Ancient roman sarcophagus found at London building site

An ancient Roman sarcophagus has been excavated from a building site in central London. The 1,600-year-old coffin found near Borough Market is thought to contain the remains of a member of the nobility.

Archaeologists have been unable to identify the body as the stone coffin has been left filled with soil after being robbed, experts believe.

The sarcophagus will now be taken to the Museum of London’s archive for analysis. The coffin was found several metres underground with its lid slid open, which indicates it was plundered by 18th-century thieves.

Gillian King, senior planner for archaeology at Southwark Council, said she hoped the grave robbers “have left the things that were of small value to them but great value to us as archaeologists”.

The grave owner must have been “very wealthy and have had a lot of social statuses to be honoured with not just a sarcophagus, but one that was built into the walls of a mausoleum” Ms King said.

She added: “We always knew this site had the potential for a Roman cemetery, but we never knew there would be a sarcophagus.”

The coffin was found on Swan Street last month after the council told developers building new flats on the site to fund an archaeological dig.

Researchers discovered the coffin six months into the dig as they were due to finish their search.

Experts at the Museum of London will now test and date the bones and soil inside.

Anglo-Saxon Trade Hub Found at Monastery Site in England

Archaeologists have unearthed a long-forgotten trading hub that researchers say would have enjoyed comparable status to London in the Middle Ages.

The find on the banks of the Thames in Cookham, Berkshire, has been hailed as “a once in a generation discovery” by the University of Reading.

It includes infrastructure that suggested the area was used extensively for importing and exporting goods.

The university said the site was abandoned in the late 9th Century.

Archaeologists began work on the land next to the Holy Trinity Church after evidence pointed to it being the site of a “lost” 8th Century monastery.

The excavation team said what it went on to find “ranks alongside the most extensively preserved early medieval monastic sites ever investigated in Britain”.

They found evidence of a waterside loading area, workshops for industrial activities like metalworking, and bread ovens to feed the local population.

The university said the area “could have enjoyed similarly important status as a trade and production centre to larger towns like London and Southampton”.

Gabor Thomas, the excavation’s lead archaeologist, said: “This is a once-in-a-generation archaeological discovery.

“We have not just rediscovered the location of this monastery but shown that it’s in a remarkable state of preservation.

“We have uncovered a densely occupied riverside trading and production zone, complete with streets and loading areas.

“This level of infrastructure and planning is surprising and compares with larger trading and production sites known as ‘wics’ that were the only towns of the period.”

He said Cookham’s population would have been considerably smaller than London but similarities in the way the monastery was organised reflected “its importance as a place of trade and production on the River Thames”.

“The discoveries at Cookham will enable us to build a detailed picture of daily life within a monastery of this period, including Cookham’s role as an economic hub for the Middle Thames region,” he added.

The monastery is believed to have thrived in the 8th and early 9th centuries, reaching its peak under the control of powerful Anglo-Saxon queen Cynethryth.

Cynethryth was the only Anglo-Saxon queen known to have been depicted on a coin and had been married to King Offa, who ruled one of the era’s main kingdoms, Mercia, until his death in 796 AD.

Possible Medieval Pub Found in Northern England

Archaeologists excavating a site in East Yorkshire say they may have stumbled on a medieval alehouse. Volunteers have spent the past three weeks searching for the remains of a village at High Hunsley, near Beverley.

Assistant site director Emma Samuel said a large number of pottery beakers and jugs had been unearthed, suggesting a pub may once have served the village.

Also found were sheep and cattle bones, giving rise to an alternative theory there was a hostelry, said Ms Samuel.

She said: “From their design, we know the beakers date back to about the 13th Century. The site could well have been a pub or some kind of large house, perhaps even a hostelry.

“The bones, belonging to sheep and cows, were carefully butchered. Perhaps people gathered here to eat? There may well have been a hostelry here.”

Ms Samuel said in medieval times it was dangerous to travel at night, so people on the move would seek out a place to stay.

“People would stop and rest,” he said. “It was a myth that everyone owned horses back then. They didn’t. Horses were expensive. People would often walk. People had to stay overnight somewhere when making long journeys.”

The three-week “community dig” led by Humber Timelines and Ethos Heritage CIC also unearthed a knife, chisels and jewellery from between the 7th and 13th Centuries, including a clasp used to fasten a shirt, a hair pin and a copper brooch, thought to be of Celtic origin.

Prior to the dig, geophysical surveys of the site revealed more than a dozen stone structures, as well as a larger building, which may have been the pub or hostelry, the team believes.

Ms Samuel, a director at Ethos Heritage CIC, said she suspected the settlement probably had its origins rooted in the 7th Century, or even earlier, although further work was required to confirm this.

