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Press Release

23 November 2005
Gristhorpe Man takes his holiday in Bradford

A burial that was excavated in the 19th Century will be coming to Bradford for further analysis this week.

The box containing the excavated material will be opened at the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford at 10am on Thursday, 24, November 2005.

The well preserved bronze age burial was originally donated to the Rotunda Museum in Scarborough and has been brought to Bradford whilst the museum is being refurbished.

Whilst the finds are at the University a team of experts are setting out to complete more analysis on the excavation 2 centuries on from when it was first dug up.

The investigation will look at the human remains themselves and also look at what further information the grave goods can reveal about the individual, his social position, inter-regional contacts, and burial rite.

Experts will use advances in scientific dating techniques to permit a more accurate assessment of the information they are looking for. The work will permit comparison with radiocarbon dates obtained from other British examples, as well as with the series of dendrochronological (tree ring) dates obtained from Bronze Age tree-trunk coffin burials excavated in Denmark where such burials are much more common.

Research Fellow for the department of archaeological sciences, Dr Nigel Melton said, "This project gives us a unique opportunity to carry out analyses using modern techniques on the material from the Gristhorpe excavation, which have remained unstudied since the 1830s."

Please note that the event is not open to members of the public.

23 November 2005