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Archaeologists discover a mysterious mass grave over 3,000 years old! Here's what the ancient mound contained
2025-12-19 20:35:30 / MISTERE&KURIOZITETE
Recently published research has uncovered a "mysterious mass burial event" in southern Scotland around 3,300 years ago.
The excavations were undertaken in 2020 and 2021 by Guard Archaeology, during the construction of the access road to the Twentyshilling Wind Farm, near Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway.
He discovered a Bronze Age mound – an ancient burial mound – with the cremated remains of several people contained within five tightly packed urns.
Archaeologist Thomas Muir, who led the excavation, said it seemed as if some kind of "terrible event" like famine had led to so many burials at the same time.
The wind farm is located about three miles (4.8 km) south of Sanquhar, in open and rugged mountainous terrain.
During their work, the Archaeological Guard found urns with the cremated remains of at least eight individuals, all placed there in a mass burial sometime between 1439 and 1287 BC.
A small group of pits somewhere to the north was also excavated, revealing late Neolithic activity between 2867 and 2504 BC.
"The five urns at Twentyshilling Mound contained at least eight individuals," Muir said.
"The urns were deposited at the same time when they were tightly packed inside the pit and belonged to the same date range from the 15th to the 13th century BC."
He said this indicated it was a single mass burial, "perhaps of the same family or group."
"What is significant about the remains of the Twentyshilling family is that they were cremated and then buried almost immediately," he said.
He said this was unusual as in the Bronze Age there was "quite a good tradition" of leaving bodies outside for some time, as seen in another excavation at Broughton in the Borders.
"This had been reopened several times and reused, so it was used by a community for a long period of time," he said.
"Whereas what we have in Twentyshilling is some kind of terrible event that must have happened to the community – perhaps famine – and a lot of people died within a very short period of each other."
The Bronze Age in the area may have been a "time of particular stress", as other burial sites in the region show evidence of famine and abandonment.
Archaeological work at Twentyshilling was a mandatory condition of planning permission for the wind farm, which is now fully operational.
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