Archaeological Discoveries In the UK
Archaeological Discoveries In the UK
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
The Women of Stonehenge
Stonehenge is one of the world’s most iconic and mysterious Neolithic monuments. The henge, or stone circle, was a cemetery for high-ranking individuals as well as a sort of calendar, since its stones align with the sunset on the winter solstice and sunrise on the summer solstice. It was built between 4000 and 5000 years ago, and most of its secrets have yet to be revealed. Even more curious than the main structure itself, outside the stone circle are 56 chalk pits called Aubrey Holes. In one of these, Aubrey Hole 7, researchers found the cremated remains of more than twenty-three people. Using CT tomography and radiocarbon dating, these remains were dated to the early third millennium BC (from about 3100 BC to 2150 BC). The remains in Aubrey Hole 7 represented the highest-ranking members of the society that built and used Stonehenge. To the researchers’ surprise, out of the twenty-three identifiable individuals, 14 were female! This indicates that in Neolithic societies, women held positions of power and authority, outranking even their male counterparts. Archaeologists also noted that the people buried in Aubrey Hole 7 appeared to have lived good lives. There are virtually no signs of trauma or violence on the bones, and most of the individuals appear to have lived into old age. All of the artist renderings of ancient rituals at Stonehenge show men in charge. It might be time to rethink those portrayals.
Lincolnshire Black Death Pit
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
In the 14th century, the Black Death, also known as bubonic plague, killed 75 million to 200 million people all across Europe and Asia. Britain was not immune to the plague, and some experts estimate that fifty percent of the population of what is now the United Kingdom died during the outbreak. In 2011, archaeologists from the University of Sheffield began excavating the Lincolnshire site of Thornton Abbey, one of the largest abbeys in the medieval period. They found a mass grave containing the skeletal remains of 48 people, including 27 children. DNA was extracted from the teeth of these individuals, and the tests revealed the presence of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that caused the Black Death. Historical evidence shows that the Black Death reached Lincolnshire in 1349. It’s believed that these plague victims were being treated at a monastery hospital on the grounds of Thornton Abbey. Plague pits like this are actually relatively rare in the UK, because most families still tried to give their dead a proper burial. When mass graves are found, however, that indicates a time when the death toll was too high for individual funerals to be feasible. Unlike the popular image of plague pits where bodies were just flung in haphazardly, the bodies in the Lincolnshire mass grave were laid out very carefully. The children’s remains were interred slightly overlapping some of the adults, perhaps suggesting a family relationship between the deceased. Before this finding, the only known plague cemeteries were in London, where the higher urban population led to an equally high number of deaths. The Lincolnshire plague pit is the first time evidence of mass plague has been found in the rural areas of the country.
Boxford Roman mosaic
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
Britain was once a province of the Roman Empire, and there are Roman-era archaeological sites all across the country. Usually the sites are stone walls and hidden pits, but in 2017, archaeologists working near the little town of Boxford found something extraordinary. The team from the Boxford History Project was excavating a modest Roman-style villa when they discovered the largest and most complete Roman mosaic ever found in the UK. Over six meters (twenty feet) in length, the mosaic has a central panel surrounded by a plain border. The main section of the mosaic depicts the Greek hero Bellerophon riding Pegasus and fighting a chimera, which is a fearsome, fire-breathing monster with a goat’s body, a snake’s tail and the head of a lion. This is only the second depiction of the chimera myth ever found in the UK where the monster is attacking the hero instead of running away, which makes this mosaic even more special. The mosaic also shows Hercules wrestling a centaur and the god Cupid flying through with a wreath in his hand. There’s a lot going on!! The images on the mosaic are unlike any others found in the UK to date, and it is so rare and in such good condition that at first, experts thought it might be a hoax. Most Roman era mosaics found in Britain prior to this had shown only geometric patterns, so the plethora of images is exceedingly rare. There is also an inscription in Greek!! Just to be super extra!! The mosaic was set into the floor of a room that was probably used for entertaining guests. Its presence in such a small villa is really extraordinary, because mosaics like this are normally reserved for palaces and grand villas closer to Rome itself. Experts believe that the mosaic is over 1600 years old, dating to between 360 and 380 AD. Only half of the mosaic was excavated before it was reburied to protect it from damage and looting. There are plans to excavate the rest of the mosaic in the near future.
