Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old cremated remains of at least eight people buried in five urns in Scotland. While it is not known how they died, it was likely during a catastrophic event.
The discovery is unusual, because although many Bronze Age burial sites in Scotland have been reused over the years, newly discovered cremations “tell a different story,” the researchers wrote in a new study recently published in the journal. Archeology reports online. In this case, the urns were “tightly arranged, giving the impression of being buried en masse, and then remaining undisturbed except for modern plow damage,” the team wrote.
Three of the urns each contain the remains of an adult and a young child, while the other two urns each contain the remains of only one adult. The burial was found at Twentyshilling Hill, near the Twentyshilling Hill wind farm in southwest Scotland, during excavations carried out in 2020 and 2021 during the construction of the access road to the wind farm. The excavation work was carried out by a team of Archeology GuardIt is a company that carries out archaeological excavations during or before construction.
“The discovery of five jars tightly packed together at the same time in a single mass burial event is extremely rare and distinguishes Twentyshilling Barrow from other barrows in Scotland,” the researchers wrote in the report.
The team suspects that these eight individuals may have died around the same time, during a horrific event. It is unclear what this event was, but it could have been famine, disease, or war. Ronan in GadgetGuard Archeology’s CEO told Live Science in an email.
They suspect the individuals died around the same time because the urns appear to have been made by the same craftsman, Tooles said. Also, during that period, it was common for the deceased to be left in this area long enough for their bodies to decompose before being cremated. However, in this case, the team found that the individuals still had some of their flesh left when they were cremated, suggesting that their bodies had to be hastily cremated, the team noted.
These people were farmers, Tooles said. He noted that they likely lived near the burial place, although their settlement has not been found.
“This is an area of Scotland where only a few of these archaeological remains have been discovered so far, so future research may reveal more about the context of this chariot,” Towlis said.