A human jawbone with teeth has been found placed in a massive whalebone vertebra at a prehistoric cairn in Orkney

In 1901, a local amateur antiquarian, the Reverend Alexander Goodfellow, made a strange discovery in Orkney.

Writing in a report for a group known as the Viking Club, he told of a “souterrain” – an earth-house, or an underground prehistoric passageway.

In the mid-20th century, the landowner’s father accidentally uncovered a narrow opening towards a large voided chamber. He hastily covered up the entrance on a site previously noted as “a mound of indeterminate nature”, with the exact location never recorded. Decades later, archaeologist Martin Carruthers and a team of excavators carried out geophysical detective work at the Cairns in an attempt to find out more about mysterious souterrain-style structures on the island of South Ronaldsay.

They found a well-preserved Bronze Age house full of invaluable leftovers at Windwick. But starting with a broch - a kind of prehistoric stone tower - the recent discoveries at The Cairns have been remarkable in their oddness.

“Let me give you some context,” says Carruthers. “Quite low down against the broch wall, a single tooth was discovered – quite worn and suspiciously human-like. “We were just digesting this fact when we found more human remains. This time we had uncovered a large piece of a human mandible – the lower jawbone.

“It was found about 40 centimetres to the south of the first tooth and the single tooth still present on this mandible appeared to be similarly worn to the first.”

They then noticed a whalebone and a set of full-length deer antlers. “They were laid out snug against each other and the southern side of the whalebone vessel, almost cradling it,” says Carruthers. “It now looks like the whole event that led to the deposition of the human jaw involved quite a formal laying out of the various objects – the whalebone, the deer antlers, a large saddle quern and stone mortar, as well as portions of a juvenile pig and a juvenile cattle vertebra.”

This extraordinary line-up, understates Carruthers, is “quite an interesting little assemblage”, drawn together “in a moment of reflection” by someone who put them on the ground before abandoning the broch and cramming it with rubble.

There could be more surprises when the team lifts the whalebone, but the human bones were a bit unexpected at a settlement site which had revealed few human parts until this week. Carruthers had been “constantly” considering the possibility of them appearing. “Iron Age settlement sites of the period do, fairly often, yield pieces of human skeletons,” he explains.

“Often these are only partial remains – an arm bone here, or a partially articulated hip and leg bone there. There are even fairly common occurrences of human heads, in particular, from Iron Age sites.”

The bones are not as ominous as you might think. “There’s nothing apparently sinister in all this. There’s not too much evidence that these are particularly gruesome outcomes of violent activity.  “When you consider the context in which these remains have been found, interesting patterns emerge. Often, they turn up in deposits that are being formed at sites when there is major change under way.

“Frequently, they are found associated with the foundation and construction of major buildings, like broches and roundhouses, or sometimes towards the end of such buildings’ lives – when they’re in the process of decommissioning and abandonment.

“It looks like the deposition of these disarticulated human remains was not part of a funeral ritual. It’s not about dealing with the dead.

“The bones seem to have been used to make an even more significant act of these rituals of foundation or abandonment.”

The body parts could have been pretty old when they were buried, and might have been linked to high-status individuals. “Then the deposition of parts of these renowned persons, in foundations or in the infill of buildings, might have been an appropriate and powerful way of accentuating just how significant the lifecycles of these buildings actually were for the community,” says Carruthers.

“From the very preliminary information that we are able to work from just now, our human jaw  appears to be deposited in the context of the abandonment of the broch and its covering, both inside and out,  with rubble.

The jawbone appears to have been placed in a stone feature built against the broch wall and covered up by the rubble.”

The discovery was “sobering” and “sombre” for the excavators, who had been hugely excited by a perfectly-preserved chamber in the wall of the broch the previous day.

“As the dig came to a halt, everyone was drawn to the hole in the wall of the broch. Looking inside, we could see a wonderful complete and immaculate chamber set within the wall,” says Kevin Kerr, the Finds Supervisor of a job which required a few scrapes and half a bucket of removals to reveal itself.

“You can see the void as a dark patch above the rubble. The roof is still in place and the wall stonework also appears to be intact. We were the first people to see into this space for perhaps 2,000 years.”

