# Skull in the Quarry: What Happened to the Highsted Cemetery, and Who Was Buried There? *Radiocarbon dating, osteology, isotope and ancient DNA analysis of commingled remains from a 1955 rescue excavation show a local Late Iron Age to Romano-British population, with diets shifting under Roman influence and possible bustum burials.* By Sandee Oster · Published 13 October 2026 Source: https://archaeologyteahouse.com/stories/skull-in-the-quarry-what-happened-to-the-highsted-cemetery-and-who-was-buried-there Primary source: [REDISCOVERING THE DEAD: REANALYSIS OF A LOST IRON AGE CEMETERY AT HIGHSTED, KENT](https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.70030) Subjects: [Kent](https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q67479626), [Museum](https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q33506) --- ![](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/media/01a1247c-3a38-7c43-ba7a-932937cc326c/1600.webp) *Back of the image reads "Highsted Chalk Quarry Sittingbourne Aug 1955 20 skeletons & 6 cremations and Belgae pottery & 1 La Tene brooch", the skull of this individual had been damaged by a machine. Credit: © Maidstone Museums in Legge et al. 2026* In 1955, the Highsted site, in Kent, was a quarry where quarrymen worked away blocks of chalk. Then one day Archie Pack looked up and saw something tumbling down the edge of the quarry pit; it was not a stone, but a human skull. Another worker, Frederick George Winter, later uncovered the first skeletons along with some old pottery sherds. Rescue excavations were conducted. The whole thing was reported on by the local Gazette. Photos, notes and interviews were taken. The bones and pots were exhumed over the course of the next several weeks. The quarry had been hiding an Iron Age cemetery, filled with dozens of people, possible cremations, and maybe even a chariot burial. Within weeks, the pots disappeared into private collections, notebooks vanished, and bones were forgotten and shuffled between damp basements and a private garage until everything was hopelessly jumbled. The site, its finds, and the people they represented were written off as lost. No one bothered looking at the remains anymore; after all, what's the point? It's not like this hopeless mess could possibly be of any use. But that changed when Michael Legge, lead author of the study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, decided to have another look. He discovered that the cemetery had been reused over centuries, spanning the Late Iron Age and Early Roman period. The interred were local, yet they ate somewhat like the incoming Romans and may have burned some of their dead, as people along the Rhine and Danube sometimes did. The rest were buried in traditional Deal-rite burials, making this the third-largest Deal-rite cemetery known. The collection was jumbled, confusing and probably frustrating to work with at times, but it was anything but lost! ### The Cemetery in the Quarry ![](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/media/01a124aa-2461-796d-b6ed-037124307e57/1600.webp) *Lead coffin. Credit: Maidstone Museums in Legge et al. 2026* Highsted is a disused chalk quarry south of Sittingbourne near Rodmersham Green. The area has a long archaeological history, with records dating back to the Roman period, including a Romano-British cemetery discovered in 1828, four Romano-British cremations found in 1865, and, in 1934, four late Roman burials, a lead coffin, and 4th-century pottery discovered just 100 m from the 1955 site. Around 1920, a 'soldier' was supposedly found in the quarry too, buried together with a horse and cart. Highsted was discovered in 1955, when quarry workers began unearthing skulls and skeletons. Archaeologists D.T.A. Ponton and M. Blumstein quickly came to the quarry and began digging; they uncovered twenty human burials, plus six supposed cremations, along with some pottery and a brooch. However, the finds were never published, and the full extent of the cemetery was never established. Sadly, since then, the whole area has been quarried away, leaving little evidence that a cemetery once stood there, save for old photos and Gazette reports. Exactly how the finds and writings of Highsted went missing is equally mysterious; some claim everything was stolen. Others, including Dr Raymond Birch, the last surviving excavator, claimed the finds went to Maidstone and Milton Regis Court Hall Museums, while the Kent Archaeological Society wrote a full report. One source claims the pottery and drawings were returned to the quarry owners, only to vanish later, though no evidence of this supposed return exists, making theft the most likely option. Why steal random archaeological reports, some