Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• The first excavation at the famed Tower of London in a generation uncovered more than 20 skeletal remains.
• Excavations revealed everything from a 14th-century Black Death group burial to three skeletons from the late 12th or early 13th centuries buried in coffins.
• The on-site chapel is serving as a tell-all of London’s medieval history.

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A rare dig into the soil of the famed Tower of London—the first excavation at the site in a generation—yielded two skeletons from around 1500. As archaeologists dug deeper into the ground, they found roughly 20 more burials, including one group grave likely tied to the 1348 “Black Death” plague.

“Undertaking these two excavations has provided us with a generational opportunity to enhance our understanding of the evolution off the Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and the buildings which stood before it,” Alfred Hawkins, curator of historic buildings at Historic Royal Palaces, the organization that oversees the Tower, said in a statement.

The dig began as a trial excavation in 2019 to prepare the on-site Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula for a new elevator. The archaeologists helming the excavation discovered the remains of two skeletons. Subsequent excavations outside the chapel as deep as 10 feet below the surface revealed everything from a 14th-century Black Death group burial to three skeletons from the late 12th or early 13th centuries buried in coffins—an unusually expensive burial for that time.

Jane Sidell, principal inspector of ancient monuments at Historic England, said the team is already gaining insight into the residents of the Tower in a way they never have before. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said in a statement. “There is so much more to learn through further analysis about the people as well as the buildings of one of England’s most evocative historic monuments.”

The Tower of London was built alongside the River Thames in the 1070s as a royal palace. It also served as a prison for high-status individuals (including King Henry VI), and housed the country’s Royal Mint. But it has seemingly almost always had a chapel on its grounds.

The current parish church for the residents of the Tower of London was built in 1520, after a 1512 fire devoured the one King Edward I built in 1287. A compacted layer of stone found in the recent excavation could be a 1240 project at the site led by Henry III, showing there was a chapel before 1287.

And since the current chapel sits atop the same land as the Tower’s previous chapel foundations, burials aplenty are to be expected. Of the recent finds, the older burials could have even been buried inside one of the long-destroyed chapels. “Typically, if you’re buried closer to the church, you’re more important, and if you’re buried inside the church, you’re much, much more important, and if you’re buried under the altar, you are the most important person,” Hawkins said, according to National Geographic.

Known burials at the site include three queens and two Catholic saints, but finding out more about the unknown skeletons could help piece together the medieval story of the site.

“The new excavations provide the opportunity to transform our understanding of the Tower’s community,” Katie Faillace from Cardiff University’s School of History, Archaeology, and Religion, said in a statement. “Our work uses a biomolecular technique known as isotope analysis, which tells us about health, diet, and mobility in the past, all from a tiny fragment of a tooth. This cutting-edge method was unparalleled potential for reconstructing the experiences of the people who lived and died at the Tower, allowing us to build a rich picture of individuals’ lives.”

The analysis on the first two skeletons starts developing that picture. Richard Madgwick, archaeological scientist at Cardiff University and part of the team, told *National Geographic *that one individual was likely a middle-aged female who died between 1480 and 1550. Clues indicate she likely lived as far away as Wales at one point, and had a diet featuring sugar—an expensive ingredient at the time.

The second skeleton belonged to a younger man who died around the same time. Details of his remains show a high-stress life that likely played out just north of London. His diet was much less exotic.

“I’m looking forward to starting analysis of some of the other amazing finds we have uncovered along the way,” Hawkins said. “This is a very, very rare opportunity to get this information.”

Along with the remains, the team found a rare burial shroud from the late 12th or early 13th century (fabric doesn’t usually last through the ages), jewelry, shards of stained glass, and rare grave goods in the form of funerary incense pots dated to between 1150 and 1250 (with charcoal still inside them).

“At the moment we’ve got these lovely two biographies,” Madgwick said. “It hints at the dynamic movement of people and the dynamic life trajectories of the people who were buried in the Tower, but it’s going to be really exciting to see whether we’ve picked two anomalies, or whether we see the broader range of lifeways that we see of those buried here.”

Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.