Carruthers echoes his sense of incredulity when he describes the jawbone. “It really does pull you up short,” he says. “It reminds you in the most direct terms of the basic humanity of this place.”
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Reference:

Miller, Ben. 2016. “A human jawbone with teeth has been found placed in a massive whalebone vertebra at a prehistoric cairn in Orkney”. Culture 24. Posted: July 8, 2016. Available online: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art558332-prehistoric-cairn-whalebone-teeth-orkney-island

Bronze Age Britons Mummified Their Dead, Analysis Reveals

The rainy climate of the British Isles might not seem like the best place to preserve human bodies through time, but a new scientific analysis of ancient bones reveals that Bronze Age Britain was a mummy hotspot.

Specifically, archaeologists found that human remains had been preserved in various ways during the Bronze Age, a period lasting from about 2200 B.C. to 750 B.C.

At first glance, the analyzed skeletal remains might not look like mummies, the researchers said. That's because the region's wet climate has long since disintegrated the fleshy tissue, including the skin and organs, from the human bones found buried in the ground. But archaeologists, who have uncovered a number of Bronze Age skeletons over the years, now can analyze the bones to determine whether they were once mummified, the researchers said in a study. 

"The results demonstrate that Bronze Age populations throughout Britain practiced mummification on a proportion of their dead, although the criteria for selection are not yet certain," the researchers wrote.

When people die, their gut bacteria — which usually aid in digestion — turn against them.

"After you die and your cells start to break down, the kind of internal gates that keep your bacteria within their locales break down as well," said study lead researcher Thomas Booth, a postdoctoral student of Earth sciences at the Natural History Museum in London. Booth completed the research when he was a doctoral student in archaeology at the University of Sheffield in England.

"Your bacteria — they have no loyalty," Booth told Live Science. "They start to attack your soft tissues in the first few hours after death."

These gut bacteria can eventually get into the bones, leaving behind microscopic tunnels as they devour proteins in a dead person's skeleton, research suggests.

Archaeologists have seen evidence of this bacterial tunneling — called bacterial bioerosion — in multitudes of bones. But if the body has been mummified, or purposely preserved with natural and man-made techniques, the bones tend to have few or no microscopic tunnels, Booth said.

When he and his colleagues looked at skeletons from the Bronze Age in Britain, "they were showing only a little bit of bacterial attack, or none at all," Booth said. "And, therefore, the best explanation for Bronze Age remains is that they had been mummified, but the preserved soft tissue subsequently degraded away because of the climate."

Bronze Age bodies

The researchers did a microscopic analysis on the bones of 301 people, retrieved from 25 European archaeological sites. In most cases, they looked at the femur, a long bone in the leg, Booth said.

Of these, 34 individuals were from the Bronze Age. More than half of the samples showed evidence that the person had been buried immediately, but 16 had "excellent bone preservation," compared with mummies from Ireland and Yemen, indicating that these Bronze Age people were mummified after death, the researchers wrote. 

The finding gives researchers a glimpse of howBronze Age people treated the dead, and "opens up how we approach the Bronze Age in Europe," Booth said. It's likely the Bronze Age Britons used a variety of ways to mummify the dead, including temporarily placing them in bogs, smoking them over a fire or removing their organs after death, he said.

The study is the first time researchers have used this type of analysis to identify specific funerary treatments in archaeological bones, he said. It also reminds other scientists that "even if you don't have preserved soft tissue at a site, it doesn't mean that people weren't mummifying at the site," Booth said.

The study was published online today (Sept. 30) in the journal Antiquity.
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Reference:

Geggel, Laura. 2016. “Bronze Age Britons Mummified Their Dead, Analysis Reveals”. Live Science. Posted: September 30, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/52349-bronze-age-britain-mummies.html

Bone bow and arrow wrist guard and pottery found with Bronze Age body in Drumnadrochit

DRUMNADROCHIT'S earliest-known resident, who lived around 4500 years ago, wore a stone guard on his wrist when using a bow and arrow and favoured geometric designs on his kitchenware.

Following the discovery last month of an early Bronze Age burial cist in the village, archaeologists have found shards of pottery and a wrist guard on the same site.

