SANQUHAR, SCOTLAND—BBC News reports that archaeologists have uncovered the cremated remains of at least eight individuals inside five urns within a Bronze Age barrow in southern Scotland. Thomas Muir from Guard Archaeology and his team discovered the burial mound while surveying the area ahead of a wind farm construction. The site has been dated to between 1439 and 1287 B.C. Muir suggested that the individuals may have belonged to the same family or social group and that their deaths could have resulted from famine or another catastrophic event. “The urns were all deposited simultaneously, tightly packed in the pit, and share the same fifteenth to thirteenth century B.C. date range,” he explained. At a nearby Bronze Age site, Muir noted that bodies were sometimes exposed before being reburied in a communal burial location used over a long period.
The original research is published in Archaeology Reports Online. For more on Bronze Age Britain, see "Bronze Age Beads Go Abroad."
