'Lost' Iron Age cemetery reanalyzed more than 70 years after its finds went missing
In 1955, workers in a chalk quarry in Highsted, near Sittingbourne, were working when a human skull came tumbling down the bank at the edge of a pit. It would be the first of some 26 burials, all belonging to an ancient cemetery.
In 1955, laborers in a chalk quarry near Sittingbourne, England, stumbled upon a human skull while performing routine work. This marked the discovery of what would become known as the Highsted cemetery, an ancient Iron Age burial site. Excavations ensued to retrieve the remains before the quarry's operations obliterated the evidence.
Rescue efforts yielded photos, notes, and reports, but the artifacts soon vanished into private collections and disappeared altogether. Lost for over 70 years, the cemetery resurfaced when doctoral student Michael Legge revisited the assemblage in 2018, leading to a detailed reanalysis of the site.
Written by urgent.news from Phys.org's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
