The mystery of the headless Romans ??

[Dinosaur]

Having watched the programme through twice (the power of the VCR, bit juddery the second time though...) I'm still waiting for a single shred of evidence that any gladiators ever set foot in York. The 'Tiger victim' was particularly comical, of course a conical tooth is going to fit a round hole at some point along its length.....did we get pairs of holes with discussions about the spacing between them? Of course not. Otherwise all they presented was a selection of people who may (or may not) have had military training at some point in their lives (probably not uncommon in a major garrison city) and some evidence that some of them may have suffered sharp or blunt-force trauma peri-mortem (again not that uncommon). The guy who'd been decapitated....err...wasn't the original thing about that cemetery the large number of decaps? No evidence was presented to suggest whether the head came off peri- or post-mortem, so that was totally invalid evidence anyway. The geographical origins of the guys can't be put in context because until a lot more isotope analysis is done we can't say what's normal for a Roman urban cemetery population in Britain anyway - Lankhills has certainly been turning up some surprises, not seen any of the results yet for Catterick (anyone know if they're available anywhere?).