fish dishes.
34:11Were they preserving these dishes, these fish, for eating all year round?
34:16Yes, it's very important to them to have food that preserves well.
34:20And, in fact, much of the staple fish is preserved
34:25and it comes particularly as wind-dried cod or salted cod.
34:30We have records of boats coming into hull in the 1380s, 1390s,
34:35with as many as 96,000 preserved fish on board.
34:39It seems that dried or salted fish was a huge industry
34:43that fed a fast-growing coastal and inland population.
34:47This is dried cod that we saw earlier.
34:49This is dried cod with medieval sweet and sour sauce.
35:00It's quite nice, actually, isn't it?
35:02I don't expect it not to be nice, but, you know...
35:05But fish wasn't just food for the body.
35:08There's another reason why a medieval knight might favour fish over meat.
35:13So, 30% fish sounds like an awful lot to me.
35:17Is that a kind of common component of a medieval diet?
35:20Interestingly, it often links to their conception of religious virtue.
35:25Fish is most like the food that men will eat in paradise.
35:29And the reason is that it is a way of avoiding carnality and meat
35:35and the corruption that comes from it.
35:37It leads people into lust and to gluttony and into sin.
35:41And there's one final clue.
35:44Preserved fish like this was a very good way of provisioning armies.
35:48And when we see the calculations that the English Exchequer made
35:52for provisioning its armies going to Scotland,
35:55we can see that fish forms, I guess,
35:58probably well over a third of the diet that's there.
36:01As much as that? Yes.
36:04So a high fish diet tells us that our man was eating the standard food of the army
36:09and it was also the diet expected of a pious Christian knight.
36:13This fits perfectly into the growing profile of our sterling warrior.
36:26Back in Dundee, Caroline Needham is showing her colleague Caroline Wilkinson
36:30how the face of the sterling knight is developing.
36:35So I've added the pegs.
36:37The pegs indicate the depth of the tissue they are about to position on the face
36:42now that they have reassembled the skull in the computer.
36:45Areas where we've had to rebuild with the different fragments,
36:50put them together, there's always a bit more room for error there.
36:53But I think, because we've had most of the skull, it shouldn't be too far out.
36:58I can show you the muscles that I've started to add.
37:04I've got a neck for him, if you want to take a look.
37:07So this is from a laser scan of somebody
37:12and I've adapted it to fit this skull.
37:15That's quite a beefy neck, but it looks like it's in the correct position
37:19from these mastoid processes.
37:21He's getting to look more beefy by the minute.
37:25He's got a big square face at the moment.
37:28Especially the lower face and the jaw, isn't it?
37:31OK, so we've got the nose to add to the measurements
37:37and then it's just skin and ears.
37:41So if I just get rid of the plane and put the skin back to normal,
37:46we can have a good look at what he looks like.
37:54Oh, wow, that's great.
38:00Looks like a rugby player.
38:04I think he's got quite a nice face, though.
38:06He doesn't look...
38:07At rest, I think he looks perfectly pleasant.
38:09Yeah, and I think...
38:10He's more of a battlefield.
38:12That's true.
38:13He's got this interesting gap between his teeth as well,
38:16which is quite endearing, I think.
38:18And his ears stick out a bit.
38:20That's true.
38:21The next step is to work on the full-body reconstruction
38:24to show how beefy he really was.
38:27Then the reconstruction will be almost complete.
38:37But there is one more critical line of inquiry.
38:41What caused our knight's death?
38:44HE GROANS
38:48His grave provided the biggest clue.
38:51An arrowhead was found mixed with his bones.
38:56But would a single arrowhead have been lethal enough
38:59to kill such a powerfully built man?
39:04Xanthe has come to the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
39:08She's meeting Graeme Reimer, medieval weapons expert.
39:14He recognises the type of arrowhead found in our man.
39:18It was designed to cause maximum damage to flesh.
39:21This is the nature of arrowhead
39:23that would be used in both hunting and warfare.
