Archaeologists excavating a site along the Thames Tideway Tunnel—a massive pipeline nicknamed London’s “super sewer”—have uncovered the skeleton of a medieval man who literally died with his boots on.

"It’s extremely rare to find any boots from the late 15th century, let alone a skeleton still wearing them," says Beth Richardson of the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA). "And these are very unusual boots for the period—thigh boots, with the tops turned down. They would have been expensive, and how this man came to own them is a mystery. Were they secondhand? Did he steal them? We don't know."

Unearthing skeletons during major construction projects is not unusual in London, where over the centuries land has been reused countless times