Secrets of the Dead : Season 2

(Disease & Disaster) “The Witches Curse” poses a shocking new idea about the violent convulsions, delirium, and strange skin sensations that struck a group of young girls in 17th-century Massachusetts and inspired the infamous Salem Witch Trials. In 1692, 19 of the town’s residents were put to death because they were believed to have been witches. For hundreds of years, this tragedy was blamed on religious fanaticism, adolescent cruelty, and contagious hysteria. But these explanations failed

A mysterious skeleton buried in a shallow grave beneath a famous ancient monument. Who was he? How long had he been there? And why had his head been severed from its body? Archaeologist Mike Pitts works with scientists, forensics experts and historian to dig up ominous information about early Britain and the circumstances that surrounded the man's death. Was he a cattle thief, an insurgent, or a pagan sacrifice in a newly Christian world? (UK/PBS 55 min)

The settlers at Jamestown, the first British colony in the New World, were looking for wealth and adventure. But within six months 80 of the original 100 arrivals were dead; 440 of the first 500 died within three years. Death came in sudden, brutal waves marked by severe bruising, weakness, wasting and madness. Did the men die of disease and starvation? Or is it more than a coincidence that the deadly outbreaks always seemed to strike just after the supply ships set sail? Clues from Europe and t

During the Anglo-Zulu wars in South Africa, the success of small British regiments against huge numbers of native warriors became the stuff of legend. But in one key 1879 battle, Zulu fighting unites known as Impis decimated the British forces at the battle of Isandlwana. Historian Ian Knight and forensic archaeologist Tony Pollard investigate the battle scene, trying to assess the impact of a solar eclipse on the outcome, and discovering the Zulu use of performance enhancing "battle drugs" that

For centuries, visitors to the Church of the Holy Seplulchre in Jerusalem believed that they stood within what was merely a symbolic representation of Jesus' burial place. But what if the edicule within the church, an ancient crumbling structure, really does house Christ's actual tomb? Oxford archaeologists Martin and Birthe Biddle reconstruct Jesus' final day and trace the history of the various incarnations of the edicule -- looking for evidence that there is a tomb present, and trying to deci

In 1492, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic in search of gold. But what his men carried back with them to Europe was something far less appealing. They brought the scourge of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease never before seen in the Old World. At least that is what scientists have generally believed. But now, the discovery in Europe of a pre-Columbian body with definite signs of syphilis has archaeologist Charlotte Roberts convinced that syphilis existed in the Old World long befo