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Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
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The first dig at the famous Tower of London in a generation has unearthed more than 20 skeletal remains.
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The excavations revealed everything from a 14th– the burial of the century black death group at three skeletons from the end of year 12th or early 13th centuries buried in coffins.
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The on-site chapel serves as a teller of London’s medieval history.
A rare dig into the soil of the famed Tower of London – the first dig at the site in a generation – has revealed two skeletons from around 1500. As archaeologists dug deeper into the ground, they found around 20 more burials, including a group grave possibly linked to the 1348 ‘Black Death’ plague.
“Conducting these two excavations has given us a generational opportunity to improve our understanding of the development outside the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula and the buildings that came before it,” Alfred Hawkins, curator of historic buildings at the Royal Historic Palaces, the organization that oversees the Tower, said in a statement.
The excavation began as a test dig in 2019 to prepare the Royal Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula on the site for a new lift. Archaeologists leading the dig discovered the remains of two skeletons. Subsequent excavations outside the chapel at a depth of 10 feet below the surface revealed everything from a 14.th– the burial of the century black death group at three skeletons from the end of year 12th or early 13th centuries buried in coffins—an unusually expensive burial for the time.
Jane Sidell, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments at Historic England, said the team were now gaining an insight into the Tower’s inhabitants in a way they had never done before. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said in a statement. “There is much more to be learned through further analysis of the people as well as the buildings of one of England’s most evocative historic monuments.”
The Tower of London was built along the River Thames in the 1070s as a royal palace. It also served as a prison for high-status individuals (including King Henry VI) and housed the country’s Royal Mint. But he seems to have almost always had a chapel on his grounds.
The current parish church for the residents of the Tower of London was built in 1520 after a fire in 1512 consumed the one built by King Edward I in 1287. A compacted layer of stone found in recent excavation may be a 1240 design on the site ruled by Henry III, showing that there was a chapel before 1287.
And since the present chapel is on the same land as the earlier foundations of the Tower chapel, burials abound. Among recent discoveries, older burials may even have been buried inside one of the long-destroyed chapels. “Typically, if you’re buried closer to the church, you’re more important, and if you’re buried inside the church, you’re much, much more important, and if you’re buried under the altar, you’re the most important person,” Hawkins said, according to him. National Geographic.
Known burials at the site include three queens and two Catholic saints, but learning more about the unknown skeletons could help piece together the site’s medieval story.
“The new excavations offer the opportunity to transform our understanding of the Tower community,” Katie Faillace of Cardiff University’s School of History, Archeology and Religion said in a statement. “Our work uses a biomolecular technique known as isotopic analysis, which tells us about past health, diet and mobility, all from a small fragment of a tooth. This cutting-edge method had unparalleled potential to reconstruct the experiences of people who lived and died at the Tower, allowing us to build a rich picture of people’s lives.”
Analysis of the first two skeletons begins to develop this picture. Richard Madgwick, an archaeological scientist at Cardiff University and part of the team, said National Geographic that one individual was probably a middle-aged woman who died between 1480 and 1550. Evidence indicates that she probably lived as far as Wales at one point and had a diet of sugar – an expensive ingredient at the time.
The second skeleton belonged to a younger man who died around the same time. The details of his remains show a stressful life, which probably took place just north of London. His diet was much less exotic.
“I look forward to beginning the analysis of some of the other amazing discoveries we have made along the way,” Hawkins said. “This is a very, very rare opportunity to get this information.”
Along with the remains, the team found a rare burial shroud from the end of Year 12th or early 13th century (fabric does not usually last through the ages), jewellery, shards of stained glass and rare funerary objects in the form of funerary censers, dated between 1150 and 1250 (with charcoal still inside).
“Right now we have these two wonderful biographies,” Madgwick said. “It hints at the dynamic movement of people and the dynamic life trajectories of the people who were buried in the Tower, but it will be very interesting to see if we’ve picked out two anomalies or if we see the wider range of lifestyles that we see of those buried here.”
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