I really enjoyed Cat Jarman’s River Kings – it takes complex archaeological practices and makes them understandable to general readers while also presenting a different perspective on Viking history than most people will be used to. I was understandably excited when I saw The Bone Chests in my local bookshop – I was hoping for that same marriage of archaeology, science, and narrative. Unfortunately, The Bone Chests left me underwhelmed. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not the book I hoped it would be, nor is it really the book that is promised on the blurb on the back. It’s undermined by its structure and core pitch, and in my mind fails to live up to the potential set by River Kings.
The framing device is six chests in Winchester Cathedral that contain the bones of early medieval English kings, bishops, and a queen. Dr. Jarman has numbered the chests in approximately chronological order – approximately because some of the chests contain multiple skeletons from different centuries, largely the result of some of the chests being destroyed during the English Civil Wars in the 1640s and the bone scattered and later recollected into new chests. Bone Chests takes each numbered chest in order and in theory examines the lives of the people whose skeletons are contained within them.
I say in theory, because in practice The Bone Chests is mostly a chronological narrative history of the royal family of Wessex and the foundation of the Kingdom of England. This is not in itself a bad thing, but readers expecting (based on the publisher’s blurb) a more archaeology focused book examining the contents of the chests, and the analysis of the skeletons therein will be disappointed. This is not strictly Dr. Jarman’s fault, while it is the case that the chests have been opened and are undergoing intense archaeological analysis, that analysis is still far from complete and so it cannot be the sole focus of this book. What I had expected from The Bone Chests was something more like vignettes examining the lives of the individuals in each chest by combining the narrative information we have on the people supposedly buried in them along with what the archaeological evidence of the skeletons inside tells us. Instead, The Bone Chests mixes a history of Winchester (only briefly) with a long form narrative of the royal line of Wessex, carrying on post-conquest up to the death of William Rufus, who is supposedly buried in one of the chests.
There’s plenty of interesting information in The Bone Chests, especially if, like me, you know very little about this period of English history (I’m more of a post-conquest guy). However, the book’s structure really does it no favors. The chests themselves feel entirely superfluous to the narrative and even Winchester only pops up every now and then. This leads to weird experiences like in the chapter that is supposedly on the chest containing Edmund Ironside, the chapter is fifty pages long of which fewer than eight pages actually cover the life of King Edmund. If you came to this book hoping to learn about the people in the chests (or at least who are supposedly in the chest) you will probably be disappointed.
The book also doesn’t really play to Dr. Jarman’s strengths. In River Kings she showed consummate skill in explaining complex archaeological and scientific practices, but The Bone Chests is mostly narrative history drawing from chronicle accounts. She is not incapable in this field, but it is not her strength and given the frequent repetition of old English names this is a particularly tricky narrative, and the writing sometimes lost or confused me. The Bone Chests is at its best when she is explaining the results of archaeological analysis, but all too often these are incongruous in their own way – like the fascinating but slightly bizarre aside about the discovery of Richard III’s body and the studies done on it.
I didn’t dislike The Bone Chests, but I was disappointed by it, and I wouldn’t recommend it. There are worse books you can read, but there are also much better ones.