old pots and skeletons? Who knows, maybe to add to one's personal collection. People will steal the damnedest things even when they have no use for them (my own university has had someone steal a dinosaur skull, simply by tucking it beneath their shirt and walking out with it… yeah, security measures have been increased since). Accounts of what happened during the dig also conflict: some say the dig was kept secret to deter looting, while a local man recalled being able to walk around the excavation site to his heart's content. The only surviving official records are photographs taken by Arthur Page and donated to Maidstone Museum by excavator Hubert Berry, two images by Brian Jarrett, and some details in the East Kent Gazette. ### A Trail of Bones ![](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/media/01a1248c-548e-7979-9e12-a2b46a6e9aba/1600.webp) *Excavation of some of the Highsted human remains in 1955. Credit: © Maidstone Museums (photo 25A/A4), in Legge et al. 2026 and available on [Maidstone Museums ](https://museum.maidstone.gov.uk/blog/the-value-of-revisiting-archaeology-by-dr-michael-legge/)* The first Gazette article, published in August, reported the discovery of fourteen skeletons dated roughly 75 BC to AD 20. It mentioned two pots lying beside a skull and another skeleton in some blackened soil. Images of the excavation revealed graves with scattered bones in different layers, suggesting the cemetery was used and reused over a long time. Later reports go into more detail. On August 19, the Gazette reported another burial and a trench filled with pottery fragments, animal bones, and an animal skull with tusks a few inches long. By September 2nd, 17 skeletons had been unearthed; some were supposedly cremated, while the trench was described as containing pottery from two different periods. A week later, the Gazette published its final report. It concluded 26 individuals had been found, including a possible child and a six-foot-tall man found in an unusually deep grave surrounded by burned wood. According to former excavators, the graves were shallow, no more than 45 cm deep in most cases. Every individual had been marked and placed in their own little bag. One excavator claimed that, besides pottery, nothing else was recovered, but a photograph from the time shows a lead coffin, and a brooch is known to have been found. Another account, from Feakes, whose teenage brother had dug at the site at the time, recalled a grave containing geodes or sling stones, and said the 'cremations' were simply burned skeletons. Then all written mentions of the remains vanished. Years later, in 1974, a local newsletter reported one of the skeletons from the Highsted cemetery was supposedly on display at the Milton Regis Court Hall Museum, and the current curator recalls a skeleton having been laid out for the public sometime in the mid-60s. The other bones, she said, had been put in bags down in the basement. Fast forward again to 1981, and R.P. Whimster recorded a cluster of six burials and some pots and reported that everything from the site had been lost; the excavation material was written off. The trail of breadcrumbs eventually led the researchers to a letter written in 1987 when some of the bones had resurfaced, having been found wrapped up in old newspaper and placed in paper bags in a damp basement. Now, I am sure most of you know what happens to paper in damp places; it begins to crumble and break. So the bones began spilling out and ended up in a mixed-up pile. When the bones arrived at Maidstone Museum, staff noted that some of them had drill holes, a sign that someone had sampled them at some point; why, and what came of the results, is uncertain. By this point, at least 16 of the 26 individuals remained. Of the pots, four are known from Highsted; three were donated to the Royal Scottish Museum in 1977, and one other remained in private hands. Based on their style, three had been made during the late Iron Age and early Roman periods, while one, a deliberately holed bowl, dates to AD 270–370. And that's it; that was all that was known about the cemetery. It's not much; based on this alone, you can say very little. Highsted was a burial ground for individuals of the late Iron Age and early Roman period. End of story. Or is it? ### Not Quite Written Off ![](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/media/01a12487-c9cc-7a64-b45c-7c7bdb58c957/1600.webp) *Graves at Highsted. Credit: © Maidstone Museums (photo 25A/B3/2), in Legge et al. 2026* In 2018, doctoral researcher Legge identified the bones at Maidstone Museum, and the team's analysis gave the first clear picture of the people buried at Highsted. Two bones were sent for radiocarbon dating; they