Analysis of an Iron Age mass grave in northern Serbia reveals surprising new information about the group of individuals buried here. Gomolava is a tell site in the Pannonian Plain that was first occupied in the 6th millennium BC and…
Excavations at Wandlebury Country Park, just south of Cambridge, have uncovered a large burial pit containing the remains of at least ten individuals who died violently in the 8th- to 9th-century AD (below). The Department of Archaeology at the University…
The discovery of a mass grave in the Jordanian city of Jerash (ancient Gerasa) has provided evidence of the impact on the population of the Justinian Plague. A newly published study of the burial site has revealed that at least 230 individuals were hastily buried on top of each other, rather than in individual graves, within the city’s abandoned hippodrome
Recent analysis has shed new light on the circumstances surrounding a pair of unusual Neolithic mass graves in north-east France. Around a decade ago, two late Middle Neolithic burial pits were discovered at the sites of Bergheim and Achenheim in…
Roman battlefield burial uncovered A mass grave was discovered in autumn last year during construction work being carried out in Simmering, a district of Vienna, Austria. The subsequent excavation of the site uncovered around 150 individuals buried within a 5m…
A mass grave recently unearthed in Austria is believed to be associated with a Roman battlefield. In autumn 2024, construction workers carrying out renovations of a playing field in Simmering, a district of Vienna, had unexpectedly come across a large…
An ‘unprecedented’ mass grave of Roman soldiers has been uncovered in Vienna. The find was made last autumn by construction workers who were renovating a football pitch in the Simmering district of the city. In April, experts at the Vienna…
A medieval mass burial containing the remains of more than 100 men, women, and children has been revealed during excavations connected with a new heritage centre in the gardens of Leicester Cathedral. The pit, which is believed to date to…
Mass horse burial in central France The remains of 37 horses have been recovered from 14 pits in Villedieu-sur-Indre. The horses date back 2,000 years, and have all been identified as fully grown stallions. Archaeologists have made various suggestions as…
REVIEW BY KK This is the third book in Alice Roberts’ recent series, which began with Ancestors (highlighting seven famous burials from prehistoric Britain; see CA 380), followed by Buried, which covered the quickly evolving funerary traditions from late Iron…
Recent excavations by Cotswold Archaeology in Harnham, along Netherhampton Road on the western edge of Salisbury, have uncovered a large barrow cemetery, consisting of at least 20 burial mounds. While several Bronze Age barrow cemeteries have been identified in the…
A round-up of some of the latest archaeology news from around the world.
The positions of the skeletons indicate that they were thrown or rolled into the grave, and many of the remains are disarticulated or incomplete.
Located in the centre of the Netherlands, Vianen saw two wars in the 18th century, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and later the Flanders campaign of 1793-1795.
A round-up of some of the latest archaeological stories from across the globe, including the discovery of a slaves' room in Pompeii, a 1,000-year-old mass grave in Peru, and evidence of ancient clothing manufacture in Morocco.
Although the Chimú are known to have practised human sacrifice, it is currently not possible to say whether this is the case here.
Each of the bodies showed signs of serious injury and were buried with swords, maces, and arrows.
Around 168 victims were exhumed shortly after the war, but it was long known that many other graves remained uncovered.
New research has uncovered evidence of the first large-scale atrocity committed in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Around 30-35,000 people were murdered in the country’s Pomeranian province in the first months of the conflict. One area saw so…
It all began with a bead: a small piece of carnelian recovered during the excavation of a Viking Great Army mass grave at Repton in 1982. Thirty-five years later, it fascinated Cat Jarman, who was examining artefact archives for the…