Young Lovers.

It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love.

Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua, just 40 kilometres south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of Romeo and Juliet.

Buried between 5000 and 6000 years ago, the prehistoric lovers are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig, said.

"As far as we know, it's unique," Menotti said. "Double burials from the Neolithic are unheard of, and these are even hugging."

The burial site was located on Monday during construction work for a factory building in the outskirts of Mantua.

Alongside the couple, archaeologists found flint tools, including arrowheads and a knife.

Experts will now study the artefacts and the skeletons to determine the burial site's age and how old the two were when they died, she said.

From the Sydney Morning Herald

Parham village.

Parham estate.

Early this year the Parham estate contacted us with a proposal to undertake the research and an excavation of the lost village of Parham, I think it’s important to understand what a lost village is, and an understanding of what it may have been like for the inhabitants during the period of occupation.

Firstly what is a deserted medieval village, the term used to describe such a place is a DVM, this term is really misleading, as not all deserted villages date from the medieval times, many such settlements were only finally abandon as late as 1950s, while many others have been deserted since the 5^th or so century.

One of the most famous medieval villages to be researched and excavated is Wharram Percy in Yorkshire; this site has been a focus of extensive archaeological investigations that has spanned over forty years. Only the church is clearly visible above the ground, although the surrounding landscape clearly shows the layout of the original village.

A deserted medieval village or DMV is really a ghost settlement, an abandoned location where partially erected houses and crop remains but the inhabitants have long moved on to other places.

In England there are some 3.500 DMVs, and that is at the last count, in Sussex alone there are around 115, but this is not set in stone as there will many others that to date, have not been recorded - discovered to date.

Throughout the medieval period, villages consisted of from 10- 60 families, mainly living in very rough huts-at best; wooden-framed with wattle and daub walls-on dirt floors, with no chimneys or glazes windows. The furnishings would have been sparse, beds on floors softened with straw of leaves.

Water would have come from a local river or stream, often also the main sewer from the village, sometimes they may have been a well, water would have been collected in wooden buckets.

In most cases one end of the hut would be given over to livestock, which would have been kept in the hut over night, this in the cold periods of winter would have given extra warmth to the family living in the hut, but during hot periods it would have very smelly, and very unhygienic.

Clothes made of wool, flax and animal skins were rarely changed. Only the elite, the lord of the manor, the priest the Lords steward and perhaps some of the wealthier peasants, enjoyed superior housing and clothes.

The diet at this time would have been poor, mainly porridge, cheese, black bread, and some home grown vegetables, a lot of the food would have been dried and smoked, and this food would carry them throughout the winter months.

Village lives revolved around the agriculture calendar.

In the spring the animals grazed in the pasture, and seed sown. Summer was the busiest time; particularly when the harvests of wheat, barley, rye, hay, vegetables and fruit were being gathered.

In the autumn the animals grazed on the remains of the crops, providing manure for the fields, and it is at this time other types of marling were applied.

Winter was the time when families and those animals not killed for meat stayed indoors.a

There are several arrangements for the village as we know it, a village in the round, IE around a church, the village arranged along street, and a village around a square, as in Wisbrough Green, what we have at PARHAM is a village perhaps around a church, or a village arranged along a street.
The village arranged around a church is often there from much early times, especially if the church is on a mound, as this then denotes the period of occupation perhaps to Pagan times.

A village along a street often goes back to Roman times, when settlements grew up along well known trading route. Or even an ancient track way, another trading route, perhaps where travelers stopped over night. Many of the roadside settlements of Roman Britain were abandoned in the troubled times of the Saxon Conquest, but when ever possible during settled periods ,villages sprang up again at crossroads, at river crossings, and wherever somebody thought he had something to gain from passing traffic.

So what do we have at Parham, I think it’s a village along a street, an old road or track way, the church is dated to around to around the early 12^th century.