She said: “What we can say for definite is it was buried after the body had started to decompose.
“The limbs have started to fall away from the rest of the body but great care has been made to try to put the body back.”
Dr Willmott said: “A great deal of care has been taken in this burial. So this could be an individual who perhaps has died away from the site and been brought here to be interred here specially.”
Dr Willmott adds: “And of course saints and holy people. So there could be something like that going on here, which suggests Little Carlton was a place of great importance.”
The skeleton was the first of a number of intriguing and rare finds which include writing implements, around 300 dress pins, and a huge number of ‘Sceattas’, coins from the 7th-8th centuries, a small lead tablet bearing the faint but legible letters spelling ‘Cudberg’, a female Anglo-Saxon name, and glassware that indicated trade with mainland Europe.
An iron manacle – a unique find on British soil – was also discovered which possibly indicates either a slave trade operated at the site in the early medieval period or slaves were kept by whoever occupied it.
And a pair of tweezers that could have been used by Christian monks to turn the pages of religious manuscripts were also uncovered.
It is believed the site, which today is surrounded completely dry land, was actually surrounded by water and was most likely the site of a monastery or trading post in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey.
The…