came back confirming what the pots had hinted at: these individuals were interred between the late Iron Age and the early Roman period, with one possibly as late as the second century AD. Their bones were incredibly fragmentary, eroded and terribly commingled, with almost no hope of figuring out whose arms, legs, ribs and skulls belonged to whom. Based on bone counts, at least 17 people were represented by the remains; at least seven were male and three female (some only probably); a few bones came from juveniles (e.g. teens or younger, which makes sexing them difficult), and the rest were too damaged to sex. Soil still clung to the remains, suggesting that no one else had examined them after 1955. Many individuals showed signs of tooth loss, dental plaque, a possible early case of Forestier's disease (ligaments and tendons slowly ossify and become like bone), a slipped femoral head, and a skull with a blow to the back of the head. Now, remember those six 'cremations' and the six-foot-tall man surrounded by burnt wood? Well, while none of the remaining individuals showed signs of burning, based on those older accounts describing the bones as simply burned, these may have been busta. This is a type of burial where a pyre is built above an open grave, so when the wood has burned down enough, the body drops into the grave below. The funerary rite is thought to have originated in the Rhine and Danube regions but is rare in Britain. Isotope analysis of their teeth suggests they were all locals, and their DNA fits Iron Age southern Britain, with one person showing genetic affinity to France/Switzerland and another to Scotland. Meanwhile, the rest of the burials had been laid out in neat north–south rows in the "Deal-rite" style, named after the cemetery at Mill Hill, Deal. With 26 burials in total, this made Highsted the third-largest Deal-rite cemetery known, surpassed only by Mill Hill and Thanet Earth. Finally, analysis of their carbon and nitrogen isotopes told the researchers what they ate: a mix somewhere between typical local Iron Age and Roman diets, with a little seafood (or possibly imported foods) added to the mix. This is an interesting result, since the isotopes show they grew up locally rather than being Roman incomers, suggesting that even small rural areas changed their diets as Romans moved in around them. --- It may not seem like much, but this is a remarkable amount of information from a site that was completely written off. From an "Iron Age-Roman cemetery" to the third-largest Deal-rite burial ground known, with a largely local population, someone with a blow to the head, and possibly one of the few rare instances of bustum-style pyre burials. Highsted is a reminder that just because something is labelled lost does not mean it is worthless, nor does it mean anything useful is gone. With enough determination and a little detective work, even the most scattered bits of evidence can eventually reveal much more. And since the alternative is knowing nothing at all, I think trying to piece together whatever we can is worth it. The cemetery is gone, quarried away decades ago. All we have are these remains to piece together the history of its people. Writing them off without even trying seems wrong, as if their history was not worth remembering anyway.  Do you think the Highsted finds were stolen or simply lost, and what do we owe the people whose bones were left forgotten in damp paper sacks? *Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to support this blog and the person writing it, you can *[*chip in once, monthly, or yearly.*](https://archaeologyteahouse.com/support)* Only if you'd like to.* ### Reference Legge M., Faillace K. E., Navarro L. C., Metz S., Bleasdale M., Büster L., Willis S., Carter M., Reich D., and Armit I. (2026) *REDISCOVERING THE DEAD: REANALYSIS OF A LOST IRON AGE CEMETERY AT HIGHSTED, KENT*, *Oxford Journal of Archaeology*, doi: [https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.70030](https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.70030). ## Common questions **Who donated the Highsted pots to the museum in Scotland?** They were donated in 1977 by Miss Madeline Brunton of Biggar, Lanarkshire, who insisted they stay in Edinburgh rather than go to Maidstone, which suggests she may have known how they were obtained. **Were the human remains ever meant to be studied after the 1955 excavation?** Yes, the bones were originally meant to go to Guy’s Hospital in London for examination, but either this never happened or no report was ever produced. **Were any of the people buried at Highsted related to each other?** Ancient DNA showed that one man and one woman were related at the third degree or more distantly.