About 40 decapitated skeletons have been discovered by a group of archaeologists in southern England, CNN reported.
These human remains belong to “criminals” of the Roman era, according to information collected by the media.
The skeletons were found when archaeologists, working on the High Speed 2 (HS2) program in England, discovered a Roman cemetery. The latter would be the largest of its kind in Buckinghamshire.
A team of 50 archaeologists had been working on the site for over a year. They found remains of a Roman city, as well as coins, dice, bells, spoons, pins and brooches.
The cemetery contained approximately 425 burials in total.
The number of tombs implies that a large number of people stood there during the mid to late Roman period. This is explained by the increase in agricultural production.
One explanation for the use of beheading as a funerary practice could be that the skeletons were once “criminals or some type of outcast”.
The cemetery mainly housed buried graves, as burial was common at the time.
“The excavations are important because they allow both to clearly characterize this Roman city, but also to study many of its inhabitants,” said Richard Brown, senior project manager at COPA JV, a consortium of archaeologists working on behalf of the project.
“With several new Roman settlement sites discovered during the work of HS2, this study enriches and completes the map of Roman Buckinghamshire,” added Mr Brown.
Archaeologists from the HS2 excavation program have unearthed a host of finds in Buckinghamshire in recent months, including a set of rare Roman statues and a wooden figure that may be 2,000 years old.