![]() While their location inside the farmstead isn’t too strange, the position of these skeletons is quite unusual for this period. The archaeologists digging at Field 44 also found two burials dating to the Roman period, just inside the northern boundary of the settlement. The findings from Field 44 will then feed into wider research, helping archaeologists answer the big questions around burial rites in Iron Age Britain. The locations where they were found might also have a specific meaning or significance. As our osteologists (human bone experts) study them more closely over the coming months, we will be able to better understand how these marks came about.īy reading the signs left on these bones we will be able to reconstruct how human remains were treated by the people living at Field 44. Some of these bones have traces suggesting they may have been gnawed by scavenging animals or deliberately cut. Isolated fragments of human skull were found in different parts of the site, including inside one of the roundhouses. How does the evidence from Field 44 fit in all this? ![]() It is possible, however, that such complex rites were reserved for selected members of the community. Finally specific bones were recovered, often the skull or long bones, and kept by the community – sometimes for generations. It was then allowed to naturally decompose or be scavenged upon by animals until only the skeleton remained. These studies have shown that firstly, the body was left exposed to the elements or buried in a shallow grave. By looking at how bones decay and signs of animal gnawing, cut marks, and fractures that occurred after death, we can reconstruct these practices. Research on Iron Age human bones has suggested certain complex burial rituals occurred at the time. For a long time these isolated bones haven’t really been studied, because it was thought they could only provide limited information. Iron Age cemeteries are extremely rare and what archaeologists normally find are just individual bones recovered inside settlements. This makes it quite difficult to see the big picture. From burial mounds to complete skeletons, or just a few individual bones. Secondly, human remains found suggest different communities followed very different traditions. This might mean most people had burial rites that left no traces – like being deposited in water. Firstly, the Iron Age human remains found aren’t enough to account for the substantial population of the British Isles at the time. 800 BC-AD 43)? While we have plenty of evidence about people’s lives at the time, we have very little telling us about what happened after they passed away.Īrchaeologists face two different problems. One of the big questions archaeologists are still working to answer, is how people buried the dead in Britain during the Iron Age (c. How did they bury their dead in Iron Age England? ![]() The living and the dead were never far apart in this settlement and the evidence we found is helping to reveal more about ancient funerary practices. In this blog, we turn our attention to the human remains discovered at Field 44. Archaeological work continues on the proposed National Highways A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet improvements.
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