A rare discovery of 81 Anglo-Saxon coffins made from the hollowed-out trunks of oak trees may provide new insights into how people lived in the early days of Christianity in Britain, archaeologists said on Wednesday.
The coffins, which date back to the seventh to ninth centuries, were uncovered at a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery on a site called Great Ryburgh in Norfolk, eastern England, where six rare plank-lined graves were also found.
Evidence suggesting the cemetery served a community of early Christians includes a timber structure thought to be a church or chapel, wooden grave markers and a lack of grave goods that would have been expected at pagan burial sites.