Archaeologists find one of the largest ever Anglo-Saxon burial sites

As part of the high speed rail development archaeological digs are conducted to ensure history isn't destroyed before the destruction (sorry , construction) begins , so for archaeologists HS2 is actually a good thing , in Wendover, Buckinghamshire archaeologists have discovered one of the largest Anglo-Saxon burial sites ever found with 141 graves , the graves date back to the Dark Ages at time follwing the departure of the Romans to around the time of the invasion by William the Bastard in 1066.

Lead archaeologist Dr Rachel Wood described the finds as highly unusual.

"Finding Anglo-Saxon cemeteries is quite rare, it does happen - but not very often. It's really, really unique," she said.

The discoveries are said to be of national significance, dating back to the 5th and 6th century, a period in which the team says there are gaps in historical and archaeological record.

A team of 30 field archaeologists initially made the discovery in 2021 and have since been sorting and cataloguing the finds.

Many of the 141 burials were found with two brooches on their collarbone, indicating they were holding up garments such as a cloak.

There's also evidence of a murder.

One skeleton - thought to be that of a male aged between 17 and 24 - was found with a sharp iron object embedded in the spine of the individual, which was likely his cause of death.

Osteologist Rose Calis told Sky News it is easy to let the imagination run wild with these finds: "We have to try to keep an open mind as possible.

"What we can tell is that this blade was left in the individual when they died so it's very possible it was a cause of death.

"Also, we have the blade mark in the second lumbar vertebrae, and we can also roughly tell the direction of the stab wound and we think it was from the front rather than the back."
news.sky.com... 5

Picture of the "murder weapon" next to the spine it was embedded in.


Those were the days.

a reply to: gortex
Nice. This should yield a lot of little gems. I expect a book or two will come out of this find.

do you think that that's part of a weird arrow head?

a reply to: gortex

a reply to: gortex

They are going to find a lot of things but to me the idea of a bunch of modern day grave robbers digging up the bones of my ancestors is disgusting and a little upsetting.

The Angles and Saxon's began as Pagans but ended up Christian by the time the Danes and other Vikings began there invasions.

Still they weathered those only for the Normans to then cross the Channel and invade stealing the throne from the English and putting the English and finally the Welsh as well as the Scots under the cruelty of the Norman Oppression which lasted for more than 400 years.

On his death Bed the Conqueror admitted his foul deed's though his confession does not express the grim fate of the English during those times which included the Norman lords having the right to rape and kill on a whim as well as having the right under there EVIL laws to have sex with the Saxon Virgin brides on there wedding night before they ever got to see there husbands - if the fancy so took the Norman Lord - ancestors of our modern aristocracy - that is.
historytavern.blogspot.com...
He also EXPLODED when he was being buried.
www.historic-uk.com...

IF these are Christian burials and even if they are not digging them up just so some morbid bone freak can add some bones to there collection is actually an act of desecration and yes I know they can learn a lot of things which I have nothing against so long as they treat these people with the due respect they deserve.

If they will give this respect to Maori and Australian Tribal body's sending them home to be buried with respect and honour by there people then they most certainly should treat our own with no less respect.

a reply to: chris_stibrany

I think it might be a crossbow bolt head. I mean it could be the tip of something which would explain the lodging. Hit History is doing or did a small documentary on the site... I'll see if I can find it.

Absolutely fascinating. I love things like this, it links us closer to the past. A time we've long forgotten.

Cheers for this thread, archaeology and anthropology are fascinating to me.

a reply to: gortex

As always interesting thread Gortex.

Good stuff.

a reply to: Cutepants

Beautiful, I still think it was an injustice done to a noble warrior that held back the entire Saxon army but those that slew him (the snuck under the bridge and stabbed him from beneath with a spear or spears since none could face him in battle and he was able to hold back the entire army on the narrow bridge) were soon to join him in death at the battle of Hastings, there body's were treated with far less respect by the Normans however whom left them to rot for years and denied them burial.

The battle of Stanford Bridge could also be called the battle of the two Harold's though there is probably at least one other battle with that name, Still to this day most people in the north of England have Danish and Norwegian ancestry as well as Saxon and Angle mixed but in fact almost all (ethnic) British have still got Celtic British female ancestry so while they - we are also heirs to the long legacy of the Nordic history's we are also genuinely at home in Britain with our other ancestral lines and that exchange of genes went both ways of course with some genetic ancestry among the Greenlanders for example actually being Celtic British and many raiders taking woman home with them, in the time of the Romans British woman were often regarded as very beautiful and famously with red, auburn and golden blonde hair being common among the British at that time as well as brown of course, Boudicca for instance was said to be a fiery red head.

