Reconstructed Face Shows A Medieval Wanderer Found Buried In A Toilet [View all]

Tom Hale
By Tom Hale
29 MAR 2022, 17:29

This is the face of a "rolling stone" who spent his life wandering across medieval Scotland before (most likely) meeting an unpleasant death, left to lay in the remains of a Roman toilet for centuries.

Archeologists recently took a closer look at the skeletal remains of nine adults and five children discovered beneath a bathhouse at the former-Roman fort in Cramond near Edinburgh, Scotland, piecing together their story using a bunch of bioarchaeological techniques and isotopic data.

These remains are literally “bog bodies,” not because they were preserved in the acidic, low oxygen environment of a wetland, but because these bodies were actually discovered in what the British often call a bog: a toilet, aka latrine, that was used by Roman soldiers when they occupied Scotland centuries before.

First discovered in 1975, it was initially assumed that the skeletal remains dated from the 14th century CE, perhaps victims of the Black Death. However, new radiocarbon dating showed they were actually some 800 years older, dating to the 6th century CE. This was a tumultuous but little-understood, time in British history; a fact that is sewn into the physical make-up of the skeletons.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/reconstructed-face-shows-a-medieval-wanderer-found-buried-in-a-toilet/