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Newly announced analysis has shed new light on a double child burial from an early medieval cemetery at Cherington, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire, revealing that the pair were siblings.
The grave (above) was excavated by Time Team and the MOD initiative Operation Nightingale in 2024, and aDNA analysis by the Francis Crick Institute has now confirmed the close biological relationship between the two children: a boy aged 7-8 years old, and a teenaged girl. The younger child had been placed on his side, while his older sister lay facing him in a slightly raised position – perhaps intended to represent her watching over him in death, as she had in life – see the reconstruction (below). It is thought that both had been buried at the same time, possibly after succumbing to the same disease.
Unusually, the boy had been laid to rest holding a full-sized sword, a weapon more commonly associated with high-ranking adult men (see, for example, here). More remarkable still, though, was the fact that he was not the first ‘child warrior’ to be identified at Cherington.
The double burial formed part of a wider cemetery, with numerous graves cut into the rocky limestone subsoil. The site had originally come to archaeological attention in 2016, after a local metal-detectorist reported the discovery of a different sword. Preliminary fieldwork by Gloucestershire County Council, followed by an excavation, in 2019, by Operation Nightingale and Cotswold Archaeology, revealed that this blade, too, had been buried with a young boy. It formed part of an impressive array of grave goods that also included two spears, a shield, a glass cone beaker, a knife, a glass bowl, and a copper-alloy vessel (see CA 356).
In 2024, Time Team, Operation Nightingale, and Cotswold Archaeology carried out another investigation on the site, establishing that the cemetery extended further into the field than was previously thought. The second sword was discovered right at the end of this visit – but six weeks later the team were able to return to the site, and careful excavation of the weapon, overseen by the late Pieta Greaves of Drakon Heritage, confirmed that it was also from a child’s burial, this time containing two young people. Thanks to the Francis Crick Institute’s new aDNA analysis, we can now add more details to this poignant picture, revealing a story of family tragedy as well as unusually elaborate burial rites.
Further information:
Time Team’s episodes about the 2024 investigations, ‘The Princely Burial’ and ‘Return to the Princely Burial’, are on the Time Team Official YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/@TimeTeamOfficial. The latest aDNA developments are discussed on the Time Team podcast: https://podfollow.com/time-team.
See here for more on Time Team’s work since the show relaunched five years ago.
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