For those that do not know the story of the battle of Stanford Bridge here is a video.


You know it was only a mistake that gave the Losing Normans the battle at Hasting's, an attack upon the Saxon shield wall had failed and the Normans involved in that attack were running away but the men in that part of the Shield wall were NOT the veterans of the Saxon army but the least experienced and they broke there own line chasing after the fleeing Normans, this gave William an opportunity and he sent his cavalry into the gap.

Harold Godwinson's men defended him to the last and he fought to his death, after the battle his body was gelded (castrated a warning to any heirs that they would be killed should them try to claim the throne) and mutilated so badly his wife Edith the Swan Necked (Edith Swan Neck) could only recognize him by a birth mark, what became of her and any children they may have had is a mystery but likely she was either killed, entered a convent or made a trophy wife though her fate is not known.

If Harold Godwinson had not lost some of his best men at Stanford Bridge the Normans would undoubtedly have lost.

As far as I know to this day unless it is in a lost writing somewhere no one knows the name of the warrior that held back the Saxon's for so long on that bridge until he was killed by being stabbed from below.

a reply to: LABTECH767

"Prima Nocta"; the first night with a bride as a lord has been debunked. Most if not all references are from later centuries.



en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Butterfinger

That may be but I do still hold that they were the cruellest thing that happened to the British people for a very long time.

But you know the Scottish nobility were if anything even worse though that only became apparent much, much later one as late in fact as the 18th and 19th century's beginning with the massacre at Glen Coe following the defeat of the Jacobite Army (the perversity is actually that the Scots were loyalists to the legitimate heir to the British throne although he was an idiot that wasted his army at Culloden were due to the boggy ground the Scot's could not perform there signature highland charge though to be fair the British and "Scot's" army that faced them was actually much better than the other army's they had faces prior to this point or I would believe they were, add to this the weird historical facts about how the Campbell's and Stuarts (Stewarts) had literally traded places over the course of history with the Stuarts once being allied to the English while the Campbell's had been back then against the English and now it was the Campbell's turn to be allied to the English while the Stuart's were against them.

Then in the 18th century Queen Victoria made visits to the highlands fashionable and many wealthy English wanted to copy and emulate there queen and hunt stag and grouse, this in turn created a lucrative market to pander to the wealthy tourists and through corruption, outright theft and lies many people whom had actually OWNED there own land suddenly found they did not own it as there Laird's (Scottish Lords) with the help of Scotland's corrupt and fraudulent legal system at that time then started to seize these people's lands and claim them as there own evicting them from there own homes were they had lived in some cases for as long as there family's could be traced, overnight almost the Scottish highlands were made barren of people, entire villages erased from map's some as large as small town's BUT even prior to this Scotland has been a cruel place, it dragged it's feet after the English abolished slavery for example and it remains legal for several years after north of the Border, people whom worked as miners were an interesting case as the Scot's had passed laws even prior to this that affectively made them property of the mine owner so it was not racism but the elite of Scotland were literally nearly as bad as the Normans had once been, many of those Lairds did have Norman Blood but that is another matter.

Had it not been for the Land Clearances that the Scottish Nationalists LOVE to blame upon the English when in FACT it was THERE OWN LAIRD's and Corrupt Government at that time that committed the crime Scotland today may have a population between 35 to 45 million people but instead it's population despite it being more than two thirds as large as England or perhaps even larger than that if you count all the isles is just shy of 5.3 million so the land clearances could be ranked as an act of Genocide and social cleansing since the victims were universally poor farmers, the title Tenant was only applied to some of them when there land was actually stolen.

A similar bit of history is the Irish Potato Famine without which despite the grinding poverty of the Irish economy at that time that may still have caused an exodus to the colonies robbed Ireland of so very many lives and was once again blamed on the English (whom actually were 'in part' to blame due to an evil government taking over though the previous government was trying to do something to help the Irish whom remember at that time were British Citizen's albeit like the rest of the country only the upper middle class and above had the vote) while in fact the main landlord within Ireland was not the English but the Irish Catholic Church whom continued to sell there produce to the English merchants and allowed there people to die of starvation and poverty while condemning the very people they were selling the meagre produce that Ireland was still producing to from the pulpit showing a historical hypocrisy, being part Irish myself I can see the anger and the need to blame someone but once again like the Scot's wanting to blame the English for nationalist and SECTARIAN reasons the same was definitely true of the IRISH nationalist's.

