The skeleton had lain buried for about 500 years in the muddy silt of Chamber’s Wharf, a site located at a bend in the river just downstream from the Tower of London. Debris in the river tends to accumulate in bends like this one, so there’s no way to be sure exactly where the man fell in. But he ended up face-down in the mud at Chamber’s Wharf, with one arm stretched over his head and the other twisted to the side. The tide-washed sediment would have covered him quickly, the team says, holding his body in place and helping preserve the thigh-high leather boots he was wearing when he died.

The boots are a tangible, deeply personal link to how the unknown man lived, and they offer some hints at how he probably died. They’re comparable to the tall wading boots currently worn by fishermen, sewage workers, water utility crews, and many other industrial workers wear today: thigh-high boots with sturdy reinforced double soles, stuffed with a material that might be moss to keep the wearer’s feet warm or make the boots fit more snugly.

Based on their design, the boots date to the late 1400s or early 1500s, and they’re not the sort of item the man would have taken to his grave on purpose. Leather was a valuable commodity at the time, and almost no one in the working class would have buried such an expensive pair of boots—not when they, or their material, could be reused. Like his awkward final resting position, the man’s boots suggest an untimely, unexpected death.

“It has been a privilege to be able to study something so rare and so personal,” said archaeologist Beth Richardson, a finds specialist at MOLA Headlands, the archaeology and heritage firm excavating the site, in a statement.

The boots, combined with evidence from his bones, suggest that the man may have died on the river while trying to earn a living. The condition of his bones suggests that he was about 35—near the upper end of average life expectancy for a man in Tudor England, which ranged from around 35 to around 42. It had been a hard life of intense physical work, leaving the man with signs of osteoarthritis, which would, no doubt, have caused considerable aches and pains. Deep grooves worn into his teeth suggest the nature of that work: that kind of wear often comes from passing or holding a rope between one’s teeth, as a medieval fisherman or sailor might have done.

That could explain what the man was doing on the river, and it’s a grim reminder of the double-edged nature of London’s relationship with the Thames; the river has always been vital to the city’s economy, but it has also been a dangerous, often deadly neighbor. It’s easy to imagine the man’s final moments. Perhaps he slipped and fell from the deck of a fishing boat in the river, or a dock on the bank. Few people in England could swim at the time. Perhaps he waded out into the river and slipped in the mud; unable to regain his footing, he would have been helpless before the current. Drowning seems most likely; his bones reveal no signs of injury that might have caused or preceded his death.

Perhaps it’s also fitting that the archaeological project that finally uncovered his remains after all these years adds another chapter in the long history of London’s interaction with its river. The remains turned up during the construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a sewage infrastructure project aimed at reducing sewage pollution in the Thames. Tunnel-boring is set to begin at the site in 2019.

Listing image by MOLA Headlands