Legend has it that the Rothwell charnel chapel was discovered when a grave digger tumbled into an underground vault stacked with bones. This alarming incident brought to light a rare exampleof an intact medieval ossuary in England. Our cover feature explores why the dead were assembled in this manner, and how common the practice was.

Two of the dead at Portmahomack, today a small Scottish fishing village, seem to have been brutally slaughtered during a Viking attack. A major research project has pieced together the remarkable story of this settlement, and evidence for a Pictish monastery that attracted the raiders.

Archaeologists have also been examining the rise and fall of a community on the Ll≈∑n peninsula in Wales. Here, an open prehistoric settlement developed imposing defences, before fading into obscurity once more.

Ever since Sellar and Yeatman wrote their spoof 1066 and All That, it has been widely appreciated that there are two memorable dates in English history: 55 BC and AD 1066. But has this focus on the invasions of Caesar and William the Conqueror unjustly eclipsed a third memorable date? In 1016, Cnut’s Vikings secured dominion over the country, but how much survives from this forgotten conquest of England?

Finally, celebrities are often said to seem shorter in the flesh, but the difference of 790 feet between Hadrian’s Wall and its icy counterpart in Game of Thrones must be a record. We tackle the cultural afterlife of Rome’s most famous border.

Matt Symonds