Archer’s Companion Gold Ornament

In 2002 a new school was built at Boscombe Down. Wessex Archaeology excavated the area and found a grave close to the Amesbury Archer. The so-called ‘Companion’ was a man aged between 20–25 years old. He had died a generation or two after the Archer and it is possible they were related as they both had the same unusual bone structure in their feet.

He was buried with gold ornaments and a boar’s tusk like those in the grave of the Amesbury Archer. Isotope analyses of his teeth show that he spent his early childhood in southern England and his later childhood somewhere in the Alpine region of Europe.