Mummification was widely practiced in what is now Britain throughout the Bronze Age, a new study reports.

Archaeologists used microscopic bone analysis to study 34 human remains from Britain dating to the Bronze Age, spanning from 2200 B.C. to 750 B.C., and compared them with known mummies in northern Yemen and Ireland. The pattern of erosion in 16 of the British skeletons was consistent with that of the known mummies.

“Since it was widespread in Britain, there’s no reason to think that it wasn’t a common practice in Bronze Age societies across Europe,” said Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum in London and one of the study’s authors.

The research was part of his doctoral work at the University of Sheffield. He and his colleagues published their findings in the journal Antiquity.