Overview
- University of Cambridge students uncovered a pit at Wandlebury containing remains of at least 10 people, recorded during a training excavation.
- Excavators found four largely intact skeletons beneath grouped body parts, including clustered skulls and a stack of legs, indicating deliberate deposition.
- Radiocarbon dating places the deaths in the 8th–9th centuries when Cambridgeshire lay on the frontier between Mercia and Viking-controlled East Anglia.
- Evidence includes a decapitated individual with jaw chop marks and an exceptionally tall man about 196 cm with a healed skull opening consistent with trepanation.
- Archaeologists are weighing scenarios such as execution or post-battle disposal, while Historic England plans geophysical survey and Cambridge specialists conduct aDNA, isotope, refitting, and osteological analyses.