Teams plan to return to the site next year to resume excavations.

Study Investigates Rate of Parasite Infections in a Medieval City

Research examining traces of parasites in the remains of medieval Cambridge residents suggests that local friars were almost twice as likely as ordinary working townspeople to have intestinal worms – despite monasteries of the period having far more sanitary facilities.  

One possibility is that the friars manured their vegetable gardens with human faeces

Piers Mitchell

A new analysis of remains from medieval Cambridge shows that local Augustinian friars were almost twice as likely as the city’s general population to be infected by intestinal parasites.

This is despite most Augustinian monasteries of the period having latrine blocks and hand-washing facilities, unlike the houses of ordinary working people.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology say the difference in parasitic infection may be down to monks manuring crops in friary gardens with their own faeces, or purchasing fertiliser containing human or pig excrement.

The study, published today in the International Journal of Paleopathology, is the first to compare parasite prevalence in people from the same medieval community who were living different lifestyles, and so might have differed in their infection risk. 

The population of medieval Cambridge consisted of residents of monasteries, friaries and nunneries of various major Christian orders, along with merchants, traders, craftsmen, labourers, farmers, and staff and students at the early university.

Cambridge archaeologists investigated samples of soil taken from around the pelvises of adult remains from the former cemetery of All Saints by the Castle parish church, as well as from the grounds where the city’s Augustinian Friary once stood.

Most of the parish church burials date from the 12-14th century, and those interred within were primarily of lower socioeconomic status, mainly agricultural workers.

The Augustinian friary in Cambridge was an international study house, known as a studium generale, where clergy from across Britain and Europe would come to read manuscripts. It was founded in the 1280s and lasted until 1538 before suffering the fate of most English monasteries: closed or destroyed as part of Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Church.  

The researchers tested 19 monks from the friary grounds and 25 locals from All Saints cemetery and found that 11 of the friars (58%) were infected by worms, compared with just eight of the general townspeople (32%).

They say these rates are likely the minimum, and that actual numbers of infections would have been higher, but some traces of worm eggs in the pelvic sediment would have been destroyed over time by fungi and insects. 

The 32% prevalence of parasites among townspeople is in line with studies of medieval burials in other European countries, suggesting this is not particularly low – but rather the infection rates in the monastery were remarkably high.

“The friars of medieval Cambridge appear to have been riddled with parasites,” said study lead author Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology. “This is the first time anyone has attempted to work out how common parasites were in people following different lifestyles in the same medieval town.”

Cambridge researcher Tianyi Wang, who did the microscopy to spot the parasite eggs, said: “Roundworm was the most common infection, but we found evidence for whipworm infection as well. These are both spread by poor sanitation.”

Standard sanitation in medieval towns relied on the cesspit toilet: holes in the ground used for faeces and household waste. In monasteries, however, running water systems were a common feature – including rinsing out the latrine – although that has yet to be confirmed at the Cambridge site, which is only partly excavated. 

Not all people buried in Augustinian friaries were actually clergy, as wealthy people from the town could pay to be interred there. However, the team could tell which graves belonged to friars from the remains of their clothing.

“The friars were buried wearing the belts they wore as standard clothing of the order, and we could see the metal buckles at excavation,” said Craig Cessford of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit.

As roundworm and whipworm are spread by poor sanitation, researchers argue that the difference in infection rates between the friars and the general population must have been due to how each group dealt with their human waste.

“One possibility is that the friars manured their vegetable gardens with human faeces, not unusual in the medieval period, and this may have led to repeated infection with the worms,” said Mitchell.

Medieval records reveal how Cambridge residents may have understood parasites such as roundworm and whipworm. John Stockton, a medical practitioner in Cambridge who died in 1361, left a manuscript to Peterhouse college that included a section on De Lumbricis (‘on worms’).

It notes that intestinal worms are generated by an excess of various kinds of mucus: “Long roundworms form from an excess of salt phlegm, short roundworms from sour phlegm, while short and broad worms came from natural or sweet phlegm.”

The text prescribes “bitter medicinal plants” such as aloe and wormwood, but recommends they are disguised with “honey or other sweet things” to help the medicine go down.

Another text – Tabula medicine – found favour with leading Cambridge doctors of the 15th century, and suggests remedies as recommended by individual Franciscan monks, such as Symon Welles, who advocated mixing a powder made from moles into a curative drink.

Overall, those buried in medieval England’s monasteries had lived longer than those in parish cemeteries, according to previous research, perhaps due to a more nourishing diet, and a luxury of wealth.

Heat Wave Reveals 17th-Century English Gardens

A stately home’s “ghost gardens” have become visible after the recent extreme heat.

