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Archaeologists don’t often bounce with excitement, but London’s archeology team could hardly contain themselves on Tuesday as they unveiled an “exhilarating” discovery made on the last day of an otherwise barren dig in the spring.
“This is the most significant early medieval female burial ever discovered in Britain,” said Levante Bens Balazs, leader of the dig, almost defiantly with glee. “It’s an archaeologist’s dream to find something like this.”
“I was looking through a suspicious garbage pit when I saw the teeth,” Balazs added, his voice catching with emotion at the memory. “Then two golden objects came out of the earth and shone before me. These artifacts haven’t seen the light of day for over 1,300 years, and being the first to see them is indescribable. But still, we had no idea how special this discovery would be.
What Balazs found was a woman buried between 630 and 670 AD – a woman buried in bed with an extraordinary, extraordinary, 30-piece necklace, intricately crafted of gold, garnet and semi-precious stones. It is, by a country mile, the richest necklace ever found in Britain and shows unparalleled craftsmanship in the early medieval period.
The woman buried with a large, elaborately decorated cross, buried face down, another unique and mysterious feature of the tomb mysteries, featured highly unusual depictions of a human face in delicate silver with blue glass eyes. Two vessels were buried with it, also unique in that it still contains a mysterious residue that has yet to be analyzed.
“This is a discovery of international importance. This discovery has shaped the course of history, and its impact will become stronger as we investigate it more deeply,” Balazs said. “These mysterious discoveries raise many more questions than answers. There is much more to discover about what we found and what it means.”
Much about the excavation in April was ominous. The small, isolated Northamptonshire village of Harpole, whose name means “dirty pool”, was previously known only for its annual scarecrow festival and for its proximity to one of the worst motorway service stations in the UK.
There were no ancient churches near the excavations or other burial sites. But thanks to an archeology practice funded by the developer, Wistry Group housebuilders began exploring the area they were building on.
“I’ve worked for Wistry for 19 years and so I’ve had a lot of interaction with archaeologists,” said Daniel Oliver, Wistry’s regional technical director. “I’m used to Simon [Mortimer, archaeology consultant for the RPS group] Calling me very excited about pot shards.” Beside him, Mortimer visibly stiffens in protest, and Oliver quickly adds: “Pot shards are, of course, very attractive.”
“The day the team found the Harpole treasure, I had five missed calls from Simon on my phone,” Oliver said. “I knew then that this pot was more than shards. Exciting as pot shards.”
The woman—and she is a woman, though her crown of teeth remains—was almost certainly an early Christian leader of considerable personal wealth, both a nun and a princess, perhaps. Lynn Blackmore, an expert from the Museum of London archeology team, said: “Women have been buried with swords, but men have never been buried with necklaces.” Experts agree that she must have been one of the first women in Britain to reach a high position in the church.
She was clearly a devotee, her tomb is evidence of a changing era when pagan and Christian beliefs were still in flux. “This is an interesting burial of composite iconography: the burial has a distinctly pagan flavor, but the tomb is also heavily embedded in Christian iconography,” Mortimer said.
The vestry waived its rights to the treasury, which now belongs to the state. The team hopes to display it locally once their conservation work is complete — a painstaking effort that will take at least another two years.
Oliver is vague about where the actual dig site is. It is not built up but, equally, it is not marked. “We don’t want people coming in with metal detectors,” he said. “That would be a little too much.”
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