Medieval knight crypt: Researchers have speculated that skeletal remains of eight people could be the relatives of a suspected medieval knight or a nobleman who was found under a parking lot in Scotland in what could be an old crypt.
A team with the University of Edinburgh found one infant and an adult female among the remains. They were buried behind what appears to be a wall that could have been a burial crypt.
“This site just keeps getting more and more interesting, it is turning out to be a real treasure trove of archaeology,” Ross Murray, a former student with the university, said in a statement to LiveScience.
The new discovery, he said, could be related to the suspected knight found earlier in the year.
“The skull of the skeleton found immediately beneath the location of the knight looks like that of a female and the remains found on the other side of the ornate slab belong to an infant from the same period,” he told the Scotsman.
Headland Archaeology said in March, when the suspected knight was found, that the remains were found on the 13th century Blackfriars Monastery in Edinburgh.
Carvings of a cross on a sandstone and an ornate sword suggested that the person buried there was a knight or a nobleman.
“We hope to find out more about the person buried in the tomb once we remove the headstone and get to the remains underneath but our archaeologists have already dated the gravestone to the thirteenth century,” stated Councillor Richard Lewis, culture convener of the City of Edinburgh Council, a month ago.
Lewis called the finding “one of the most significant and exciting archaeological discoveries in the city for many years.”
Friends Read Free