by LONDON – Newly discovered human remains could offer a rare glimpse into life in Britain through the decline of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
Experts have hailed the 1,600-year-old cemetery that has been unearthed near the city of Leeds, about 200 miles north of London, as a “once-in-a-lifetime” find that bridges the gap between the ancient and medieval periods.
Among the remains of more than 60 men, women and children was what is thought to be a late Roman female aristocrat, Leeds City Council said in a statement on Monday.
The woman was found inside an ancient lead coffin in archaeological excavations near the Garforth suburb of Leeds.
The site could also indicate early Christian and Saxon burial rituals, officials said, and marks an important crossroads in a poorly understood period when the Roman Empire began its gradual decline and eventual collapse in the West, as Germanic tribes they migrated from continental Europe.
England takes its name from one of the main groups that arrived from the 5th century onwards from present-day Denmark and Germany: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
“It is every archaeologist’s dream to work on a site ‘once in a lifetime’, and supervising these excavations is definitely the highlight of my career,” said Kylie Buxton, site supervisor for the excavations, in a press release.
“There is always the possibility of finding burials, but to have discovered such an important cemetery, in such a moment of transition, was truly incredible.”
Carbon dating is underway to establish the precise timing of the burials, as are chemical tests, which it is hoped will shed light on dietary habits and ancestry.
The site was discovered in the spring of 2022 but no announcements have been made so far in an effort to preserve the site while testing takes place. The exact location of the site has not been disclosed, but remains of late Roman and Anglo-Saxon buildings have been found nearby.
“This has the potential to be a discovery of huge importance for what we understand about the development of ancient Britain and Yorkshire,” said David Hunter, principal archaeologist at West Yorkshire Joint Services.
“The occurrence of two communities using the same burial site is very unusual and whether or not their use of this cemetery overlaps will determine how significant the find is.”
Once the analysis has taken place, plans are afoot to display the lead coffin at Leeds City Museum in an exhibition of death customs around the world.
The Saxons tended to bury their dead with particularly important items such as knives and pottery. The most famous Anglo-Saxon burial site, Sutton Hoo – thought to be a burial vessel to honor the 7th-century King Rædwald – contained a fabulous collection of jeweled helmets and weapons.
Claudius, the fourth Roman emperor, began the invasion of Britain in AD 43, allegedly using an army of up to 20,000 men and even armored elephants. By the dawn of the 1st century, Rome had established its power across southern Britain and up to the disputed northern area later bounded by a huge wall built by the emperor Hadrian.
That control came to an abrupt end in AD 409-10 as Rome’s military might waned, with the empire distracted by pressure from barbarian invaders in Italy and Gaul.
The empire would survive another 1,000 years from its eastern power base of Constantinople, but it could only limp west for decades. Roman aristocrats fled Britain as villas and towns crumbled into ruins, burying what they could not take with them.
Leeds is thought to have been the center of the mysterious Celtic kingdom of Elmet, one of several entities established after the collapse of Roman control but before the rule of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms or the arrival of the Vikings in the 8th century.
Experts will investigate whether the newly discovered graves offer further evidence of how the people of Elmet lived alongside their Saxon neighbours, at a time when England was rapidly leaving behind its pagan traditions and converting to Christianity.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
