At JTrails, we look forward to seeing further detailed and hard evidence for these claims, which if verified, would constitute one of the most important finds in medieval Anglo-Jewish archaeology.

However, the sensational conclusions that have been presented so far, seem to have been reached by some significant inferential leaps, vaulting large gaps in the physical evidence and by appeal to the negative stereotypical generalisation that the Jews were hated and attacked in the 12th and 13th century, even though the worst depredations on the community were largely after 1250 and many Jews in England could live an entire life-time without witnessing either murder or massacre in their own town. The archaeologists also make unhelpful comparisions of the Norwich finds to 'ethnic cleansing' in the 20th Century, when in fact persecution of Jews in the medieval period was for religious reasons - racial anti-Semitism was a 20th century creation. It hardly helped this impression when the archaeologists seemed keen to point out that one of the skeletons 'had a big nose and ears' which one supposes was to imply the Jewishness of the remains, by implicit appeal to Jewish stereo-types. While these conclusions may be true, they may not be provable, and unless they are, there are other scenarios (and not just the Plague and Interdict scenarios) that should be considered and which may be as likely, or more likely.

It is important to point out that of 17 skeletal remains, only 7 returned DNA profiles, so we do not know what the origins of the other remains were. However, in the programme, the geneticist presenting the findings to the cold case team stated that 2 of the skeletal remains yielded DNA common in Europe at the time - that is to say they were in all probability local non-Jews, probably Christians. Of the 5 that were stated to be Jewish, the geneticist stated that 6% of the European population in this period had this DNA. At this time the Jewish population of England and Europe was only around 1% of the population, so the implication is that some non-Jews or Christians, had this DNA also. By the end of the programme, the cold case team has seemingly edited out all reference to the non-Jewish skeletal remains in a dishonest, misleading and exploitative summary of the evidence, which was presented as a certain and unchallengable conclusion. The emotional reaction shots of the 'community' at the end was deliberatley set up and staged by the producers who clearly had decided to create an effective, if manipulative conclusion to the documentary.

Our own work in identifying, possible medieval Jewish human remains, and with medieval Jewish artefacts, high-lights the real difficulty in proving the Jewish provenance of such remains or artefacts and the importance of using a wide range of multi-disciplinary techniques and evidence before arriving at conclusions. Also, historically there is a tendency to ascribe the unusual, or unexplained, as 'Jewish' and there is a continuing and unhelpful tendency to see Jewish history through the stereotypical view of medieval murder and mayhem.