[goody2shooz]

Archaeologists from Bristol and Cardiff universities, who are carrying out the excavation, have also exhumed the body of a Roman teenage boy, whose head had been cut off and placed at his feet.

Interesting. The head of a Roman household, the Pater familias, legally held the power of life and death over members of his family and the household staff including slaves.

For example, the wife of Claudius Ceasar was executed on his order. She was beheaded by a Praetorian guard.

I don't know how archeologists at the site would have determined the teenager had his head separated from his body after death; it seems something a forensic pathologist would have to determine. But I can imagine an enraged Roman father or grandfather killing a young man for dishonoring the family in some way.

Roman writings of the period record such incidents.

[LostTribe]

>Roman writings of the period record such incidents.

Those had to be tough times, even for the wealthy.

[Tokhtamish]

The wife of Claudius Caesar (Emperor Claudius), Messalina, held a public mock marriage with her lover in a public insult to him. That is rebellion and it had to be dealt with.

Perhaps then as now, the Cotswolds (where Bath is and where the Romans had a hot springs resort) was a resort area.

[mewzilla]

Re: the severed head thing. The damage done to the cervical vertebrae would make it pretty obvious, even to an archaeologist :)

[Utopia]

For example, the wife of Claudius Ceasar was executed on his order

You're right about Messalina. But beheading is very rare. If a Roman committed suicide, his/her hand was cut off for separate burial. I have never heard about beheading in association with suicide. And a beheading on a teenage boy seems very strange to me.