About 1600 years ago, a woman in Eastern Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) was buried with a wealth of precious objects, including a headdress and four silver buckles that were inlaid gold and studded with semiprecious stones.
Archaeologists from the East Bohemian Museum in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic found the fifth-century burial in 2019, and they recently detailed their initial findings in a statementA special find was the headdress, decorated with golden discs. The remains also contained glass beads, a bone comb, a ceramic pot and an iron knife.
Five other graves in the cemetery contain skeletons, but looters looted them of precious artifacts and looted the corpses shortly after burial. Only a handful of everyday funerary items in those tombs, such as knives and a sword, were untouched, the scientists reported.
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Researchers estimate that the woman was between 35 and 50 years old when she died. They identified bits of cloth on the silver buckles that belonged to two different textiles; one was probably the item of clothing that held the clasps together, and the other was perhaps a coat or cloth covering the woman’s body at the funeral. The scientists also found traces of leather and fur on the buckles, possibly from another item of clothing. Analysis of the ceramic pot revealed chemical traces of certain fats and acids, suggesting that it was used for cooking and preserving meat.
All the people in the tombs were between 16 and 55 years old when they died, but most of the skeletons had been so badly damaged by looters that it was impossible to determine the sex of the individuals. However, close examination of individual bones provided some clues about the health of the deceased.
“Traces of cancer were found on the skull and pelvis in one person,” the researchers said in the statement. Some bones indicated signs of arthritis, and a person’s bones showed they carried asymmetrical muscle mass, indicating that they preferred one leg – perhaps as a result of a stroke.
Further tests include radiocarbon dating to more accurately determine the age of the graves. Evidence in oxygen isotope ratios (variations of the same element with different numbers of neutrons) could further reveal whether the individuals were local to the region or whether they migrated there from a different location. Other chemical analyzes of the bones could tell scientists what these people ate and whether their diet changed drastically during their lifetime.
The researchers also expect “significant results from the DNA analysis, “which will be conducted with scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, and the Institute of Archeology and Museology at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, the statement said.
“Perhaps we will learn more about the kinship of the dead and where they came from,” the scientists said.
Originally published on Live Science.