A story which began 23 years ago when archaeologists began uncovering an Anglo-Saxon cemetery on the Northumbrian coast will come to a conclusion this weekend with a conference which looks back on what became a remarkable journey through history.
The two-day conference celebrates the Accessing Aidan/Bamburgh Bones project, which has created a public display and teaching resource around 120 skeletons from the Bowl Hole burial ground in sand dunes a few hundred metres from Bamburgh Castle. Excavations stretched across eight years as the 1,400-year-old cemetery, from when was Bamburgh was the royal capital of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria, was threatened by sea erosion.
Organisers of the event on Friday and Saturday at Bamburgh Pavilion and the King’s Hall say: “It is a celebration of everything that has been achieved.”
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The individuals from the Bowl Hole were the subject of an extensive study, led by Durham University’s Professor Charlotte Roberts, which revealed details of how they lived and died in Bamburgh as it flourished under King Oswald and the teachings of St Aidan to become a cosmopolitan and spiritual centre. In 2016, St Aidan’s Parochial Church Council and the Bamburgh Heritage Trust created an ossuary – a place of bones – in the crypt of the village’s St Aidan’s Church, whose own story dates from the Seventh century.
The re-interment of the Bowl Hole people in the church in their individual zinc boxes led to the Accessing Aidan project, which aimed to make the crypt and the Anglo-Saxon stories accessible to the public. In 2018, the National Heritage Lottery Fund awarded a grant of £355,600 to the church council, Bamburgh Heritage Trust, whose driving force was the late Jude Aldred, and the Northumbrian Coast AONB partnership, supported by Durham University and the Bamburgh Research Project, which carried out the excavations.
This enabled the crypt to be opened to the public and the setting up of a digital ossuary which can be viewed on the bamburghbones.org website. A book titled Accessing Aidan has also been published, with contributions from key figures who played their part as the venture unfolded.
Jessica Turner, project officer for Accessing Aidan/Bamburgh Bones, says: “It has been one of the most rewarding projects of my working life. Accessing Aidan came about because a community recognised that they had a fascinating story to tell. The people of Bamburgh are proud of their remarkable Anglo-Saxon ancestors, whose endeavour and adventure resulted in the creation of the cosmopolitan capital 1,400 years ago.”
Graeme Young, a director of the Bamburgh Research Project, tells how the location of the cemetery was revealed when a storm in 1817 stripped away sand. The project’s excavations, he said, led to “an enthralling story that opens a window into lives lived more than 1,300 years ago of people who were visitors, or members, of a long lost kingdom.
“The story of the Bowl Hole cemetery is just a short part of the long history of Northumberland which has been an occupied landscape for thousands of years, but it is a fascinating part of that story as it is such a detailed window into the lives of a group of individuals.”
Research showed that 45% of the burials were male, 42% were female and 13% undetermined. About a quarter had not reached adulthood. This means that the site was a burial place for family groups and not that of a male-dominated garrison.
It seems that few of the burials were of people who grew up in and around Bamburgh and north Northumberland. Early medieval royal courts had diplomatic, trading and exchange links far beyond their frontiers and Bamburgh would also have been a destination of pilgrimage. A number of the individuals originated from Ireland and Scotland, also Scandinavia and some from as far south as the Mediterranean or North Africa.
Prof Roberts said: “The Bowl Hole cemetery is unique in several ways. There are few cemeteries of this date in England and the Bowl Hole is linked to the royal centre at Bamburgh. It has allowed us to give voices to the people buried in the Bowl Hole cemetery for them to tell their story, and a fascinating story at that.
“The skeletons now lie in peace within the crypt, but their lives live on in the form of the digital ossuary. Studying skeletons from archaeological cemeteries is the closest we can get to those once living people who created our past.”
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