Anglo-Saxon Cemetery Found Beneath Demolished University Housing

[Judi Lynn]

The find may shed light on life in Britain after the withdrawal of Roman forces in the fifth century A.D.

By Livia Gershon
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
FEBRUARY 2, 2021

For decades, students and staff at Cambridge University slept on top of a roughly 1,500-year-old graveyard.

As Donna Ferguson reports for the Guardian, the British university’s King’s College discovered the Anglo-Saxon cemetery while tearing down 1930s buildings ahead of construction of new housing.

Caroline Goodson, a King’s College historian and archaeologist, tells the Guardian that because the remains are remarkably well preserved, researchers will be able to learn about everything from the deceased’s genetic relationships to the foods they ate.

“The alkaline soil, which is typical around here, hasn’t decomposed the bones,” she says.

The site is home to more than 60 graves, the majority of which date to between 400 and 650 A.D., reports Louis Hodgson for Cambridge’s independent student newspaper, Varsity. Many of the burials contain grave goods, including bronze brooches, weapons, pottery and bead necklaces. Archaeologists also discovered earthworks from the Roman period; a few of the graves may date to that era (43 to 410 A.D.).

Sam Lucy, a medieval archaeologist at Cambridge, tells BBC News that a “small cluster” of graves are deeper than the others and lined with stone, which was “not normally an early medieval practice.”

Per BBC News, archaeologists have known of the existence of an early medieval cemetery in west Cambridge since the 19th century. But as Goodson tells the Guardian, the team from Albion Archaeology was surprised to discover the burial site’s size. The find enhances scholars’ understanding of what happened in the area after the Roman military withdrew from Britain in the early fifth century.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/medieval-cemetery-found-under-demolished-college-housing-180976907/