In part this intolerance toward the English had its roots in the fact that during Henry the Eighth's reign the English monarchy and Lords had stolen the wealth of the English Catholic church, it's lands and murdered monk's, nun's and priests that had tried to stand in there way, the persecution of Catholic's was so bad that despite the English still being mostly at that time Catholic's the priests of the Catholic church could only operate in secrecy hiding in Priest holes (hidden room's) in sympathetic lords and wealth people's houses, this persecution of the Catholic church also stretched north into Scotland and west into Wales and Ireland and the government was dead set upon planting Anglican (English Catholics that had renounced the papacy in Rome and accepted instead the Sitting monarch as the head of the Church - I always thought that Jesus was the head of the Church but what do I know?) and Protestant (since Henry the Eighth had allied himself to the Protestant powers in Europe after his excommunication for murdering his wives and divorcing them simply because he was a dangerous wife killer that wanted a son and they kept giving him daughters) preachers in place of the Catholic priests but in most of Scotland at that time AND in Ireland this did not go down at all well with the people and despite attempt's to suppress the Catholic church the support of the people was such that doing so would spark revolts that were often then bloodily suppressed.

This Sectarian hatred spread both way's and to the shame of England one of the first places, in fact the First place to ever be bombed from the air was actually an Irish village - SUSPECTED - of harbouring IRA members in which an early biplane flew over it and dropped hand grenades upon the Village.

Our government in the UK at least in England really started to change once first the common man and later woman gained the right to vote, it was at this time that pompous nasty men with no respect for the common person began to be replaced but there legacy still lives on in many modern politician's ironically in the Tory (conservative) party of the UK today though like the Cambpells and scot's they also have had a change of personality.

At one time the Liberals or WIGS as they were more rightly known were a party that was NOT liberal at all and was at times far more right wing and for the ELITE than the Tory's party was, back then the Tory's were even happy to let a German Jewish immigrant called Benjamin Disraeli become there leader and to eventually become Prime Minister, he reformed society or began the reform's that culminated under the later Labour Government that came to power after WW2 by bringing in laws to limit child labour and to give children the beginnings of a state based education system among other reform's, it is funny that today's Tory's are actually the spiritual and moral heirs of the old WIGS rather than the old Reformist Tory's of that period.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Beg to differ, being a European mutt who's has considerable trouble tracing a particular lineage more than 300 years back. After a few generations, its just names on paper, and maybe some bones somewhere. Or maybe theyre completely reabsorbed back into the soil as a nutrient component again.

Stardust and whatnot, those rosy death ideology glasses are nice until you realize they're a bit asinine, the dead give no #s about someone they never lived to meet centuries post-death. Actually, let's change course a bit, for common sense. Have you ever stopped & wondered how many people's bone structure minerals YOU ate via plants over your lifetime? They uptake that stuff regardless of source, but nah, betcha never think that far down the decomp road (I'll give a break, it IS centuries/thousands of years later)

A thousand+ years out, and it's just remnants in the ground. Just like you, and I, will both become once the last living person who knew us kicks it if someone can learn something abput their own past from my cremains being cracked open, so be it, Im not here anymore, lol, greener esoteric pastires abound.

Supposedly.

Death superstitions like overly reverent No Touchy stances seen to indicate a subconscious (oraybe conscious) fear of otherwise, though. Chew on it, maybe?

a reply to: Nyiah

I see your point of view but will raise you mine, I believe there is NO death only the falling away of our worn out body's, I do believe the personality does survive after death, how much they continue to care about his world though I do not know.

But every parent that raises kid's knows you live to place the foundation of the future, it is only todays generation of selfish short sighted materialistic idiots that have forgotten them, they also forget that if they do not care for there elderly parent's and pack them off to some care home somewhere in the name of there OWN selfish freedoms it will also come to bite them on there own arses very hard as there children do the same to them, sadly our modern generation therefore is corrupt and I would argue corrupt by design of those whom have manipulated us into this in order to create a disposable population.


Now as to address that lack of believe in Consciousness it is based in part on the concept of local consciousness rather than non local consciousness, it took thousand of years for people to figure out the brain is more important in this than the heart for example (But people whom have had heart transplants have often reported very strange personality changes, dream's and memories that are NOT there own?).
Ever hear of the concept of parallel universes and branching reality's?.

The branching reality's may not be as separate from us as you may think and there may be some feedback that is NOT in the brain but something else, energy that spans these branching reality's call it a quantum soul or spirit if you like, it may experience multiple reality's at once and so we sometimes experience Deja vu etc, prolepsis and precognition as a result of this.

