Hundreds of human bones have been lifted from the River Thames over the past two centuries. A new analysis shows the pattern is not random and that many of these remains belong to people who lived long before Rome reached Britain.
The work uses modern dating to pull scattered finds into a single timeline. Results point strongly to late prehistory, when communities along the river were changing fast.
Dating human bones in the Thames
Nichola Arthur, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London (NHM), led the research. Her team set out to anchor each bone in time, then compare the big picture across the entire river corridor.
The study reports 30 new radiocarbon dates and folds in previously reported results to create a stronger chronology.
The clearest signal lands in the Bronze Age and Iron Age, two long periods that frame much of Britain’s later prehistory.
Why did humans end up in the Thames
“The big question for these human bones is how they came to be in the river,” said Arthur. The combined dataset spans from roughly 4000 BC to AD 1800, with most dates falling between 2300 to 800 BC and 800 BC to AD 43.
Many of the finds come from upstream zones rather than tidal reaches, which suggests local choices about where remains entered the water.
Earlier research on skulls from the Thames pointed to pattern, not accident. That study argued that dates and findspots show order rather than a simple sweep of the river.
Ideas have shifted over time, from stories of battles to scenarios that involve burial erosion or drownings. The new chronology trims those explanations by showing clear peaks in late prehistory.
Why watery places mattered
Archaeologists sometimes use the term votive deposition for the deliberate placement of valued objects or human remains in rivers, lakes, or bogs.
The late prehistoric Thames sits within a broader northwest European pattern that includes metalwork, animal remains, and sometimes human bones.
Bodies in wetlands are known from northern Europe as bog bodies, often with forensic signs that point to unusual deaths.
Museum Silkeborg’s resources on Tollund Man show how waterlogged conditions can preserve skin and soft tissue. This helps investigators reconstruct life and death in the first millennium BC, illustrates the ritual use of wetlands in that era.
Patterns seen in the Thames bones
The team used radiocarbon dating, a method that estimates age by measuring the decay of radioactive carbon in bone collagen.
With careful lab preparation and calibration against tree ring records, the method can place these remains along a reliable time axis.
“We can now say with confidence that these don’t appear to just be bones that have steadily accumulated in the river through time,” said Arthur.
When the new dates were combined with earlier results, the distribution did not look like a slow, even drip of bones into the river. “
How to tell ritual from accident
Archaeologists weigh location, association with other finds, and traces left on bone. Patterns in skeletal trauma can reveal blows, cuts, or projectiles, and weathering can show whether a body decomposed on land before entering the water.
Upstream concentrations and date peaks are clues, not verdicts. They restrict what is plausible, then encourage targeted tests that can separate ceremony from conflict or erosion.
Upstream zones are less likely to collect random debris from the estuary. Clusters there point to choices about where remains were placed or where people died.
Local topography, current lines, and fords could have shaped those choices. Communities may also have used particular bends or islands for repeated acts over generations.
Thames bones tell London’s history
If many of these remains entered the Thames as offerings, then the river was a stage for public acts tied to belief, law, or memory. That reframes the Thames as a social place long before it became a highway of empire and commerce.
If violence played a role, the river becomes a record of territorial stress and the risks that came with controlling access to water. Either way, the chronology lifts scattered bones into a coherent history.
“Exploring exactly how the Thames human remains might fit into these practices is one of the next exciting steps of the project,” said Arthur. Trauma analysis is underway, and it will test whether injuries match ritual killing, interpersonal conflict, or accidents.
Future work can add isotopes that track movement and diet, which will show whether the people came from local communities or from far afield.
Careful mapping of findspots against ancient channels can also reveal whether deposition favored shallow crossings, eddies, or confluences.
Ceremony and conflict are not mutually exclusive. Communities can fold punishment, sacrifice, and display into single acts that leave similar traces in the water.
The new timeline narrows the field and raises sharper questions. That is progress, because good questions lead to tests that separate story from evidence.
The study is published in Antiquity.
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