Now, work is ongoing to glean as much information as possible about the finds, and it is even hoped to determine the gender of the skeletal remains – though it is thought the archery equipment may provide a clue.

The cist and artefacts were uncovered during works preparing the site of the NHS Highland’s replacement Drumnadrochit Health Centre.

Heather Cameron, senior project manager with the health board, said: “We are particularly excited to have uncovered the pottery and wrist guard in what appeared to be a second grave next to the first, and I think we will be looking to mount a display on the finds somewhere in the new building when it opens at the end of the year.”

Mary Peteranna, of AOC Archaeology Group, has been working on what she described as “significant” finds for NHS Highland.

She said: “The shards are of around two-thirds of a beaker pot which will probably have been around 20-30cm high. What makes them particularly interesting is that there is some organic material adhering to the base of the pot, so we may find out something about its contents.

“The shards have a distinctive decoration which may have been made on the clay before firing in a stabbing movement with something like a feather quill.

“The wrist guard is also particularly exciting. It has holes so that it could be tied to the wrist with a leather strap, and may have been ornamental or functional.”

The skeletal remains, which may be of an adult or near adult, comprise of most of a person’s long bones along with part of the skull and a number of teeth. It is hoped to be able to determine scientifically the sex of the person, and perhaps even the cause of death.

The artefacts have been photographed, recorded and removed and will now be undergoing specialist, detailed analysis. A decision will then be taken about what to do with them.

Archaeologists have investigated a 4m x 4m area on the site, which lies just off the A82. NHS Highland said that, with ground clearance work having been completed, it is not planned at this stage to carry out further archaeological work there. However, with more construction work planned on the other side of the main road, where houses and retail units are to be built, further finds have not been ruled out.

The new, £1.5 million health centre is being built on a greenfield site near the existing health centre in Balmacaan Road. It will feature enhanced GP facilities, community services, additional clinical services and social work facilities. It has been designed to accommodate wider use by the general public out of working hours, and will have capacity for future expansion if needed.
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Reference:

Staff Reporter. 2015. “Bone bow and arrow wrist guard and pottery found with Bronze Age body in Drumnadrochit”. Inverness Courier. Posted: February 3, 2015. Available online: http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/News/Bone-bow-and-arrow-wrist-guard-and-pottery-found-with-Bronze-Age-body-in-Drumnadrochit-03022015.htm

Stonehenge's secret: archaeologist uncovers evidence of encircling hedges

Survey of landscape suggests prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges



The Monty Python knights who craved a shrubbery were not so far off the historical mark: archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of The Great Stonehenge Hedge.

Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric

banks. The best guess of the archaeologists from English Heritage, who carried out the first detailed survey of the landscape of the monument since the Ordnance Survey maps of 1919, is that the hedges could have served as screens keeping even more secret from the crowd the ceremonies carried out by the elite allowed inside the stone circle.

Their findings are revealed tomorrow in British Archaeology magazine, whose editor, Mike Pitts, an archaeologist and expert on Stonehenge himself, said: "It is utterly surprising that this is the first survey for such a long time, but the results are fascinating. Stonehenge never fails to reveal more surprises."

"The time these two concentric hedges around the monument were planted is a matter of speculation, but it may well have been during the Bronze Age. The reason for planting them is enigmatic."

Pitts wonders if the hedges might have been to shelter the watchers from the power of the stones, as much as to ward off their impious gaze.

If the early Bronze Age date is correct, when the hedges were planted the Stonehenge monument already had the formation now familiar to millions of tourists, after centuries when the small bluestones from west Wales and the gigantic sarsens from the Stonehenge plain were continually rearranged.

The survey also found puzzling evidence that there may once have been a shallow mound among the stones, inside the circle. It was flattened long ago, but is shown in some 18th century watercolours though it was written off as artistic licence by artists trying to make the site look even more picturesque. The archaeologists wonder if the circle originally incorporated a mound which could have been a natural geological feature, or an even earlier monument.

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References:

Kennedy, Maev. 2010. "Stonehenge's secret: archaeologist uncovers evidence of encircling hedges". Guardian. Posted: February 4, 2010. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/04/stonehenge-hedge-discovery