History Cold Case

A seemingly African skeleton, unearthed near a medieval English monastery, pushes forensics expert Professor Sue Black and her team at the Centre for Anatomy and Human ID at the University of Dundee to their limits. Bone analysis offers clues about the true origins of the mysterious skeleton and facial reconstruction painstakingly reveals his face, which hasn't been seen for centuries.

A skeleton unearthed in an archaeological dig in the historic borough of Southwark in London sparks a new cold case when it is found to be covered with disfiguring scars - this investigation leads the cold case team into the seediest corners of early Victorian Britain. The latest facial reconstruction techniques bring the identity of one of history's missing persons back into chilling view.

For decades experts have remained baffled by a jumble of human bones discovered in a unique series of caves on the North York Moors, known as the 'Windy Pits'. One discovery in particular stands out - a tangle of bones that might belong to a family from two thousand years ago. The trail to uncover answers about what happened to these people takes us into a dark world of ritual sacrifice and right back to the limits of British recorded history.

York 2008: construction workers just beyond the City Walls uncover 113 bodies in a mass grave. When the 'History Cold Case' team spots an incredibly rare genetic peculiarity in two of the skeletons among the 113, they wonder whether they have stumbled on a pair of brothers, one of whom was severely disabled. The trail to find out who these two men could have been and how they ended up dead in a mass grave outside York opens up a new personalised vantage point on the events surrounding the English Civil War and also gives us a perspective on disability. Can this teach us something about so-called modern attitudes today?

When the remains of seventeen people thought to date from the early 1200s were discovered recently in a dry well shaft in Norwich city centre, the local community were keen for answers about who these people were and what happened to them. This becomes a case of suspected medieval murder but the final reveal of the identity of these people is an even bigger shock to all involved.

In the sleepy commuter town of Baldock in Hertfordshire the ‘History Cold Case’ team is called in to investigate the discovery of a skeleton dating from around 100AD, buried in a bizarre position, along with the remains of three babies. Is she Celt or Roman? Is she the earliest recorded mother of triplets in Britain and what can her story reveal about the bizarre attitudes to pregnancy and childbirth during the Roman occupation of Britain?