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Old bones see new light after 3,500 years underground
(By Journal Staff)
Ancient bones were exposed to daylight for the first time in 3,500 years when a coffin was opened at a burial ground. Duneland on the Northumber land coast gave up its dead for the second time in a week. The stone cist excavated yesterday was one of two unearthed by high winds at Druridge Bay It lay behind a similar metre-square coffin spotted by walkers near Low Hauxley, south of Amble. After careful digging, archaeologists gingerly lifted the lid to reveal the well-preserved skeleton, thought to be a young man.
County archaeologist Caroline Hardie said: "It's so exciting to
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be one of the first people to see something in 3,500 years.
The last people to see that body were the people who were at the funeral".
The body was lying, according to custom, with the head facing east. Experts were excited to see that, like last week's find, the cist included an intact pottery vessel. That is rare because although there are 30,000 known Bronze Age burial grounds nationally, most have been plundered in the past two centuries by people who wrongly thought they contained hidden treasures.
Ms Hardie said: "We can test the inside to find out what they were burying with the body, the dead were often buried with mead and joints of meat, presumably to keep them going into the afterlife."
Experts from Tyne and Wear archaeological service supervised the opening of the cist, which is close to the site of a similar find excavated by Edinburgh University academics 10 years ago. Small samples of bone will be sent to Florida for analysis with sophisticated dating equipment and to forensic scientists in Newcastle. Conservationists will preserve the pot.
Ms Hardie said: "If we hadn't excavated it, the body would just drop out on to the beach and be washed away or the bones will be picked up by dogs, so what we are doing is really rescuing it from that and getting archaeological information at the same time."
Both cists are likely to go on display at Druridge Bay's country park centre, though it is uncertain if the bones will be put on show. A mummy at Newcastle's Hancock Museum and the remains of a Roman soldier at South Shields have proved popular with the public, but Ms Hardie is unsure what will happen at Druridge "I don't know how sensitive people are to bones being displayed," she said. "They are very popular, but whether it's the respectful thing to do I'm not so sure".
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