Excavations at the Bowl Hole

Dr Sam Lucy is a Newnham Fellow and an archaeologist specialising in Late Roman and Early Medieval Britain, with a particular focus on mortuary evidence. Dr Lucy presented her research on 'The Anglian-period cemetery at Bamburgh, Northumberland: excavations at the Bowl Hole' at our latest Pudding Seminar. 

Bamburgh is a site of historical and royal significance on the northeast coast of England, with fortifications mentioned in writings by the Venerable Bede. A storm in 1817 uncovered a long-hidden and extensive burial site in the area. Excavations from 1999 to 2007 by the Bamburgh Research Project revealed a  late 6th to 8th century cemetery in the sand dunes to the south of Bamburgh Castle. The remains found in the graves exhibited exceptional levels of bone preservation allowing for detailed osteological and isotopic analysis.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council funded a research project to look at the osteological, archaeological and isotopic data from over 100 burials. Graves of different types were found, including cist burials, with bodies placed in a number of different ways including in prone, crouched and flexed positions. Furnishing of the graves was limited, though some burials were accompanied by simple accessories such as buckles, knives and combs. Notable pathological conditions included a case of rickets and two of DISH (diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis) and a few weapon injuries, including one young adult who had suffered a violent death.

Of great interest were a number of adult skeletons with both notches in the front teeth and evidence of a lot of squatting behaviour - possibly the effect of a crafting occupation.

An early paper from the project published in 2013 assessed the mobility history of the cemetery's occupants based on oxygen and strontium isotopic ratios, concluding that over 50% of the buried population had come from outside the local area, including from other parts of the UK and Scandinavia. This method of analysis has since been improved on, and in the more recent work a much smaller number of people were identified as being non-local, probably having spent their early years in parts of Scandinavia.

Dr Lucy's monograph on this work is in the process of publication, co-authored with her colleagues Prof Charlotte Roberts of the University of Durham, and Graham Pearson of the Bamburgh Research Project.