Hanged Iron Age man has left his brain to science

Scientific studies have shown the man, who was aged between 26 and 45, most probably died from hanging before he was carefully decapitated and his head then buried on its own.

Archaeologists found the remains in 2008 in one of a series of Iron Age pits discovered in a dig ahead of York University’s £750m campus expansion.

Brain material was still in the skull which dates back about 2,500 years, making it one the oldest surviving brains in Europe.

A team of scientists, including chemists, bio-archaeologists and neurologists, is studying how the man’s brain could have survived when all the other soft tissue had decayed, leaving only the bone.

The researchers are also investigating details of the man’s death and burial that may have contributed to the survival of what is normally highly vulnerable soft tissue.

The team is headed by Dr Sonia O’Connor, a Research Fellow in Archaeological Sciences at Bradford University and an Honorary Visiting Fellow at York University.

She said: “This is the most thorough investigation ever undertaken of a brain found in a buried skeleton and has allowed us to begin to really understand why brain can survive thousands of years after all the other soft tissues have decayed.”

The research, funded by York University and English Heritage, is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.