Staffordshire Hoard
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
In 2009, a man with a metal detector was searching a field outside Hammerwich, Staffordshire, when he got the surprise of his life. When his metal detector went off to tell him he’d found something, he was expecting a coin or maybe someone’s lost pocket watch. What he found instead was the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever found in the United Kingdom! The Staffordshire Hoard, as the deposit of artifacts came to be called, included over 3,500 pieces of high-quality gold and silver metalwork created by the Anglo-Saxon residents of the medieval kingdom of Mercia. Almost everything in the hoard is related to war and warfare, including weaponry, ornaments from sword pommels, and crosses that were meant to give the bearer protection in battle. The sword pommels appeared to have been deliberately removed from the swords themselves and added to the hoard. Experts believe that the hoard represents a “death duty,” or a tax paid to the king when a nobleman died. The hoard may have been deposited in the year 875 in connection with a Viking attack on the settlement of Lichfield. It’s entirely possible that if this is a death duty, the nobleman in question died fighting off those Viking invaders. The objects in the hoard are considered some of the finest examples of Anglo-Saxon metalworking. The hoard was valued as being worth over £3.25 million. It was sold to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where it has been put on display for everyone to enjoy.
Lindow Man
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
In 1984, commercial peat cutters at Lindow Marsh near Wilmslow in Cheshire, England, came across a gruesome discovery. One of the workers pulled what he thought was a piece of wood off of the machine he was using to cut peat, but when he tossed it aside, he realized that it was a human foot! The condition of the foot made them think this was a modern murder victim, so the authorities were called. They had found the body of a murder victim, but the crime had taken place between 2 BC and 119 AD. Lindow Man had been a man of status when he died, because his body showed no evidence of manual labor, and his fingernails were neatly trimmed and clean. His body was in such an excellent state of preservation that experts were able to determine that his last meal had been a piece of charred bread, which has been interpreted as showing that he had been selected for his fate by lottery. The man was most likely a sacrificial victim, and he suffered what is called a “triple death”. He was hung until his neck broke, had his throat slit and was struck violently on the head with an axe. Any one of these injuries could have been fatal, but the fact that they were all delivered at once is believed to show the sacrificial nature of his demise. Lindow Man is one of over 140 bog bodies found throughout the United Kingdom, but he is the best-preserved of them all. Many of these bog bodies hold fascinating details from history but there is not enough time.
Hoxne Hoard
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
In 1992, another man with a metal detector found what’s come to be known as the Hoxne Hoard!! This is the largest hoard of late Roman gold and silver ever found in Britain. I’ve been telling you guys, we have to all go to the UK with a metal detector!! The hoard dates to 407 AD, which is right about the time that Rome was withdrawing from Britain. An oak chest was buried, filled with gold and silver, outside the town of Hoxne in Suffolk. It includes a silver tigress that was made as the handle for a vessel, 29 pieces of gold jewelry, thousands of gold and silver coins, and 98 silver spoons and ladles. The hoard was buried during a time of huge upheaval, when Rome was abandoning Britain and the Anglo-Saxons were invading. It might have been that the hoard was buried because of these ongoing struggles, as an effort by some wealthy family to keep their riches safe in the face of war. The fact that they never returned for what was obviously a valuable collection even at the time of its burial might indicate that they suffered a sad fate in the turmoil that gripped the country at that time.
Richard III
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
Richard III was the last of the Plantagenet kings of England, and he is best known from his villainous portrayal in Shakespeare’s play about his life. He was known to have died in the Battle of Bosworth, the last English monarch to die in combat. He was buried in a simple grave at Greyfriars Friary in Leicester, but the location of his grave was lost after the monasteries were dissolved under Henry VIII. The friary was demolished, and over time the location was built up, with the offices of the Leicestershire County Offices and the staff parking lot put up on the site. The mystery for many years was, where was he??? The Looking for Richard project, a group of scholars who were dedicated to finding the dead king’s grave, determined that the parking lot was probably over the site of the old Greyfriars cemetery. When they pulled up the pavement and began excavating, they found the body of a man in his 30s with scoliosis of the spine and severe wounds from battle. DNA analysis proved that they had found the remains of King Richard III. His grave had been preserved all this time even as the city changed around him. The king was given a proper burial at Leicester Cathedral.
Heatwave Revelations
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| Archaeological Discoveries In the UK |
The summer of 2018 was one of the hottest and driest that the United Kingdom has ever seen. The landscape suffered under the heat as crops shriveled and grasses wilted. There was a silver lining to this heat cloud, though – the elimination of a top layer of vegetation helped reveal over a thousand years’ worth of lost archaeological sites. Some of the sites that the weather helped archaeologists to identify include Celtic forts, Roman farms and villas, Neolithic henges and even lost bunkers from World War II. Aerial photography helped to record all of these ghosts in the land, and now archaeologists are scrambling to catch up. One of the more striking discoveries revealed by the heat wave was the footprint of a grand mansion called Clumber House, which had been destroyed in 1938 due to a series of fires. The stone foundations of the old manor showed up as the stones were heated by the sun and burned away the grass above them. The entire floorplan can be seen in aerial photographs of the site.