Sometimes an archaeology news story or a new study comes along which has a deep emotional effect. A story which for me reminds me of what first made me fall in love with archaeology. Last night I got a notification of a story on LiveScience about an Anglo-Saxon double burial which was one such story.
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| The double burial in southwest England was first excavated in September 2024. (Image credit: © Harvey Mills / Time Team) |
Furthering to the connection of my own archaeology origin story the story came from the revival of Time Team - the TV series which, for all its faults, spurred a generation of people to study and get involved in archaeology.
A dig in Gloucestershire in September 2024 had uncovered a double burial dating from the Anglo-Saxon period. The grave dates from the seventh century and both the occupants were relatively young - one was a teenager, the other a younger child. The younger child was a boy of around 7 or 8, and was buried with an iron sword. The older was a girl, in her teens, buried with a workbox, and a necklace, and the orientation suggested her head had been propped up on something now lost. The double burial of two young children would be emotional enough, but a new study of their DNA carried out at the Francis Crick Institute had revealed that the pair were brother and sister.
We do not, and may never, know what caused their deaths - but it could well have been a fast acting pathogen. Here we come against one of the hard problems of palaeopathology - the vast majority of pathogens leave little evidence of changes in the skeleton - changes in morphology (the shape of the bones) or condition (changes like for example those caused by Hansen's disease or osteoporosis. Further DNA study may reveal the cause of their deaths, but until such work it done, we can only speculate.
For me, this burial raises some of the regular questions of archaeology. Did they suffer or did death come quickly? Was it a particular pathogen - one we know? Was it part of a wider outbreak or epidemic? Could there be other signs of the disease in local excavations - more burials, abandoned villages? But it also raises some of the unanswerable questions. Which of them passed away first? Who placed the necklace around her neck? Was it her mother? Did she comb out her hair as she was laid out in the grave? Who chose the sword to be buried with the boy - perhaps a symbol of the hoped for warrior he might have become? Was it made for him, or had it belonged to someone else before? Did they gather and recall stories of their children's lives? Remembering a favourite joke, or a fleeting moment of joy? We cannot answer these questions, but for me asking them is a reminder to one of the fundamentals of archaeology - we are not just excavating artefacts or 'treasure' or just the last remains of people - we are uncovering their lives which have so many connections to our own stories being lived out all around us. Every new study not only tells us more about the past, it tells us more about the present and about ourselves.
Because this story came close after the death of one of my favourite vocalists, from one of my favourite bands, I was particularly reminded of the lyrics to the sound 'Poison Glen' from the album Anam by the Irish band Clannad. In her signature vocal style, the late and much lamented Máire Brennan, sings a repeated motif at the end of each verse:
Feeling something from long ago...
Feeling spirits of long ago...
Feeling something from long ago...
Feeling everything from long ago...
For me the sums up how I often feel when new studies reveal these glimpses of our collective human past, and the ever shifting broad vista that they add up to.
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