Grass on parts of Longleat’s baroque garden in Wiltshire has dried out to such an extent it has revealed historic features long buried in the landscape.

New overhead drone images of the imprints show what the grounds would have looked like in the 17th Century.

The parch marks have been described as an “invaluable window” into the site’s history.

Outlines of pathway fountains, long-lost walls and statues, as well as a maze and bowling green have emerged.

The images hint at what the 70-acre (4,046 sq m) gardens would have looked like four centuries ago.

The earliest visible features discovered so far are parts of the walled gardens to the front of Longleat House.

These date back to earlier in the 17th century and were painted by the renowned Flemish landscape artist Jan Siberechts in 1675, in what is believed to be the first painting of Longleat.

“It is fascinating to be able to see these ‘ghost’ gardens and other features literally appearing out of the ground around the house,” said curator James Ford.

“While we are extremely fortunate to have contemporary engravings and paintings here at Longleat, there is nothing to compare with actual physical evidence.

“These parch marks, that will entirely disappear again when the rain and cooler weather return, provide us with an invaluable window into a lost world and an opportunity to accurately plot the design and layout of these important elements of Longleat’s history,” he added.

As with many of the great estates, Longleat’s formal gardens were transformed into naturalistic parkland in the 18th century by landscape gardener ‘Capability’ Brown.

The 17th Century canals were transformed by teams of workmen, digging by hand, to create Half Mile Pond, which is now home to a colony of California sea lions and a pair of hippos.

50 Graves of Slaves Who Toiled at a Roman Villa Unearthed in England

Archaeologists have uncovered what may be the graves of 50 enslaved workers who laboured at an elite Roman villa just under 2,000 years ago in what is now southern England. 

These burials date to the Roman period in the United Kingdom, from about A.D. 43 to A.D. 410. Many of the deceased were buried with grave goods, such as pottery and brooches, in what is now Somerset, a county in southwest England.

“It’s relatively rare to excavate this number of Roman burials in our region, but in particular, in this case, we are very confident that all the burials are people who worked on a Roman villa estate,” said Steve Membery, a senior historic environment officer at South West Heritage Trust in the United Kingdom, which oversaw the archaeological excavation. 

These labourers likely weren’t paid for their work, he noted.

“They are most likely household servants, agricultural workers, and many may have technically been slaves,” Membery told Live Science in an email. “So, this is a rare opportunity to study a sample of a community.”

That community appears to be a culture native to the area and seems to have merged Iron Age and Roman era burial practices. Some of the buried individuals likely held a high status within their community, Membery added.

For instance, an older woman buried with her head on a pillow in a stone-built, coffin-like box (known as a cist) was likely an important person, he said. 

Archaeologists also found small nails at the foot of the burials, indicating that many of the people were laid to rest in leather hobnail boots, according to The Guardian. 

“The burials also show early adoption of Roman burial practices, such as offerings, alongside traditionally Iron Age characteristics,” Membery said in a statement. It’s likely that these were British individuals who began following the customs of the Roman invaders, but DNA tests will be needed to support that idea, Membery noted.

Archaeologists found the burials while surveying the area ahead of the construction of a new school.

The graves were dug into the bedrock, many with tops and bottoms lined with flat stones to create a coffin. Some of the graves had tented stone roofs, which are less common for this area, Membery said.

Archaeologists also found traces of Iron Age round-shaped houses as well as a Roman building, in the area. The villa itself has yet to be found, but an outhouse and a barn that may be part of it have been discovered, The Guardian reported.

During the excavation, researchers from Wessex Archaeology found a number of treasures, including pots that were placed next to the heads of most of the deceased. These pots were likely offerings, Membery said.

In addition, the team found coins with the likeness of the Roman emperor Vespasian (who reigned from A.D. 69 to 79), the carved bone that once was likely part of a knife handle and an unusual lead weight that was probably part of a survey tool called a groma, which is similar to a sextant.

“This site is a significant discovery — the most comprehensive modern excavation of a Roman cemetery in Somerset,” Membery said.

Rock Crystals Recovered from Neolithic Burial Mound in England

Distinctive and rare rock crystals were moved over long distances by Early Neolithic Brits and were used to mark their burial sites, according to groundbreaking new archaeological research.

Evidence for the use of rock crystal – a rare type of perfectly transparent quartz which forms in large hexagonal gems – has occasionally been found at prehistoric sites in the British Isles, but the little investigation has previously been done specifically into how the material was used and its potential significance.

A group of archaeologists from The University of Manchester worked with experts from the University of Cardiff and Herefordshire County Council on a dig at Dorstone Hill in Herefordshire, a mile south of another dig at Arthur’s Stone.

