It does not pretend to certainties that the evidence does not support.

It presents what can be known and is candid about what cannot.

This is how archaeology should work: extracting the maximum possible information from the available evidence while being clear about the difference between what that evidence establishes and what it suggests.

The Challenge Of Interpretation

Sitting with the full picture of Conquest Man, the archaeology, the DNA, the isotopes, the burial practices, the reconstruction, a thoughtful interpreter faces a genuine challenge of not overreaching.

It is tempting to construct a narrative: a man born in Scandinavia, perhaps, who sailed to England as a young man and settled in Barton, becoming a merchant or craftsman who worked with the Norman lords who ruled the town, and who died honored by that community, buried with Scandinavian rites by people who remembered the old ways.