Now imagine that energy is real, your body dies are you dead or does that branching reality energy that is still connected to you alive in reality's were you have NOT died still exist in reality's were you HAVE and bridge through and over them to other reality's were you are still alive, if so does it support a continued residual perhaps more real consciousness that only began in your body but has continued on from there?.
(not actually my believe BUT I do believe in life after death but a handy thought tool to get my point across, it seems to often be angry people and those that choose not to believe because of guilt or fear that claim there is nothing after death, that and those that are weak and bow to peer pressure and mental fashion which today is to deny the spiritual OR to go and seek after weird new age crap to try to fill the void that abandoning established religion and belief has left for so many people creating a hunger and need to fill that void that New Age cult's and crystal salesmen are only too happy to exploit).

a reply to: LABTECH767

One, sum it TH up already, please, Im skimming that at best here because my eyes keep crossing. All I can infer is that you seem to think remains are corporeal post-death energy anchors.

And you still totally avoided that ingestion aspect. Ever considered how many fragments of someone's corporeal enegy anchors you've uptaken into your body via your foods' nutrient sources?

If ypu cannot answer that and comprehend the point, don't bother with more word salad.

a reply to: gortex

So , a Bunch of White Anglo Saxon Men Found with Weapons . How Many Non Anglo Saxons Presently Living in Brittan Somehow Feel Threatened by that ? Hmm...

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Nyiah

deleted interesting philosophical consideration

or

We are animals and when we die - that's it. Some estimates puts the number of previous Homo Sapiens at around 100-160 BILLION who have come and gone not to count all those other species and those who came after the split from the Chimpanzee line.

Lots of stray energy shooting around.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
.

no one has complained.....yet

a reply to: Zanti Misfit

So , a Bunch of White Anglo Saxon Men Found with Weapons . How Many Non Anglo Saxons Presently Living in Brittan Somehow Feel Threatened by that ? Hmm...

Sorry, might be me being a bit slow and dim-witted but why would anyone, non-Anglo-Saxon or not, feel threatened by something that happened nearly a thousand years ago?

a reply to: Freeborn

Because they are Bloody Daft .

a reply to: Nyiah

Tasty - sorry could not resist and NO you are misunderstanding me, while since the time of ancient Egypt there have been sorcerous practices such as creating a doll of someone and if possible using there hair and finger nail cuttings or something related to them to make it work in a process known as sympathetic magic - literally identical to voodoo and also as a concept having some similarity's to quantum theory such as entanglement I personally do not believe our mortal remains are anchors but now you have put that thought into my mind I may have a good old fashioned think about that since so very many cultures in the world actually DO believe that.

There is a tribe in the Amazon that cremate there dead then not wanting to leave them behind they mix there ashes into water and drink them to keep there loved one's within them, the Chinese worship there ancestors at ancestral shrines and also visit the graves of the deceased and pray to them, WE while not worshipping our ancestors in the same way will talk to our parents or other family members or close friends and stand by there graves for sometimes hours.

There are those that think we just move on and leave this world behind but more important to my mind than any physical anchor (which I do not believe the body remains once our energy leaves it) is the link of love and the other spiritual link's between close family and sometimes for a person that remains to a place, most souls that do not pass over and are not otherwise condemned or anything are often staying for a while because of some unfinished business OR they are waiting for there loved ones to join them.

Remember also the number of grave yard haunting's, people seeing spooky apparitions, phantom hitch hikers that vanish near to were they are buried etc, some people that pass over may be in a DREAM state and not realise that they are dead and so have not passed over, they may still have a phantom silver chord connected to there sleeping celestial body that may still be lying with there mortal remains as it was for some reason not released from them for some reason, perhaps they had unfinished business and were too alive to simply END that way, they may even be in denial and have refused to pass over.

So digging up these people's bones is both disrespectful and also maybe still offensive to them where ever they are now, in some other realm or right here waiting for judgement day.

For many branches of Judaism and Christianity (not all) there is a belief that when your body dies you SLEEP until the resurrection, that is you ARE with your body which will in some form be resurrected either physically or it's actual energy will be made physical again BUT there is an alternative explanation, while we Christians believe that Christ did indeed physically when others were reported to have risen and been seen in the city they were more spiritual so it may not mean a Dust of this earth resurrection happened for them (though it DID for Jesus except of course he was NOT dust of this earth) and it also happened for Lazarus (though he probably in time physically died again only for his soul to be now fully alive and go with Jesus).

Either way in case any of these people are SLEEPING in there faith awaiting the resurrection they should be treated as people not relic's.