Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an elite African woman who lived in York, England, during the Roman-era.

Academics say the discovery goes against the common assumption that all Africans in Roman Britain were low status male slaves.

Remains of the Ivory Bangle Lady, as she has been named, were studied in Reading using forensic techniques.

She was first discovered in the Bootham area of York in August 1901.

Her remains were in a stone coffin near Sycamore Terrace in the city.

Her grave dates back to the second half of the 4th Century. She was buried with items including jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, beads and a blue glass jug.

She also had a rectangular piece of bone, which is thought to have originally been mounted in a wooden box, which was carved to read, “Hail, sister, may you live in God’.

The Guardian sheds some more light on the population make-up of York at the time:

Isotope evidence suggests that up to 20% were probably long distance migrants. Some were African or had African ancestors, including the woman dubbed “the ivory bangle lady”, whose bone analysis shows she was brought up in a warmer climate, and whose skull shape suggests mixed ancestry including black features.

The authors point out that Roman North Africa was noted for its mixed populations, with Phoenician, Berber and Mediterranean influences.

“This skull is particularly interesting, because the stone sarcophagus she was buried in, and the richness of the grave goods, means she was a very wealthy woman, absolutely from the top end of York society,” Eckhardt said.

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An intact Roman burial urn has been found in England, complete with human ashes inside.

The 2,000-year-old vessel, which is whole and unbroken, was dug up during construction work on the Millwood Homes site in the centre of the town.

It was x-rayed at Exeter Airport because it was too large for the machines at the city’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

Pictures showed it contains soil, dense material thought to be ash from the cremation and several mysterious curved object, which may be bone fragments or possibly metal items.

The urn is one of many finds at the Cullompton site that prove the Roman occupation lasted from the 1st Century until the 4th Century – a fort on St Andrews Hill discovered in 1984 suggested they left in the mid-70s AD.

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A newly discovered horned crocodile may have preyed upon our human ancestors in Africa.

Scientists have even found bones from members of the human lineage bearing tooth marks from this reptile, whose scientific name, Crocodylus anthropophagus, means “man-eating crocodile.”

This predator, which lived some 1.84 million years ago, possessed a deep snout that would have made it look more robust than modern crocodiles. It also had prominent triangular horns.

“They would have been visible mostly from the side as projections behind the eye,” said researcher Christopher Brochu, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Iowa. “If you looked at them from the front, you would have seen ridges projecting upwards.”

A couple of living species of crocodile have similar horns, such as the Cuban and Siamese crocodiles. “Males will use these in mating season to show off,” Brochu explained. “While submerged they kind of tip their head forward, showing off the prominence of their horns to females.”

Scientists found a partial skull and skeleton of the crocodile at Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania in 2007. Past research there famously unearthed numerous fossils of extinct human species and their stone tools, strengthening the argument that our lineage originated in Africa.

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In an odd move, Sussex University has decided to scrap teaching English history before 1700.

Under plans, research and in-depth teaching into periods such as the Tudors, the Middle-Ages, Norman Britain, the Viking invasion and the Anglo-Saxons will be scrapped, along with the Civil Wars.

The university will also end research into the history of continental Europe pre-1900, affecting the study of the Napoleonic wars and the Roman Empire.

The university said it was “reshaping” its curriculum and research following a £3m cut in Government funding.

Last week, universities across the country were told their budgets were to be slashed by £449 million next year, including a £215m reduction in teaching funding, with threats of further cuts in the future.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, has claimed that institutions can use the opportunity to focus resources on their strongest areas.

But in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 17 leading historians said the move was short-sighted and risked undermining the public’s understanding of the past.

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Residents in Essex, England, are racing to save a 2,000-year-old, 350-metre Roman chariot track.

There was considerable excitement among archaeologists when, in 2005, a firm of housing developers unearthed the only Roman chariot-racing track in Britain, on a site in Colchester, Essex.

Five years later, residents have less than a month to save the site. The racetrack is still hidden beneath local roads, gardens and old army buildings, but campaigners are hoping to buy a large Victorian garden which covers the key part of the circuit.

Buried beneath are eight stone enclosures, originally having been fitted with wooden double doors, like giant greyhound racing traps. The land is the garden of a listed but derelict sergeants’ mess, which will become an exhibition if the campaign succeeds. If it fails, however, the building will become apartments, and the garden will be the apartment block’s private land again.

For almost 2,000 years, the 350-metre outline of the track has remained intact. The site lay undiscovered until the Colchester Archaeological Trust (CAT) began excavating after the Ministry of Defence sold the barracks for housing in 2005. Archaeological digs suggest the racetrack was built in the early 2nd century, and lasted about 150 years before falling out of use, perhaps because a day at the races became prohibitively expensive for the local gentry – crowds received free admission and also expected to receive gifts.

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