Over 200 well-preserved medieval bones have been discovered on one of Britain’s finest beaches, including 90 in the past three weeks alone, according to archaeologists.
The bodies, believed to have belonged to an early Christian community, were buried in the cemetery of a former church in Whitesands Bay, Pembrokeshire, Wales, as early as the sixth century.
Since they were interred in sand at a medieval Irish trading port, they are in excellent condition.
Whitesands Bay, a Blue Flag shoreline near St. David’s and the former location of the St. Patrick’s chapel, is currently being excavated.
Natural erosion and storms unearthed the bones just beneath the surface of the dunes, where the chapel’s former cemetery once stood.
The University of Sheffield is currently preserving them.
According to Jenna Smith of the Dyfed Archaeological Trust, which is in charge of the excavation, the preservation of the skeletons is “absolutely extraordinary” due to their immersion in sediment.
Smith told the BBC that we have transported over 90 burials in the previous three weeks.
‘It is crucial that we do this because it affords us a rare moment of clarity in Wales. Normally, the bone is not present.
We are primarily here to prevent the bones and graves from disintegrating into the sea.
The University of Sheffield determined that the graves contained people of all ages, including men, women, and 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren, and that they presumably date to between the sixth and eleventh centuries.
According to early Christian burial practices, all of the monuments were oriented with the head facing west and lacked any personal effects.
Several of the corpses were discovered in cists – tombs lined and capped with stone slabs, which was a common early medieval burial custom in western Britain.
On the cists of some of the infant graves were white quartz stones.
Whitesands Bay has been the focus of archaeologists since the early 1920s due to St. Patrick’s Church and its ᴀssociated cemetery.
The only historical reference to the church is contained in George Owen’s 1603 book, Description of Pembrokeshire.
It states, “Capel Patrick is located due west of St. Davids and as close to his homeland, Ireland, as possible.” It is currently entirely decayed.
Although it is believed that the cemetery has been in use since the sixth century, the eleventh-century sanctuary was presumably abandoned by the sixteenth century.
During the excavation of the building’s remains in 1924, a stone with a cross-cut was discovered.
The graves were eventually excavated in 1970 due to the graveyard’s ongoing deterioration, which led to the periodic exposure of human remains from the sediment.
The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority attempted to preserve the burial site in 2004 by situating large boulders on the dunes to prevent erosion.
In 2014, however, severe weather dislodged the stones and exposed additional remains, compelling Dyfed Archaeological Trust to undertake a large-scale rescue excavation, followed by two more seasons of excavation in 2015 and 2016.
By 2016, over 100 burials had been uncovered, but the six-week excavation has brought the total to over 200.
According to the Dyfed Archaeological Trust, there is still a considerable amount of material to be excavated, including a “interesting stone building that predates the graves.
