Airdate: The Headless Gladiators of York

Despite its arresting title, The Headless Gladiators of York is a series on Roman archaeology, screening this Sunday on SBS.

I’m still waiting for the horror version…

It’s one of the grizzliest finds in Roman archaeology – the decapitated remains of over 80 battle-scarred skeletons, all buried in the same plot, in the same ritualistic manner over 2,000 years ago.

The macabre discovery took place in 2004, when archaeologists excavated a plot of land in the historic city of York in North East England. Within days of unearthing the first skeleton, the body count had reached double figures, and kept rising.

Pottery found among the bones dated the burials to the very founders of York – the Romans – but the vast number of bodies buried in the same plot, and the multiple decapitations was unlike any Roman burial site British archaeologists had ever seen. It was almost identical to one 2,000 miles away in Ephesus, Turkey – the only known Gladiator cemetery in the world. For lead archaeologist Kurt Hunter-Mann, the similarity between the two sites was too great to be a coincidence.

This investigation exposes the black heart of Roman civilisation.

Sunday, 2 July at 7.35pm on SBS.