Description

"A cornucopia of our weirdest and most wonderful archaeological sites and artefacts. They make you feel proud to be a citizen of these gloriously intriguing isles." Sir Tony Robinson

An Ice Age cannibal's skull cup, a hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold, a seventeenth century witch bottle... anthropologist Mary-Ann Ochota unearths more than 70 of Britain's most intriguing ancient places and artefacts and explores the mysteries behind them.

Britain is full of ancient wonders: not grand like the Egyptian pyramids, but small, strange places and objects that hint at a deep and enduring relationship with the mystic. Secret Britain offers an expertly guided tour of Britain's most fascinating mysteries : archaeological sites and artefacts that take us deep into the lives of the many different peoples who have inhabited the island over the millennia.

Illustrated with beautiful photographs , the wonders include buried treasure , stone circles and geoglyphs , outdoor places of worship , caves filled with medieval carvings, and enigmatic tools to divine the future. Explore famous sites such as Stonehenge and Glastonbury , but also discover:

• The Lindow Man bog body, showing neatly trimmed hair and manicured fingernails despite having been killed 2,000 years ago
• The Uffington White Horse, a horse-shaped geoglyph maintained by an unbroken chain of people for 3,000 years
• A roman baby's bronze cockerel, an underworld companion for a two-year-old who died sometime between AD 100-200
• St Leonard's Ossuary, home to 1,200 skulls and a vast stack of human bones made up of around 2,000 people who died from the 1200s to the 1500s
• The Wenhaston Doom painting, an extraordinary medieval depiction of the Last Judgement painted on a chancel arch

Explore Britain's secret history and discover why these places still resonate today.