Archaeology News: Archaeologists discover Anglo-Saxon child buried with shield, spear in medieval cemetery in Kent

 Archaeologists discover Anglo-Saxon child buried with shield, spear in medieval cemetery in Kent

Four medieval swords were also discovered during excavation.

By Miriam Sela-Eitam, Jerusalem Post, February 10, 2026

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-886186

Target practice for jousting: consisting of a cross-bar turning upon a pivot with a broad part to strike against. 

Illustration after a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. An engraving from The Sports and Pastimes of the people 

of England, by Joseph Strutt, (London, 1833). (photo credit: The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

A child buried with a shield and spear was discovered during excavations of a medieval cemetery in Kent, southeast England, by Prof. Duncan Sayer and archaeologist Andrew Richardson. 

The child, believed to have been somewhere between 10-12 years-old, most likely did not use either of the weapons “comfortably” due to his curved spine, Sayer explained in a January 30 article to The Conversation. 

Sayer added that the grave of a second child was also discovered during the excavations, this one believed to have been a “boy who was just two to three years old” buried with a large silver belt buckle.

“Graves with objects like these usually belong to adult men, large buckles were a symbol of office in later Roman and early Medieval contexts, for example the spectacular gold examples from Sutton Hoo,” Sayer noted in the article. 

“The weapons in our graves were as much as an expression of loss and grief, as they were a physical statement about strength or masculinity and the male family,” Sayer wrote. “Even battle hardened and ancient warriors cried, and they buried their dead with weapons like swords that told stories."

“The spear, shield and buckles found in little graves spoke of the men these children might have become.”

Two medieval swords also discovered 

Sayer and Richardson also discovered four medieval swords buried in the graves. 

One of the blades, a “high status 6th century object,” bears a “decorated silver pommel and ring which is fixed to the handle” and was sheathed in a beaver fur-lined scabbard, while a second bears a smaller silver hilt and a “wide, ribbed, gilt scabbard mouth.” 

“Two elements with different artistic styles, from different dates, brought together on one weapon,” Sayer wrote.

“This mixture was also seen in the Staffordshire Hoard (discovered in 2009) which featured 78 pommels and 100 hilt collars with a range of dates from the 5th to the 7th centuries AD.” 

Several weapon burials were revealed during the excavation, all set around an older, deeper grave surrounded by a ring ditch.

This grave was marked with a mound of earth, Sayer noted, and held a man who was not buried with weapons or metal artifacts.

Sayer and Richardson were joined by a team from the University of Lancashire and Isle Heritage. Fourty graves were excavated in total, and the discovery can be watched on BBC2’s Digging for Britain.

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