Twelve months after a massive archaeological dig at the Trinity Burial Ground that forms part of a £355 million Highways England improvement and redevelopment project started in Hull in northern England, the burial ground project is drawing to a close. The rich haul of material excavated from the post-medieval burial ground in Hull provides a fascinating peek into life in the 18th and 19th centuries in the port town. The excavations were carried out by Balfour Beatty, Oxford Archaeology, Humber Field Archaeology, Hull City Council, Historic England, and Hull Minster.
Project Manager Stephen Rowland told Hull Daily Mail that the graveyard was consecrated in 1785 as an emergency measure as space in the Holy Trinity Church burial ground in Hull’s Old Town began running out. This was the result of a population expansion driven by increasing commercial and industrial activity in Georgian and Victorian England. The Trinity Burial Ground was used until 1861 and in that time the parish register recorded 43,000 burials.
Rowland told the newspaper, "Although it is known that some of those people were interred in the original medieval cemetery located immediately around the church, the majority are thought to lie within Trinity Burial Ground on Castle Street.” Rowland said the team’s work had uncovered a wealth of details about the population of the city as it expanded rapidly in the 18th century.
Which sports and entertainment fan today hasn’t yearned for box seats or VIP seating for their favorite concert? Despite the needle of time ticking away through these centuries, some things don’t seem to have changed...
Genetic experts have completed a full sequencing of a DNA sample obtained from a 1,000-year-old skeleton unearthed in 1999 in an ancient Islamic cemetery near the village of Segorbe, Spain.
21st Century man is very conscious of the carbon footprint he leaves behind, but footprints of people who lived about 23,000 years ago have just walked all over modern man’s Clovis First Theory.
A new study published in the journal Science Advances offers evidence to support the theory of local origins of the Etruscans, an advanced Iron Age peoples in central Italy.
Tucked away in an almost-forgotten manuscript from the 11th century is the extraordinary tale of St Rumwold, an infant saint who lived on this earthly plane for only three days.
Genetic breeding programs in the ancient Arctic required fresh DNA from faraway places. Therefore, long-distance trade routes rang with the barks and howls of horny Arctic dogs as they marched northwards to play away from home.
Two amateur divers cleaning trash from the seabed of Alicante while holidaying off the coast of Spain have uncovered a cache of 1,500-year-old gold Roman coins.
In 1908, Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier was working in southern Crete at an ancient Minoan palace located in the town of Phaistos.
Antonio López de Santa Anna was a controversial yet highly influential general who had earned the title of the “Napoleon of the West.” The period in which he lived was also sometimes referred to as the “Age of Santa Anna.”
Researchers have recreated and exploded a series of medieval gunpowder recipes. A new paper shows that through trial and error so-called ‘black powder’ was developed
When you hear the word genocide, your mind may immediately go to the Holocaust by the Nazis during the Second World War. Very few know that the first genocide of the 20th century that almost led to the extinction of two nations of Southwest Africa – Herero and Namaqua – and this one was also done by the Germans. But let’s take things from the beginning.
The German South-West Africa was a colony of the German Empire between 1884 and 1915. It included a land of 835,100 square kilometers (322,433.91 sq. miles), which was one and a half times the size of Germany.
In 1915, during the First World War, British and South African forces entered Germany Southwest Africa to conquer it. After the war, the area was commanded by the Union of South Africa (part of the British Empire) and was named Southwest Africa, after a directive by the Union of Nations. In 1990 it became an independent country and since then it is known today as Namibia.
The following essay is extracted from “Stone Circles Explained” by Stephen Childs. This book offers some alternative and less explored theories of the purpose of stone circles.
Multiple patches of human footprints found alongside a long-vanished Ice Age lake in New Mexico have finally been dated, many years after they were first discovered.
Those who are familiar with the Chinese word wuxiá (martial heroes) may associate it with memories of martial arts films and television programs that portray a fanciful depiction of Chinese martial arts to audiences around the world.