39:25It's a fairly grim process,
39:27but archery is done usually through hemorrhage.
39:30The arrowhead, the blades, as it were,
39:32these long barbs extending backwards from the main head,
39:36were sharp all the way down.
39:38So as the arrowhead penetrated,
39:40it would do a lot of cutting as it went in.
39:42There's going to be a lot of bleeding associated.
39:44Well, that's how it works.
39:46And the barbs are there to prevent the arrowhead coming out.
39:49He wants to show Xanthe a similar, better-preserved arrowhead.
39:53It becomes clear how this lethal weapon
39:56could have brought our man down.
39:58OK. Ooh!
40:00Well, here's a draw of some of our medieval arrowheads.
40:07This is the most similar that we have easily available
40:10to the long barbs.
40:12This is how it would have fitted on.
40:14That looks quite big to me.
40:16This is a pretty accurate reconstruction
40:18of a typical medieval military arrow.
40:20An X-ray confirms that the arrowhead found with our man
40:23had a very similar barbed head.
40:26There are medical treatises in the Middle Ages
40:29which explain how you may remove arrowheads of different designs,
40:32and the barbed head really can only come out
40:35by keeping going with the direction in which it went into the body.
40:38Essentially, you had to push it right the way through.
40:40There was no easy way of extracting it.
40:42And simply the process of trying to extract it
40:44could cause fatal injury anyway.
40:46So it's a very effective weapon in that sense
40:49and a very nasty thing to be shot by.
40:51If it wasn't more or less instantly fatal,
40:53it would certainly prove so in a relatively short period of time.
40:59The type of arrowhead found with our man
41:01was designed to cause maximum damage
41:03and to be difficult to remove.
41:05Up until the 13th century,
41:07the knight on horseback had ruled on the battlefield,
41:10but the rise of the archer, cheap but effective,
41:13was one of the turning points in the history of warfare.
41:26Back in Dundee, Wolfram has some more surprises.
41:29The results of his isotope tests on the knight's back tooth
41:32reveal where he grew up.
41:35Are we about to find out if he was English or Scottish?
41:39Can you take us through what you've found
41:42about our gentleman from Stirling Castle?
41:44What we have found so far from the two molars we have in our lab
41:49that during that period, let's say generally eight years to 15 years of age,
41:53that this person has definitely not lived in Scotland.
41:56Ooh! Ooh! OK.
42:00Between the ages of eight and 15,
42:02the knight was growing up in either southern England or western France,
42:06geographically close but politically very different.
42:10Adding to what you've just...
42:12the rather big bombshell that you've just dropped,
42:15if you were to geographically come down the UK,
42:18so we're happy it's not in Scotland,
42:21how far down that UK can you get?
42:23You would have to go down far south to the home counties.
42:27OK. So Sussex, Devon...
42:29Do you have to be in the real south?
42:31You have to be close to the channel.
42:33OK. And that's a very sort of specific geographical area.
42:38When we then say France, do we mean the entirety of France?
42:43No.
42:44Or is there a part of France that equates more?
42:47Basically, let's say, unfortunately, France,
42:50as far as our maps and our understanding at the moment goes,
42:54we can sort of split into two parts,
42:56and you would say this signature is closer to the west coast.
43:02He's not Scottish, but is he a French ally or an English enemy?
43:11I think our natural inclination was that this was going to be a Scottish knight,
43:15so a very important turning point in this entire investigation
43:19has been more from stable isotope information.
43:22That has really changed the pattern of who we think this person may have been.
43:27So we've got to now sort of come away from the Scottish concept
43:31that, you know, is embedded in the Scottish knight.
43:34We all think of him as being Sean Connery, don't we?
43:37But he's not Scottish, not by what we've seen today.
43:40And he could be English, but no, we don't want him to be English.
43:43We're in Scotland here, we'd quite like him to be French.
43:53Zanthi has come to Edinburgh Castle to meet Dr Katie Stevenson,
43:57a medieval historian.
