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Researchers investigating the Brading Roman Villa on the Isle of Wight believe a sudden catastrophic event took the lives of its residents.Radiocarbon dating of scattered bones, along with coins found at the site, coincide with an abrupt abandonment of the villa. Considered one of the finest Roman-style villas in Britain, the site remains a popular tourist attraction.
Overlooking Sandown Bay on the Isle of Wight, Brading Roman Villa features preserved mosaic floors, Roman archaeology, and a link to the history of elite living in ancient Roman Britain. But it also might be the site of a staggering massacre.
While pirates patrolling the English Channel might have been the aggressors, more realistic signs point to retaliation led by a Roman emperor. Michael Fulford, a professor of archaeology at the University of Reading, who’s been fascinated by the site since he was young, led a study published in Britannia titled “Brading Roman Villa: Evidence of a Late Roman Massacre?” In it, he suggests a “potentially murderous event in the 340s or 350s” that caused a complete reorganization of life at the villa.
His evidence of such an event? A mess of bones and coins.
When it was rediscovered in 1880, the villa immediately garnered interest for its impressive mosaic floors, which included depictions of Orpheus, a cockerel-headed man, Medusa, and Bacchus, the god of wine. On top of some of the mosaics, though, rested human bones. Archaeological investigations completed in the 2000s located additional remains, including those of a teenager interred in a 14-foot-deep well. With little information other than the bones, radiocarbon dating was used to interpret their context and importance.
“Perhaps the most important conclusion of the dating program is that all the sampled bones probably derive from a single event or multiple events of short duration dated to between 240 and 400 [C.E.] within the period of the Roman occupation of Britain,” the study authors wrote.
Coins peppering the site helped narrow down the dating. Among the 90 Roman coins gathered since 1880, an unusual gap between 330 and 348 C.E. perplexed experts. This period without coins matches the bone dating timeline, but it doesn’t match other coin finds at Roman sites, whether on the Isle of Wight or elsewhere in Britain, suggesting an event isolated to Brading.
To help explain the bone-and-coin anomaly, Fulford first discarded the idea of a pirate raid off the nearby English Channel for lack of evidence. A sudden disease or sickness is also unlikely due to the isolation of the event (there’s no supporting evidence of a plague elsewhere in Britain). That led the authors to believe the bones, which represent four adults, a baby, and that poor teenager in the well, could have been murdered. Cut marks on multiple bones support this theory. Fulford posits that the bones and coins at Brading are likely evidence of a late Roman-era massacre.
“The radiocarbon dates make it clear that the bones are of late Roman date, not post-Roman, and that is the important result,” Fulford said, according to Phys.org. “The coins point to a possible historical context.”
Historical records contain two potentially violent events at the villa. A crisis in Britain in 342 prompted a visit by Emperor Constans I in 343. He brought with him a field army. “It is conceivable that the villa was caught up in the circumstances surrounding these events,” the authors wrote.
More fighting occurred in the 350s, as Emperor Constantius II beat down an uprising led by Magnentius after the latter killed the former’s brother, Constans. The emperor then retaliated against supporters of Magnentius with torture, imprisonment, and executions. “They might well be associated with a significant change in status of the villa, its owner killed or dispossessed, and the management of the estate put in the hands of a bailiff,” the authors wrote.
A sudden killing also explains how the bones became scattered about, as shallow graves would allow animals—the bones show signs of being gnawed on—to pick at the remains, moving them around the site.
“I can’t be certain of a massacre,” Fulford said, “hence the question mark in the [study’s] title.” Still, he wrote a fascinating paper about the possibility, and the story certainly adds up.
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.