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Bronze Age Coffin Under a Golf Course

Ian Panter, the head of conservation at the York Archaeological Trust, with the coffin.
Ian Panter, the head of conservation at the York Archaeological Trust, with the coffin. Photo: Charlotte Graham

We’ve all been there. You’re doing routine maintenance on a golf course and stumble across the burial grounds of an important person from the Bronze Age. Okay, maybe not all of us have been there, but workers at Tetney Golf Club in Grimsby, England found a 4,000-year-old, single-cut oak coffin containing human remains in a water hazard, along with a ceremonial axe. I personally like this find because of the dust-to-dust-ness of it all. One day you’re the most powerful person around; a few generations later, you’re part of the furniture on the 15th hole.