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Video: Porpoise found in medieval graveyard

Here is the video of an interesting archaeological discovery on the island of Chapelle Dom Hue near Guernsey. Earlier this week Phil de Jersey, working for Guernsey Archaeology, posted news of finding the skull of a juvenile porpoise in the graveyard of a small monastic site.

The porpoise is believed to date from the fourteenth-century, and de Jersey adds that it looks to have been buried deliberately, based on the way the grave was cut.

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He tells the Guernsey Press, “That is what puzzles me. If they had eaten it or killed it for the blubber, why take the trouble to bury it?”

In another interview with The Guardian, he suggests one possibility deals with religious observation: “The dolphin has a strong significance in Christianity but I’ve not come across anything like this before. It’s the slightly wacky kind of thing that you might get in the iron age but not in medieval times.”

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Click here to see more videos from the archaeological work being carried out at Chapelle Dom Hue.

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