The Gas Pipe laid through Skull of Anglo Saxon woman buried around 1500 years ago, in Cambridgeshire - England 🏴🇬🇧
The woman, discovered in 2014, was one of over 100 skeletons found in a 6th Century AD, Anglo Saxon cemetery in Oakington, Cambridgeshire. The dig, which spanned multiple seasons from 2012-14, featured in Series 3 episode 1 of “Digging for Britain”.
Unintentionally, a yellow pipe, likely to be a gas line, was punched clean through an ancient burial. This particular skeleton was buried very close to the modern road, which modern underground infrastructure supplying the village follows.
The yellow pipe was installed by standard practice of directional drilling - this involves machinery tunnelling a long route for pipes, between small access trenches, minimising the disruption that would be associated with the more obvious “cut and fill” method for laying pipes. Although geophysical sensing methods are used to scout for anomalies, hazards or archaeological remains ahead of the drilling, these cannot reliably detect human bone. It is overwhelmingly likely that the installer of the pipe was entirely unaware they had punched through the ancient burial.
The archaeologists noted during the 13-hour excavation how impressively the boring of the pipe had punched through cleanly, with minimal disruption to the burial, and missing the grave-goods by a matter of centimetres. Respectful treatment of human remains is certainly desirable, and an increasingly important priority for archaeologists conducting excavations.
No archaeologist or engineer would want to see an ancient burial skewered in this way. The skeleton was found with a small-long brooch on each shoulder, and an expensive large cruciform brooch face down, indicating she had been buried in a peplos dress and centrally pinned cloak. She also had wrist-clasps representing a sleeved dress beneath the peplos, and had swags of glass and amber beads.
Much of what we know about Oakington in the Anglo-Saxon period comes from excavations of an Anglo-Saxon burial ground that was located where the recreation ground is today. The first graves were discovered in 1926, when four early Anglo-Saxon burials (including one with a spear, knife and shield) were uncovered in the field that had just been bought by Alan Bloom for his nursery garden.
A further 25 burials, and a single cremation, were discovered in 1994 during construction of the children’s playground and were excavated by Cambridgeshire Archaeological Field Unit. Further work was carried out by Oxford Archaeology East in 2006–2007 in preparation for the building of Oakington Pavilion and multi-use games area (MUGA).
Test pits were dug in within the footprint of the new pavilion (Area A) and the (MUGA) (Area B), which lead to the recovery of about 600 sherds of pottery, over half of it Early to Middle Saxon, along with animal bone, metalwork and Neolithic flint. A full excavation was then carried out on Area A, while Area B was left to be preserved ‘in situ’.
The excavations of Area A revealed seventeen burials from the early Anglo-Saxon period (all dated to the latter half of the sixth century), including both sexes and all age groups. Eight of burials contained multiple grave goods, including pairs of round brooches, strings of amber beads, bone combs, wrist clasps, and square-headed brooches. Four of the burials contained a single item, either a knife or a single brooch, while five contained either no grave goods or a single large pot sherd. Subsequently researchers from Oxford Archaeology East together the students from the University of Central Lancashire and Manchester Metropolitan University carried out a series of excavations between 2010-2014.
This resulted in the discovery of many more graves, bringing total number of graves uncovered to more than 200 and establishing Oakington as a substantial 6th Century AD (early Anglo-Saxon) cemetery.
#archaeohistories