Black Death burial pit found beneath pasture where sheep grazed in rural England

A burial pit containing the bodies of 48 people who perished in the 14th century when the Black Death swept through Britain, has been found, it was revealed Wednesday.

The skeletons, which include the bodies of 27 children, have been unearthed at the site of a hospital which formed part of Thornton Abbey monastery in Lincolnshire in central England.

The pit was discovered during an archaeological dig by students from the University of Sheffield in a field in rural England where sheep have grazed for hundreds of years.

In the mid-1300s, the plague swept across Britain wiping out an estimated 60 percent of the country's population.

Archaeologists from the University of Sheffield revealed the 48 skeletons at the extremely rare Black Death burial site.

A spokesman at the university said: "The Black Death was one of the worst pandemics in human history. It devastated European populations from 1346-1353 and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people."

Dr Hugh Willmott from the university's Department of Archaeology has been working on the excavation site since 2011, directing the excavations. He has described the find as of national importance.

Willmott said the site where the burial pit was discovered was just an ordinary green field grazed by sheep for hundreds of years, adding "but like many fields across England, as soon as you take away the turf, layers of history can be revealed by archaeology."

Teeth samples from the skeletons found at the Thornton Abbey site were sent to McMaster University in Canada where ancient DNA was successfully extracted from the tooth pulp. Tests on the DNA revealed the presence of Yersinia pestis (The Black Death) which is documented to have reached Lincolnshire in the spring of 1349. Endit