The Boscombe Bowmen is the name given by archaeologists to a group of early

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

people found in a shared burial at

Boscombe Down MoD Boscombe Down ' is the home of a military aircraft testing site, on the southeastern outskirts of the town of Amesbury, Wiltshire, England. The site is managed by QinetiQ, the private defence company created as part of the breakup of the Def ...

Amesbury Amesbury () is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It is known for the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge which is within the parish. The town is claimed to be the oldest occupied settlement in Great Britain, having been first settle ...

() near

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connectin ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England.

Discovery

The burials were found in 2003 during roadworks being carried out on behalf of Qinetiq, the contractor that operates the

military airfield. The site is near a group of houses (known as Lower Camp) in

which are associated with the airfield (which lies to the east).

The burials

The grave contained seven burials: three children, a teenager and three men. Analysis of the skulls suggests that the men and the teenager were related to each other. The eldest man was buried in a crouched position with the bones of the others scattered around him, and their skulls resting at his feet. They became known as the Bowmen because several

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

arrowheads An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as s ...

were placed in the grave. Other grave goods included a boar's tusk, a bone toggle, flint tools, and eight Beaker vessels; an unusually high number. The burials are thought to date from around 2300 BCE, making them broadly contemporary with the

Amesbury Archer The Amesbury Archer is an early Bronze Age (Bell Beaker) man whose grave was discovered during excavations at the site of a new housing development () in Amesbury near Stonehenge. The grave was uncovered in May 2002. The man was middle aged ...

who was found nearby to the south.

Analysis

Lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

isotope analysis Isotope analysis is the identification of isotopic signature, abundance of certain stable isotopes of chemical elements within organic and inorganic compounds. Isotopic analysis can be used to understand the flow of energy through a food web ...

of the men's teeth has indicated that they grew up in the areas either of modern

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

or in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...

, but left in childhood. This was at first thought to be contemporary with the major building work of erecting the sarsen circle and the trilithons at

but research published in 2007 indicates that these burials occurred shortly after Stonehenge Phase 3ii.

Display

The finds are on display at the Wessex Gallery of Archaeology, which opened at the

Salisbury Museum The Salisbury Museum (previously The Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum) is a museum in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. It houses one of the best collections relating to Stonehenge and local archaeology. The museum is housed in The King's Ho ...

in 2014.

In popular culture

The bowmen feature as characters in Mark Patton's novel ''Undreamed Shores'', and part of the storyline is based on the circumstances of their burial.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Wessex Archaeology: The Boscombe Bowmen
Amesbury Bronze Age England History of Wiltshire Indo-European archaeological sites Sites associated with Stonehenge