ANGLESEY, WALES—According to a North Wales Live report, examination of the remains of 86 people found in stone-lined graves on an island off the coast of Wales revealed that the burials date from the fourth through the eighth centuries A.D. Irene Garcia Rovira of Archaeology Wales said it is rare to find well-preserved bone on the island because its soil is very acidic. Tests of the bones indicate that some of the people buried on the island had grown up hundreds of miles away, she added. “What we do know from the isotope analyses is that some individuals came from western Britain, where the border is today between England and Wales, a couple from Scandinavia and a couple from Mediterranean places like Spain,” Rovira said. A second-century A.D. Roman coin was also found on the hip of one of the female skeletons. “It could be that it just happened to be on the soil at the time of the burial and fell into the grave," she explained, "or it could have been purposely placed with her, as some sort of family heirloom.” A bronze brooch dating to the early medieval period was found in a separate burial. For more on archaeology in Wales, go to "The Marks of Time: Roman Fort."
