10 Creepiest Archaeological Discoveries

10 Creepiest Archaeological Discoveries

Caitlin Johnson

Notes: Long entries because no SBs, just stock.

Welcome to WatchMojoUK, and today we’re looking at Britain’s creepiest archaeological finds.

Porpoise Grave

Guernsey

While Guernsey isn’t technically in the UK, it’s still a crown dependency in the English Channel. This particular grave was found in 2017 on an even smaller island that’s part of Guernsey, and it immediately stumped archaeologists. They found the skeletal remains of a porpoise, carbon dated to the mid-fifteenth century. It’s unclear why somebody felt the need to give a porpoise a full burial, though some suggestions have been made, namely that it may have been butchered and buried underground in order to preserve the meat for a long time. But this isn’t a common practice and other remains like this haven’t been found. And you’d think they would be, considering historical evidence shows that eating porpoises happened regularly in the Channel Islands during the Medieval period. But this remains the only porpoise grave unearthed so far.

A Roman Road

York

York is both home to a great many Roman ruins and a great many ghosts, with the small city often dubbed the most haunted in the UK. One of its most famous ghost stories originated in the cellars of Treasurer’s House, near York Minister. So the story goes, in the 1950s, a legion of Roman soldiers was seen marching through the floor. This ghost story led to excavations that uncovered the remains of the original Roman road that led further north. Famously, the Romans were seen only from the knees up, because their feet were still walking along the road’s original surface. The rediscovery of the road wasn’t creepy, providing us with greater insight into life in Roman Britain, but the man who saw the apparition – plumber Harry Martindale – was terrified.

The Headless Vikings

Weymouth

Down in Dorset, these eerie remains were unearthed in 2009, and have been baffling archaeologists ever since. Despite being widely dubbed the “headless vikings”, they’re actually completely dismembered, believed to be victims of a violent execution at the hands of the Anglo Saxons. Over fifty skeletons and separate skulls were unearthed in the mass grave, thrown in there carelessly after their brutal deaths. It’s also believed that this was a public execution done at some point around the turn of the eleventh century. The damage to the bones proved that they were beaten and wounded before their deaths, and buried naked. Most disturbing of all, the discrepancy in the number of skulls to skeletons – with there being three fewer skulls – has suggested that the heads were probably displayed elsewhere. Will they ever be found? Who knows…

The Thames Bones

London

Did you know that the Thames is full of dead bodies? Well, it is, and archaeologists have been puzzling over them for years. They’re not recent killings, most dating back to the Bronze and Iron Ages, but periodically, skeletons emerge from the river and have to be thoroughly investigated to see whether they’re historic. The remains began being uncovered in the nineteenth century while London underwent massive construction, particularly the building of many new bridges and the river’s embankments, but scholars are always finding more. The main theory is that there was an ancient battle on the site that we don’t know about, or perhaps multiple, and the remains have stayed in the silt of the riverbed ever since. Well, until being dredged to the surface thousands of years later, that is.

Skeletons Under the Stairs

London

Sticking with the capital, in 1674, a wooden box underneath a staircase in the Tower of London was explored for the first time in centuries. Inside were two children’s skeletons, immediately assumed to be the mysteriously vanished Princes in the Tower. The sons of King Edward IV, deposed in the fifteenth century by Richard III, disappeared for good in 1483. At the time, King Charles II had the bones interred in Westminster Abbey with other royals, though in recent years the bones’ provenance has come into question. It’s not conclusive that the bodies are the princes, with some other evidence suggesting they may have lived out their lives in hiding. That said, it’s still curious that two skeletons belonging to children of the correct age were buried in a box in the Tower of London, the last place they were seen alive.

Lindow Man

Wilmslow

This Bronze Age man was discovered in a peat bog in Cheshire in 1984. It’s well-known that peat bogs can preserve bodies extraordinarily well, with people undergoing natural mummification. It’s thought that he died 2000 years ago and was left in the bog, having been killed violently. Other bodies have been found in the bog, too, including the Lindow Woman the previous year – also 2000 years old – and body parts, including skin and part of a leg; it’s thought that some of these pieces are Lindow Man’s missing limbs, however. He’d been hit in the head, partially strangled, and had numerous broken bones. We don’t know who he was or why he met his end so violently. Some have suggested it could have been a ritualistic killing, while others posit the more grounded theory that it was a robbery gone wrong.

Tiny Coffins

Edinburgh

Sometimes dubbed “Fairy Coffins” instead, these artefacts were found hidden away on Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano just outside of Scotland’s capital. The miniature coffins, of which there were seventeen, contain toy bodies, and were found by some children in 1836. At the time, people believed the dummies were used by witches. In recent years, though, a more macabre connection has emerged: some believe they may be models of Burke and Hare’s victims. This doesn’t completely hold water as Burke and Hare’s victims were mostly women and the dummies in the coffins are men, but it remains a prominent theory. If you want to see these famous coffins, they’re on display in the National Museum of Scotland.

Julia Thomas’s Head

London

In 1879, London was rocked by the violent murder of a widow named Julia Martha Thomas. Thomas was killed by her maid, Kate Webster, who attempted to dispose of the remains by dismembering her and boiling her, piece by piece, in an old laundry copper. Webster then attempted to steal Mrs Thomas’s identity, selling her possessions and trying to escape to Ireland. Webster was caught and executed. But one piece of Mrs Thomas was never found: her head. In a remarkable twist of fate, David Attenborough bought a pub in Richmond to redevelop. In 2010, during work on the pub, a human skull was unearthed, and was dated to the correct period and had an injury that matched the killing blow Webster said she delivered to Mrs Thomas. The famous “Barnes Mystery” was finally solved, 130 years later.

The Edinburgh Vaults

Edinburgh

For thirty years, these underground caverns built inside of Edinburgh’s South Bridge were occupied by shops, but rapidly became dank, squalid slums. But slowly, even the slums were abandoned. Why they were left empty isn’t a mystery: they were practically uninhabitable, with no light or sanitation. However, they were forgotten about for over a hundred years, until bizarrely being rediscovered by rugby player Norrie Rowan by accident. He then personally led excavations throughout the 90s. Today, the Vaults are open to the public, even hosting comedy shows during Fringe each year, but they’re also a hotspot for paranormal activity. There are plenty of ghost tours taking people through the tunnels, exploring this relic of Victorian Scotland. Have you ever been? Have you had a strange encounter? Let us know.

Prehistoric Mummies

Outer Hebrides

On a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, archaeologists found Britain’s only prehistoric mummies in the late 1980s. The fact that people were mummified in Scotland alone is significant, but the mummies are stranger than that, because it was found that they were made of multiple bodies that were put together. One mummy was almost entirely one person, but had a different jaw and different skull; archaeologists knew this because the pieces were dated to different centuries. They were also mummified via a peat bog, like Lindow Man, but intentionally, and were exhumed from the bog and used for unknown purposes. We don’t know why any of this was done, with the remains being over three thousand years old.

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