“Archaeological Revelations: The Mysterious Bronze Age Woman Unearthed Beneath Britain’s Modern Streets”
SWAT ArchaeologyThe site in Thanet where the Bronze Age woman was discovered alongside other human remains and Bronze Age objects.
“Coming into the job it was very likely that we would encounter burials on site due to there being several archaeological excavations within the surrounding vicinity of the site that have recorded burial landscapes from the Early Bronze Age through to at least the Anglo-Saxon period,” Dan Worsley, the site project manager, told All That’s Interesting in an email. “We had some idea of the scale and significance of the archaeology on site but of course there are always still surprises… We think that we… caught the edge of an Early Bronze Age cemetery, located to the south.”
The woman, who archaeologists believe was between the ages of 30 and 35, was found in a curled position in a burial pit. This is called a “crouch burial” — a common practice in the Bronze Age — and involves the dead being buried on their sides with their knees pulled up to their chests.
“The individual’s good oral health, affected only by a slight calcified dental plaque, suggested a low intake of food sugars and suboptimal dental hygiene,” Worsley explained to All That’s Interesting, noting that the skeleton’s average height suggested that she didn’t have a “privileged” position in Bronze Age society. “The individual had stress related trauma that affected four lumbar vertebrae, suggestive of disc degeneration. The individual also presented a lytic lesion of the front of the pelvis, a fracture where the bone is pulled away from the main bone mass by a sudden powerful muscle contraction, an injury prevalent in modern day athletes.”
