Early Medieval women’s burial site is ‘most important of all’ in the UK | archeology

Archaeologists don’t often bounce back from excitement, but the Museum of London’s archeology team could barely contain themselves on Tuesday as they unveiled a “delightful” find made on the last day of a barren dig in the spring.

“This is the most important early medieval cemetery of women ever discovered in Britain,” said the leader of the excavations, Leventy Pence Pallas, closing in on jubilation. “It’s an archaeologist’s dream to find something like this.”

“I was looking in a suspected dumpster when I saw teeth,” added Balazs, his voice swaying with emotion at the memory. “Then two nuggets of gold appeared from the ground and shimmered at me. These artifacts hadn’t seen the light of day in 1,300 years, and being the first person to see them is beyond description. But even then, we didn’t quite know how special this discovery would be.”

What Baláz found was a woman buried between AD 630 and 670 – a woman buried in a bed alongside an extraordinary necklace of 30 intricately wrought gold, garnets and semi-precious stones. It is, at a distance of a mile, the richest necklace of its kind ever discovered in Britain and reveals unparalleled craftsmanship in the early medieval period.

Also buried with the woman was a large, elaborately decorated cross, buried face down, which is another unique and mysterious feature of the secrets of the tomb, and features very unusual depictions of a human face in delicate silver with blue glass eyes. Two pots were buried next to her, which is also unique in that they still contain mysterious remains that have yet to be analyzed.

“This is a discovery of international importance. This discovery has propelled the course of history, and the impact will grow stronger the more deeply we dig into this discovery,” Balazs said. “These mysterious discoveries ask more questions than they answer. There is still much to discover about what we found and what they mean.”

Much about April’s excavation was inauspicious. The small and isolated village of Harpole in Northamptonshire, whose name means ‘dirty pond’, was once known only to The annual scarecrow festival And close to It is arguably one of the worst motorway service stations in the UK.

There were no ancient churches near the excavations or other burial sites. But thanks practice developer funded archeology, The Vistry Group commissioned homebuilders to research the area where they were building.

“I have worked on Vestre for 19 years, and so I have interacted a lot with archaeologists,” said Daniel Oliver, Vestry’s Regional Artistic Director. “I’m used to Simon [Mortimer, archaeology consultant for the RPS group] Ring me in excitement about the pot shards.” Next to him, Mortimer looks stiff in protest, and Oliver quickly adds: “The pot shards are very exciting, of course.”

“The day the team discovered Harpole’s treasure, I had five missed calls from Simon on my phone,” Oliver said. “I knew then that this was more than just pot shards. As exciting as pot shards are.”

The woman—a woman, though only her dental crowns remain—was almost certainly an early Christian leader of great personal fortune, possibly an abbess and princess. “Women have been found buried next to swords, but no men have been found buried next to contracts,” said Lyn Blackmore, a specialist in the Museum of London’s archeology team. Experts agree that she must have been one of the first women in Britain to reach a high position in the Church.

As she was clearly religious, her tomb is evidence of a changing age when pagan and Christian beliefs were still in a state of flux. Mortimer said, “This is a remarkable burial of amalgamated iconography: the burial has a distinctly pagan flavour, but the tomb is also heavily commissioned with Christian iconography.”

The Vestry relinquished its rights to the treasure, which now belonged to the state. The team hopes that it will be shown locally, once the restoration work is complete – an arduous endeavor that will take at least another two years.

Oliver is wary about where the actual dig is. It is not built but, equally, it is not marked. “We don’t want people to come with metal detectors,” he said. “That would be a lot.”