There, they studied a complex of 6000-year-old timber halls, burial mounds and enclosures from the Early Neolithic period, when farming and agriculture arrived in Britain for the first time. 

As well as a range of artefacts including pottery, stone implements and cremated bones, they uncovered rock crystal which had been knapped like the flint at the site, but unlike the flint, it had not been turned into tools such as arrowheads or scrapers – instead, pieces were intentionally gathered and deposited within the burial mounds.

The experts say the material was deposited at the site over many generations, potentially for up to 300 years.

Only a few places in the British Isles have produced pure crystals large enough to produce the material at Dorstone Hill, the closest being Snowdonia in North Wales and St David’s Head in South West Wales – this means that the ancient Brits must have carried the material across large distances to reach the site. 

As a result, the researchers speculate that the material may have been used by people to demonstrate their local identities and their connections with other places around the British Isles. 

“It was highly exciting to find the crystal because it is exceptionally rare – in a time before the glass, these pieces of perfectly transparent solid material must have been really distinctive,” said lead researcher Nick Overton.

“I was very interested to discover where the material came from, and how people might have worked and used it.”

“The crystals would have looked very unusual in comparison to other stones they used, and are extremely distinctive as they emit light when hit or rubbed together and produce small patches of rainbow – we argue that their use would have created memorable moments that brought individuals together, forged local identities and connected the living with the dead whose remains they were deposited with.„

Dr Nick Overton

The researchers plan to study materials found at other sites to discover whether people were working with this material in similar ways, in order to uncover connections and local traditions.

They also intend to look at the chemical composition of the crystal to find out if they can track down its specific source.  

7,000-Year-Old Forest and Footprints Uncovered in the Atlantis of Britain

Ancient footprints, as well as prehistoric tree stumps and logs, have become visible along a 200-meter stretch of a coastline at Low Hauxley near Amble, Northumberland, in what is believed to be Doggerland, the Atlantis of Britain.

The Daily Mail reports that the forest existed in the late Mesolithic period. It began to form around 5,300 BC, and it was covered by the ocean three centuries later.

The studies proved that at the time, when the ancient forest existed, the sea level was much lower. It was a period when Britain had recently separated from the land of what is currently Denmark.

The forest consisted mostly of hazel, alder, and oak trees. Researchers believe the forest was part of Doggerland, an ancient stretch of land, which connected the UK and Europe.

Doggerland: Stone Age Atlantis of Britain

Located in the North Sea, Doggerland is believed to have once measured approximately 100,000 square miles (258998 square kilometres). However, the end of the Ice Age saw a great rise in the sea level and an increase in storms and flooding in the region, causing Doggerland to gradually shrink.

Doggerland sometimes called the Stone Age Atlantis of Britain or the prehistoric Garden of Eden, is an area archaeologists have been waiting to rediscover. Finally, modern technology has reached a level in which their dreams may become a reality.

Doggerland is thought to have been first inhabited around 10,000 BC, and innovative technology is expected to aid a new study in glimpsing what life was like for the prehistoric humans living in the region before the catastrophic floods covered the territory sometime between 8000 – 6000 BC.

Sunken Land Reveals its Secrets

The latest research was made by a group of archaeologists and volunteers led by a team from Archaeological Research Services Ltd, which previously performed some other projects related to the Northumberland.

The works were possible due to the lower level of water. The major excavations involved a total of 700 people and uncovered part of an Iron Age site dating from around 300 BC near Druidge Bay.

Doctor Clive Waddington, of Archaeology Research Services, said:

”In 5,000 BC the sea level rose quickly and it drowned the land. The sand dunes were blown back further into the land, burying the forest, and then the sea receded a little. The sea level is now rising again, cutting back the sand dunes, and uncovering the forest.”

Ancient Footprints

Waddington maintains that his team also discovered evidence of humans living nearby. They found footprints of adults and children. Due to the results of the analysis of the footprints, it is believed that they wore leather shoes.  Animal footprints of wild boar, brown bears and red deer also had been found.

Fossilized Forests

The remains of the forest of Doggerland do not belong to the oldest known forest. The oldest fossilized forest was discovered by a team from Binghamton University in the town of Gilboa in upstate New York.

The Gilboa area has been known as a tree fossil location since the late 19th century. However, the first researchers arrived there in the 1920s.

The most recent research started in 2004, when Linda VanAller Hernick, palaeontology collection manager, and Frank Mannolini, palaeontology collection technician, uncovered more intact specimens.

According to the article published in 2012 by William Stein, associate professor of biological sciences at Binghamton, the fossils discovered in this area are between 370 to 380 million years old.

See the 5,000-year-old forest unearthed by storms: