'Black Death Pit' Unearthed by Crossrail Project

It's very inconvenient when the ancients have put a burial site in the way of a construction project. How thoughtless of them - these things blow big holes in Gantt charts and they can't be sued for delay time...

Well, at least the story didn't say, that the bodies looked just like the day they died..... :/

I'm getting a bad feeling about this.

First an asteroid near-miss and a meteorite hit. Then a plague of locusts in Egypt. After that the pope abdicates. Next a comet appears in the West at sunset. Yesterday I read that astronomers are very concerned about the sunspot cycle being all out of whack. Now Black Death has been unearthed.

I think I'd better stockpile canned goods in my basement.

I think I'd better stockpile canned goods in my basement.

This just in......... American Can Company just recall 100% of its production of cans it producted in the last 6 months due to a defect in its sealing operation,........ Bankruptcy imminent..........

Can they even stick a shovel in the ground around London without hitting some ancient ruins, cemetery, or other such historical finds?

"This just in from the BBC! Little Timmy Wilkinston of London was digging in his back yard with a Popsicle stick and unearthed what appears to be the lost ruins of Atlantis! "

What always amazes me is that "they" need to dig so deep to find things like this. Where does all of this detritus come from in the cities? Doesn't anyone record these things with more than an old sketch (from 1658)...that they just buried the old city and built atop it?

When the remains of old Jamestown and Williamsburg (Virginia) were unearthed it was only a couple of feet at its deepest. That was "only" in 1607...merely ~257 years after the black death. It's been over 400 since the historic triangle was first settled and all of that old stuff is right there! Still!

Is the overburden from all those sooty fireplaces? Coal dust? Sh!t from open sewers? I would honestly love to know.

Otherwise, a great and very interesting story!

From what I have been able to gather its the same as what most large cities experience in their history coming from a number of things mostly related to city expansion and rework.

Low areas get filled in with what ever is available near by and many times that's trash, and material from a major disaster being cleaned up, soil from slightly higher places in the nearby landscape being cut down for construction, and from basements being dug.

Swampy land gets drained and filled in or forested areas are cleared to become farmland. Farmland gets taken over to become housing, cemeteries and trash dumps. They get taken over and filled in more to become more housing, business and commercial development. That all get destroyed by cataclysmic human and or natural disasters and reworked again into being trash dumps, land fill, more housing, or commercial space again.

Given areas that were in or near water ways that got intentionally filled in and reworked over hundreds of years for multiple reasons and where you dig can have multiple layers of human history all mixed and mashed together going for several tens of feet or more in depth in places that are now right in the middle of a modern city.

Well, it is different in the United States.

Yes, it is different, it was just discovered while little jimmy was playing in his sand box, he uncovered an 60's era McDonald's cheeseburger wrapper from 1967. The local university archeologist, has discovered that little Jimmy's home was constructed on a large urban residential development on top of an old landfill site

I am just going by a generalized concept and process I have seen on many documentary shows about the history of large cities around the world.

Seems like the vast majority always have a surprisingly large amount garbage dumps, demolition material from large scale disasters, and cemeteries underneath them!

I like that middle pic...

I can hear the rats: "Is it cheese yet, is it cheese yet!?!"

Yup, in the old days they didn't bother with trivia like planning permission, drawings, health and safety, foundations etc.
Just stomp all over what was there an put the new build on top.
This principal still hold good in many places as long as the appropriate folding 'planning permission' is handed over.
Some places (Italy?) have regular amnesties for illegal building and allow retrospective planning permission.
It's all prob' V easy if you went to the right school, play golf at the right club, or have a spare horse head for the appropriate bed
Del
(CEO KrisDel 'StompnBuild' department)