People have been dumping corpses into the Thames since at least the Bronze Age, study finds

By Kristina Killgrove
published 2 hours ago

A new study of human remains dredged from the Thames River reveals that people frequently deposited corpses there in the Bronze and Iron ages.


Hundreds of human bones have been dredged from the bottom of England's River Thames over the past two centuries, and a new study of these skeletons suggests that most of them date back to the Bronze and Iron ages. But why people deposited corpses into the Thames remains an open question.

In a study published Jan. 28 in the journal Antiquity, researchers detailed their analysis of radiocarbon dates from 30 skeletons discovered in the Thames, with a goal of investigating when and why corpses ended up in the river.

"Most people — including Londoners! — are quite taken aback to hear that hundreds of human bones have come from the River Thames," study lead author Nichola Arthur, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London, told Live Science in an email. Human skeletons "have been encountered fairly regularly in the water places of northwest Europe," Arthur said, but "the Thames human bones represent a uniquely large assemblage."

. . .

When the researchers merged their 30 new radiocarbon dates with 31 previous dates, they discovered that the Thames bodies came from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 1800 — a span of nearly 6,000 years. But most came from the Bronze Age (2300 to 800 B.C.) and the Iron Age (800 B.C. to A.D. 43) and were found in upstream zones of the river.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/people-have-been-dumping-corpses-into-the-thames-since-at-least-the-bronze-age-study-finds