44:00She might be able to shed some light on whether our knight
44:03was part of the French troops sent to support the Scottish against the English.
44:11So, was there a presence of a Scottish knight in Edinburgh Castle?
44:16Yes, there was.
44:19So, was there a presence, a French presence, in Stirling in the 14th century?
44:24In Scotland, most definitely.
44:26There's obviously quite a lot of diplomacy surrounding the Old Alliance,
44:31which is taking place.
44:33The Old Alliance, very simply, is a...
44:37..an ongoing and renewable treaty between the Scots and the French
44:43that if... It's basically to do with England.
44:46If England invades Scotland, the French will come to the Scots' aid.
44:50If England invades France, the Scots will go to the French aid.
44:54Oh, really? So, it's about providing military support to each other
44:58on the borders of England.
45:00They're getting English. Yeah. Nice.
45:02There is also evidence that there were French forces in Scotland
45:06in the 14th century.
45:09In 1385, a large French force arrived at the Port of Leith
45:13outside Edinburgh to support the Scots.
45:16The army mustered here at the castle.
45:19Could our man have been part of this expedition?
45:22Here we have an example of muster rolls for the 1385 campaign,
45:29where we get a sense of the type of men who were coming.
45:33So, there's lists here of squires.
45:37There's some 3,000 names here of the men who came over.
45:41Not only is every soldier listed,
45:43but the route they took is well documented.
45:46So, here they are coming into Leith,
45:48which is the Port of Leith in Edinburgh, basically.
45:52As you can see, they head south into the Anglo-Scottish borders.
45:56It's quite far from Stirling.
45:58They're not heading north into central Scotland.
46:02They're coming into the borders area.
46:04It's pretty clear they don't go to Stirling.
46:07The old alliance meant a French military presence in Scotland
46:10in the 14th century,
46:12but there's no evidence for a French fighting man's burial at Stirling.
46:16It's a dead end.
46:18It leaves one remaining possibility for Xanthi's research.
46:22Our knight was English.
46:30Meanwhile, the two Carolines are making good progress.
46:33Based on the bone scans,
46:35Caroline Needham is starting to reconstruct the knight's body.
46:39I've got the measurements that we took of the bones.
46:42So, from those, I've made a life-size model on here.
46:46OK. I'll just open him for you.
46:55And then, if you'd like to see the skin, I'll just turn that on.
46:58I'll make it see-through to begin with.
47:03So, this is doing nothing to suggest
47:06that he isn't a rugby player, is it?
47:08Not really, no.
47:10So, let's just see the finished skin,
47:12because he's looking very big, upper body,
47:15very short and squat legs.
47:17Yeah, absolutely.
47:22It's great.
47:24That's the finished man. Yeah.
47:30Yeah, he looks great.
47:32He's fantastic. I really like him.
47:37He's certainly got the body for fighting.
47:39Yeah, absolutely.
47:41Aw, I like him. Yeah.
47:59Xanthi has come to the National Archives
48:01to find out whether there's any surviving records of the English
48:04at Stirling Castle in the 14th century.
48:09The Holy Grail is to find a name for the knight,
48:12but it seems unlikely, given he died over 600 years ago.
48:18She's meeting archivist Jessica Lutkin,
48:20who has uncovered some surprising documents.
48:24OK, so what have you got?
48:26OK, we have some petitions.
48:28Petitions? Petitions. OK.
48:31That date around the time of the wars in Scotland,
48:34so Bannockburn, etc.
48:36So, this is a direct petition to the king and his council and parliament.
48:41A request? Yes, yes.
48:43I can't read this.
48:45This is Anglo-Norman French, so it's, you know...
48:47OK, good. It's Franglais.
48:49It's quite easy to understand. OK.
48:51The request refers to an Englishman, William de Muchon,
48:54who was captured at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314
48:57and held for ransom.
49:00Hostage-taking, a common tool in medieval power play,
49:03often involved keeping VIPs under house arrest
49:06until deals were struck.
49:11So, I was hoping that this would be somebody who was killed.
