The ancient skeleton of a man thrown upside down into a ditch with his hands tied in front of him has been unearthed outside London. The man may have been the victim of an Iron Age murder or execution.
Although archaeologists are not sure how the man died, their strange burial makes them suspect that foul play happened more than 2,500 years ago.
His hands were found together and trapped under his pelvis, although the ties have now rotted. It did not have a grave, and archaeologists found no signs of a coffin.
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“It appears that his hands had been tied and he was face down at the bottom of the ditch,” said archaeologist Rachel Wood, who led the excavation for the HS2 high-speed train developer. “There are not many ways that you end up that way.”
Scientists are now examining the skeleton to learn more about the man’s death, Wood told Live Science. Pottery shards found in the ditch could help them pinpoint when exactly the man died.
“If they hit him over the head with a heavy object, he could find a mark of that on the back of the skull,” he said. “If he was stabbed, you could find knife marks on his ribs. So we hope to find something like that, that tells us how he died.”
Wood and his colleagues made the gruesome find at Wellwick Farm, near Wendover, about 15 miles (25 km) northwest of the outskirts of London, where a rail tunnel will be built along the route through the Chiltern Hills. The farm is less than a mile from the Icknield Way – an ancient road, now mostly trails, that runs along the tops of the Chiltern Hills and has been used as a route since prehistoric times.
The area is covered in ancient sites, and there is evidence at Wellwick Farm of over 4,000 years of human occupation, from the Neolithic until medieval times, Wood said.
Old town
At the man’s “burial” site, Wood and colleagues found signs of an ancient village that had been occupied since the late Bronze Age, over 3,000 years ago, until most of southern Britain was invaded and ruled by the Roman Empire around 2,000. years ago.
They discovered the remains of animal pens, graves used to store food, and at least one round house – a typical British dwelling during the Bronze Age, with a low circular wall of stone or wood, up to 45 feet (15 meters) wide. and covered by a conical thatched roof.
Most people moved east of Wellwick Farm before the Roman period, a strip of the area continued to be used for burials, especially for high-status people, Wood said. That burial site, some distance from the ditch where the alleged murder victim was found, included a circular ditch near the center, about 60 feet (20 meters) wide. Nearby, archaeologists also found an ornate tomb from Roman times, when the Bronze Age burial site would have been covered in greenery after several hundred years. This Roman-era tomb contained an adult skeleton in a lead-lined coffin: the outer coffin, probably made of wood, had now rotted.
That finding suggested that the occupant of the grave was someone of especially high status who could afford an ornate burial, though no items from the grave were found, Wood said.
Ceremonial circle
Among the most notable archaeological finds at Wellwick Farm are traces of a huge ceremonial circle of wooden posts south of the Bronze Age burial site.
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The posts have rotted and only signs of the holes are left from the holes, but it is believed to date from the Neolithic period up to 5,000 years ago, Wood said.
The ceremonial circle would have spanned 210 feet (65 m) wide and would consist of two rings of hundreds of posts, with a gap or entrance to the southwest.
A structure of five posts in the center of the circle aligned with the same space, which appeared to be the direction of sunrise on the midwinter solstice, he said.
Neolithic wooden circles have also been found in other parts of Britain, including a nearby one Stonehenge in Wiltshire, believed to be of a similar age, Wood said.
The tunnel at Wellwick Farm is part of the HS2 high-speed rail network that will open between London and various northern cities after 2028.
But it has been a science blessing as more than 60 archaeological sites are being excavated along the route before construction continues.
Among the excavation findings for the HS2 project is the tomb of the English explorer who circumnavigated Australia in the early years of the 19th century, who was buried in a London cemetery being excavated in London
Originally published in Live Science.
