In this photo, Glenn Story, Associate Professor at Classics and Antropology, University of Iowa, and his assistant, Brian Horton, Penn State University, are looking over the long bones from Burial 6 of the 2005 test pit in the Abbey courtyard. They are trying to determine the minimum number of individuals in this very mixed-up burial context by counting human skeletal elements. Currently, Story believes the burial consists of all women and children, victims either of a natural disaster such as an earthquake, or perhaps of an epidemic. The burial dates to around A.D. 350, and despite the apparent haste of the depositry of bodies, time was taken to bury them with ceramic jugs and glass vessels.