49:14Ooh, it could be our man. Yes, it could be our man.
49:17The unfortunate thing is,
49:19his son and heir were swapped as a hostage for his father.
49:23Right, OK.
49:24And so William did not die at Stirling Castle.
49:27Right.
49:28So, the first document is a red herring.
49:30William de Muchon didn't die a hostage at Stirling Castle.
49:34So, if our knight was English,
49:36maybe he died during one of the many English occupations of the castle.
49:40Jessica has unearthed another, even more extraordinary document.
49:44This is the last of our potentials.
49:46OK? OK.
49:48So, this is an account of Stirling Castle...
49:51Oh! ..when it was held by the English.
49:54And so everything was accounted for. Right.
49:57So, all the expenses at the castle and who was at the castle.
50:01We have names of everyone at the castle.
50:03We have names of everybody at the castle.
50:05You look excited now. I am excited.
50:07I did not expect to find this kind of document... Really?
50:10..with all these details on it. This is a real treat.
50:12And this account is dated 1340-1341.
50:15Right, OK. OK?
50:17And so you have all the lists of the names.
50:19So, you have knights at the top, and these are all men-at-arms.
50:22Right, so these are all the people at the castle? Yes.
50:25And what I want to show you is this name here.
50:28Oh. Sir John Districtly.
50:31Oh, OK.
50:33Does that word ring a bell?
50:35I cannot read that word.
50:37It says Obit. Oh, he is dead.
50:39He is dead. And he died at Stirling Castle...
50:42Oh! ..on the 10th of October.
50:46And the year is 1341.
50:49Oh, that is fantastic.
50:53It is an extraordinary discovery,
50:55which supports the carbon-14 dating of our man's bones.
51:00The following year, 1342, the Scottish reclaimed the castle,
51:04so could this English knight who died there be our man?
51:09You can see at the end of his name, Miles, which is knight,
51:12so he was the senior member of the castle.
51:14Oh, right, so he is a really important person.
51:16Yes, so he could have been important enough
51:18to be buried within the castle itself.
51:20Quite possibly, yes.
51:22And at this time, would the castle have been under siege, the Scottish,
51:25if the English were holding it?
51:27It wasn't under siege at this point.
51:29The siege of Stirling, when the Scots won the castle back,
51:32started in 1342.
51:34However, there still would have been a few skirmishes.
51:36It was a very unsettled time,
51:38which is why you had such an extensive garrison there.
51:40So this could really be our guy.
51:42That is a potential name, yes.
51:44Is that our boy?
51:46So, yes, we have John Districtly, who died at the castle.
51:49We don't know when he died.
51:51We don't know what age he was when he died.
51:53And, of course, it doesn't confirm that he was buried at the castle.
51:56But I think this is one of the best possible examples
51:59of the kind of scenario you're looking for.
52:01Yeah, absolutely.
52:03I just never expected it.
52:05I never expected to find a potential name.
52:07I can't believe it, actually.
52:09I have to admit, it was a big surprise to me as well.
52:11I mean, for me, this is the ultimate, isn't it?
52:13Finding a name is the kind of ultimate aim of what we're doing.
52:15But I didn't expect it.
52:17And if you're surprised, it shows just how exciting that really is.
52:20It is quite extraordinary.
52:22So John Districtly, that may be our boy.
52:33Honestly, I think what I've just learned is absolutely thrilling.
52:38It's so exciting that we've found a potential name
52:41that could genuinely be our knight.
52:44And I just never expected that in a million years,
52:46that we'd actually get a name from, you know, the 1300s.
52:50It's just amazing.
52:52Fantastic.
52:54I think the team are going to be thrilled when I tell them.
52:59Jessica's further research on the Districtly family
53:02seems to suggest that the family line has died out.
53:05Sadly, the woman who was buried with Sir John will probably never be known.
53:09In the 14th century,
53:11women weren't usually deemed important enough to be documented.
53:29It's the final team meeting.
