The Thames Boneyard Gives Up More Secrets
Not all historical sources are equal, nor are they treated equally.
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This is a riff on a New York Times article by Alexander Nazaryan from February 2025.
The banks of England’s Thames River have hosted human settlements for thousands of years, from Neolithic huts to soaring skyscrapers. The river’s mud, lacking oxygen, acts as a sealant that helps preserve remains. Because there has been activity on and along the Thames for thousands of years, its mud is constantly yielding historical treasures. In 2018, workers building a sewage tunnel along the riverbank discovered an intact 500-year-old skeleton with the remains of leather boots on its feet.
Researchers Nichola Arthur and Heather Bonney of London’s Natural History Museum, and Jane Sidell of the University of Durham, recently dated dozens of bones dredged from the river, creating a comprehensive database that has dispelled longstanding theories about why the river came to serve as the last resting place for so many people. The team published their latest findings in the April 2025 issue of the Cambridge University Press journal Antiquity.
In this new study, the team radiocarbon dated 28 river samples from skulls never dated before, and two skulls from an older investigation for comparison. Half of the new samples came from either the Bronze (3300-1200 BC) or Iron (1200-550 BC) Age to the arrival of the Romans (43 AD), with a cluster appearing to be between the periods. The researchers' findings, based on dating and location, led them to conclude someone intentionally placed the bodies in the river, against previous theories that powerful tides moved them.
As far as other watery places go, bogs are an especially rich source for archaeologists, since their acidic waters allow for mummy-like levels of preservation. Britain’s most notable bog body is the Lindow Man, discovered at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England on 1 August 1984. Someone deposited the body face down sometime between 2 BC and 119 AD, according to some. At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s who had been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy physical labor. There has been debate over the reason for his death, either violent and perhaps ritualistic.
None of the Thames bones has reached Lindow Man’s (called Pete Marsh by the wags) level of notoriety, possibly because bones don’t have faces; Pete does. These findings also help us understand how we research the past, as well as the past itself. Carbon-dating can cost as much as $1000 per sample, with no assurance that the sample will yield significant results. Significantly, too, bog bodies are routinely carbon-dated; bones found along the Thames can wait years, if ever: hundreds of samples from the Thames remain untested. The expense is one factor, but a combination of the level of interest—bog bodies with faces versus faceless bones—and the level of probable preservation, where bogs preserve more material than Thames mud, are also significant factors.
Not all historical sources are equal, nor are they treated equally.
The Persistent Past: Discovering The Steele Diaries
An obscure but important US Army General offered the Steele diaries he compiled during WWI, WWII and the Korean War, to archives before he passed away, but no one seemed interested until a 19th Century economic historian found them and realized their potential importance. He found the resources and put the work in uncovering a previously unknown chapter of the past.
Set in the small community where The Past Not Taken: Three Novellas takes place, here’s another story of how history books are written.
And Finally...
On 17 January:
1873: The First Battle of the Stronghold takes place, where 53 Modoc warriors, led by Captain Jack, defended their fortified position in the lava beds of northeastern California. The battle forced 400-plus US Army soldiers to retreat after suffering about 40 casualties compared to the Modoc’s none, a clear Modoc victory.
1977: A firing squad executed Gary Gilmore at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, ending the decade-long moratorium on capital punishment in the US. Gilmore murdered two men in cold blood in 1976, and had waived all appeals, having asked everyone to just “butt out.” There was no question about his guilt and his desire to die, having attempted suicide twice while on death row.
And today is NATIONAL CLASSY DAY/BETTY WHITE’S BIRTHDAY, commemorating the birth of Betty Marion White Ludden in Oak Park, Illinois on this day in 1922. The veteran of WWII (American Women’s Voluntary Services (AWVS)) passed in December 2021, just short of her 100th birthday.