Workers laying pipes for the gas company Calidda in Chilca, which is 37 miles (60 km) south of Lima, Peru, have recently uncovered the remains of eight people buried together in a Chilca culture
A pair of Queen Marie Antoinette’s bracelets are to come under the hammer next month. With the richest collectors in the world all primed, it’s expected that the already whopping $2 to $4 million estimate will be smashed.
Experts are concerned for the future of Afghanistan’s archaeological sites and treasures following the Taliban takeover. Even if the ancient sites are not looted and destroyed, there is still the worry that the extremist Islamic group may already be hunting for the famous Bactrian treasure - a collection of more than 20,000 gold, silver, and ivory objects recovered from ancient burial mounds in northern Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Culture and Information has responded to these concerns, stating that the treasure is in an unnamed safe place. Hamdullah Wasiq, the deputy of the Cultural Commission, said, “The Bactrian Treasure is under the government’s control. It is protected. There is no worry and steps are being taken to protect it.”
The Bactrian treasure, also known as the Bactrian gold, was discovered in 1978 in some 2,000-year-old graves at a site called Tillya Tepe. In the past the Bactrian treasure was protected when it was transferred to a bank’s underground vault. But many other artifacts were not so lucky.
Bactrian treasure ram figurine. (Public Domain)
Human beings have been wearing necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and other forms of jewelry for a long time. But the discovery of a cache of prehistoric Aterian sea snail shell beads at a cave in western Morocco has pushed the origin of this practice back farther than archaeologists and anthropologists ever expected.
Excavations that started over five years ago at a Urartian necropolis at Çavuştepe Castle in eastern Turkey (ancient Anatolia) have revealed a multiplicity of burial customs among the Iron Age Urartu people
The news was astounding! Famous India was discovered just a month’s sailing across the Atlantic, proclaimed the first-ever International Press Release, dated Lisbon, March 4, 1493.
According to the statistics provided by the World Economic Forum, nowadays China can boast its position of the world’s second largest spender on scientific research and development, yielding only to the United States.
Archaeologists in Colombia have discovered a vast treasure hoard that’s being related to El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. But these offerings of gold, silver and Colombian emeralds have nothing to do with El Dorado, which was a creation of 16th-century conquistador folklore.
Eight ceramic jars filled with gold, silver and Colombian emeralds have been discovered at an ancient temple site in Colombia near the capital city of Bogotá. While the media are associating the discovery with the 16th-century Spanish legend of the lost city of gold, El Dorado, these are in fact “Muisca” artifacts, not Spanish artifacts. Now that is clear, let’s ask the question on the lips of many of you, who were the Muisca?
The incredibly big and priceless Colombian emeralds found in the 8-jar treasure hoard at the ancient Muisca temple site on the edge of modern-day Bogotá. (Francisco Correa / Live Science)
A recent research study published in the online journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution has thrown up exciting new evidence about collaboration on complex tasks amongst our closest ancient human relatives
In the modern Western world, science and religion have changed places in terms of which is regarded as ‘reality’ and what is most likely ‘just a fantasy’.
Approximately 3,600 years ago, there was a catastrophic event in the modern-day Middle East that completely destroyed the city of Tall el-Hammam in present-day Jordan. Up to now, the source of this possible cosmic impact event had been a mystery.
The concept of a Trinity or triadic nature of the divine has been a part of our psyche for thousands of years, and has appeared in creation tales, myths, religious writings and holy texts the world over. Yet to this day, the Trinity is always thought of as having its origin in Roman Catholicism—most notably at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, the first ecumenical council of Christian bishops where the consensus of beliefs was decided upon for all of Christendom, including the Trinity as the three-fold nature of the persona of God.
A new 3D visualization is revealing what the Scottish city of Dundee looked like during the Ice Age of 20,000 years ago. At this time, the location of the east coast city was packed flat beneath a 0.6-mile-thick ice sheet.
The history of the British Isles is a colorful patchwork, made up of the diverse tribes and nations that sought to make the island their home. Peoples migrated to the island through the Bronze Age, all the way to the arriving Celtic culture and on to the Vikings and other Nordic settlers.
When those unfortunate moments occur in life that require medical assistance, one should be thankful to be alive today and not even as far back as the last decade.