53:31Using forensic investigation and historical research,
53:34the team has established that our sterling man
53:36was a powerful, battle-scarred knight.
53:41And despite the fact that he was buried in a Scottish castle,
53:44he was probably English
53:47and may have died from an arrow wound whilst fighting the Scots.
53:53Now, over 650 years after his death,
53:57the team is about to give him back his face and a possible name.
54:01So I have to go over this list.
54:03Oh, yes, I've got some rather interesting news.
54:06Aha! Let's hear it. Right. OK.
54:09We don't have any evidence to say there were any French burials at Stirling.
54:13So, we have to return to the question of whether he was in fact English.
54:17Now, there's one particular scenario
54:20and one particular individual in that scenario,
54:23which fits everything.
54:25So, during the 1330s to 1340s,
54:28it's documented the English actually held Stirling Castle for 10 years.
54:33But we have actually got a list of all of the people
54:36who were there as fighting men.
54:38And it's quite exciting,
54:40because this actually indicates that the person third down
54:43died during this time at the castle.
54:46His name is Sir John Districtly.
54:56It's really quite an incredible result.
54:58Because all we heard was a bit of a scar.
55:02And we had a bit of well-developed...
55:05A bit of beefcake, quite frankly, was what we had.
55:09So, now we know circumstances and, you know, why he's there.
55:12Everything fits.
55:14And it's the capability of having those historical documents
55:17that suddenly give you a window that the science doesn't give you,
55:22which is getting to the name.
55:24And I think the history has really shored this up.
55:26But, conversely, without the science,
55:28you wouldn't even have a starting point there to look.
55:30It's the alliance. It's the alliance between the two.
55:33It's fantastic to have, from so far back in time,
55:36a document that gives you a name.
55:38Yeah. That's great.
55:40So, do we want to see what he looks like?
55:42Yes, we do. I like that.
55:44Obviously, we don't know details of skin colour
55:46and eye colour and hair colour.
55:48We've estimated it's a best guess based on the period of time
55:51and where we think he came from.
55:53Go on, let's have a look.
55:55Here we go.
55:58Ooh!
56:00There we go.
56:02Oh, he looks like a footballer.
56:04Or a rugby player.
56:06No, a rugby player. I would say he's more like a rugby player.
56:09Nice scarf.
56:11Sir John Districtly.
56:13John. This is John.
56:15Sir John. Sir John.
56:20Very nice. That looks very good.
56:22Yeah.
56:24The next thing we've got is that we've taken this
56:27and, with the information that we have from the skeleton,
56:30Caroline has produced a full body.
56:36Look at the muscles there.
56:38Nice.
56:42Fantastic.
56:44That is really very special.
56:46Very beautifully done. Beautifully done.
56:48Nice job, Caroline.
56:50For Sue, this is the first time
56:53For Sue, the story of the Sterling Coldcase was always in his bones.
56:57His muscles carved out their own signature.
57:00They told the team he wasn't just a soldier,
57:03he was an English knight.
57:05And now, for the first time since his death over 600 years ago,
57:09the team have given him back his identity.
57:12When you start with something that, in some respects, was less than optimal,
57:16and we really didn't know where we were going to go with this,
57:19he's a very interesting skeleton,
57:21but the chances of any historical case
57:24to at least get it back to a possible name
57:27is not something we ever anticipated we would be able to do.
57:30So this has gone much further than we could ever have predicted.
57:35Absolutely unexpected.
57:37And probably, as far as we can go on this, the case is closed.
57:43With the knight's forensic journey now over,
57:45he has returned to Historic Scotland's store in Edinburgh.
57:49He left an enigma.
57:51He's coming back with a possible name.
58:00Next time, the team will be taken back to the seedy side of Victorian London
58:05and reveal a terrible plague that afflicted thousands of people.
58:09That's just an open wound.
58:11The case will take a shocking turn.
58:14Men, I'm afraid, will find children.
58:17Sexually attractive.
58:19Who was the scarred skeleton?
58:22She was dealt a fairly mean set of cards.
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