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LiveScience
LiveScience
Kristina Killgrove

'They had not been seen ever before': Romans made liquid gypsum paste and smeared it over the dead before burial, leaving fingerprints behind, new research finds

Finger marks drag horizontally across plaster.

Around 1,800 years ago in Roman Britain, people preparing bodies for burial created a plaster-like paste and smeared it over the corpses, leaving behind fingerprints that are still visible today, researchers reported in a recent blog post.

These newfound prints reveal a hands-on approach to funerary practices in the third and fourth centuries A.D., the archaeologists said.

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