Cold Case - Stirling Man
Category
📺
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.
58:47Subtitling by SUBS Hamburg