Blood Red Roses

Even ten years after the excavation, the Towton project is still unique since no other mass grave from a known battle has yet been found in the UK. Blood Red Roses, second edition describes a multidisciplinary project involving weapons experts from the Royal Armouries, anthropologists, archaeologists and a geophysicist who were involved in the excavation and post-excavation analysis of 37 combatants brutally killed at the Battle of Towton in AD 1461. Almost all of them had suffered major head injuries and these have been analysed with techniques used by forensic anthropologists to document the injuries of modern murder victims. The wound signatures were then compared with the profiles of weapons dating to the fifteenth century. The second edition is designed to make this volume available to a new generation of researchers. With this purpose in mind, an additional chapter has been added which is aimed at medieval re-enactors and history teachers, among others. These are the two groups of people who found the first edition so useful for authenticating the types of weapon and armour employed during the Wars of the Roses. Additional colour illustrations have also been added which show the full horror of the injuries sustained by these unfortunate victims of the battle.