SCIENCE & TECH: 4,000-Year-Old Bronze Age Tree Trunk Coffin to Make Museum Debut

A massive 4,000-year-old Bronze Age coffin, carved from a single oak tree and discovered by chance at a Lincolnshire golf club, has arrived at Lincoln Museum, UK, where it will be displayed to the public for the first time in the new year. The 10-foot coffin, found during routine pond maintenance work in 2018, contains the remains of a high-status individual buried with extraordinary care. Along with it was found an exceptionally rare axe that has astonished archaeologists worldwide, reports the BBC.

When workers at Tetney Golf Club near Grimsby, northern England uncovered the ancient burial, they had inadvertently stumbled upon one of Britain’s most significant Bronze Age discoveries. The coffin, known as the “Tetney Coffin,” is one of only about 65 tree-trunk burials known from Bronze Age Britain. What makes this find particularly remarkable is not just its exceptional preservation, but the wealth of information it provides about Bronze Age burial practices and the ritualistic treatment of elite members of society four millennia ago.

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