Neolithic burial mounds found in Magdeburg, Germany

A series of Neolithic burial mounds from different periods have been discovered at Magdeburg in the eastern German state Saxony-Anhalt. The site is being excavated by the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt (LDA) before construction of two new Intel semiconductor plants. Excavations began in 2023 and are scheduled to end in April.

The 300 hectare large industrial park also partially includes a small hill, known as Eulenberg. Although not particularly high, it divides the otherwise relatively low-relief Börde landscape, whose fertile loess and black earth soils were an important factor for settlement already during the early Neolithic period. The area currently examined turned out to be a highly complex, long-used burial and ritual landscape.

The mounds were built by people of the Baalberg Culture (4100–3600 B.C.) approximately 6,000 years ago. They are about 200 meters (656 feet) away from each other and each contain wooden burial chambers with the remains of several people. The burial chambers are 65 feet and 98 feet long. Today the mounds are heavily eroded, but when they were first built and for many millennia afterwards, they would have dominated the landscape.

The mounds were still a sacred site 1,000 years later. The passageway between them was used by people of the Globular Amphora Culture (3300–2800 B.C.) as a funerary procession route. The skeletal remains of young cattle were found buried in pairs along this path. They were offerings of the community’s most valuable belongings to the gods.

Another thousand years later, the site was modified with a palisade ditch following the course of the corridor between the mounds but including the larger of the two mounds. About 600 meters (1968 feet) away a group of smaller burial mounds were built by people of the Corded Ware Culture (ca. 2800-2050 B.C.). So this one small site had ritual significance to different peoples for more than 2,000 years.

Well-preserved Ming Dynasty tomb found in Shanxi

A well-preserved tomb from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) has been unearthed in Xinzhou city, Shanxi province, North China. The tomb is more than 430 years old, but its contents are intact and in excellent condition, including the wooden coffin and elaborate funerary furniture. It is rare for a tomb in such good condition with well-preserved wooden furnishings to survive in Shanxi.

The Shanxi Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology discovered the tomb when excavating sites in coordination with a highway construction project. The excavations have uncovered the remains of structures from the Longshan Period (2900-2100 B.C.) and the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), and 66 tombs from the Han, Tang, Jin, Yuan and Ming and Qing dynasties.

Among them was an intact Ming Dynasty tomb discovered on the west terrace of Hexitou village in Xinzhou’s Xinfu district. It is a brick chamber tomb 83 feet long from east to west and 21 feet wide from north to south, with a sloping entry passageway 66 feet long ending in a gatehouse with a pair of heavy doors. The gate is stone carved to imitate a wood structure. Two dragon heads look outwards on each end of the roof. The stone slabs above and on each side of the doors are carved with florals.

Inside, the tomb consists of a main chamber, a smaller back chamber and two niches, one on the north side, one of the south, of the main chamber. The niches contain porcelain vessels. There are four jars and five bowls. The vessels are filled with grains, liquid or a lipid. The main chamber is paved with bricks. Grains are piled at the four corners of the room and in seven other spots.

In the middle of the main room are two wood coffins. The smaller one has collapsed outer panels and inscriptions on the lid. A porcelain vessel, an amulet and a porcelain bowl were placed on the cover. The inner coffin is in good condition and painted with flowers, grasses and birds in brilliant colors. The larger of the two has a well-preserved outer coffin painted with diamond-shaped patterns in gold against a tan background.

The smaller chamber is furnished with wooden altars, tables, chairs, candlesticks, lampstands, incense burners, tin pots, tin cups, tin plates, painted wooden figurines, inkstones, brushes, pen holders and other writing utensils.

On the north wall of the entry passage near the doors is an epitaph which reads: “The epitaph of the prince of Ming Confucian Hou’an… Gongbaluo, whose courtesy name is Benyi, is also the nickname of Hou’an… Hou Xingong Rongxian, the clansman Those who have borrowed money to become prosperous should not be arrogant, and they should change their appearance and courtesy when meeting people of all ages.” Another inscription on the wall is a land purchase certificate. From the epitaph and certificate, archaeologists have identified the occupant of the tomb as Wang Luo, a famous eunuch king of Xinzhou in the Ming Dynasty. He was born in 1533 and died in 1588.

Full gamut of Neolithic occupation, funerary practices found at site in France

An archaeological excavation of a Neolithic site on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand in central France uncovered about 50 burials and the remains of hundreds of structures from 4,000 years of occupation. Forty-one bone samples from animal remains and burials have been radiocarbon dated and they cover almost the entire range of the Neolithic period, making this site unusually dense with information about the artifacts, dwellings and funerary practices of people in Stone Age Auvergne.

The site was first identified during construction of the A75 highway in the 1980s, and archaeologists returned to excavate it further in 2019-2020 as part of a project to widen the A75. Archaeologists from France’s National Institute of Preventative Archaeology (INRAP) found the earliest Neolithic occupation of the site, attested to by ceramics, hearths and pits dated from 4750-4500 B.C., was transitory. In the second half of the 5th millennium, the temporary habitats disappeared. Only tombs from this period have been found at the site, indicating the settlement was abandoned to funerary use only.

The burials from this period include a wide variety of funerary practices and tomb architecture. Tombs range in type from crouch burials in simple pit graves without furnishings to complex dry stone structures covered with mounds that housed the remains of several individuals. Several significant cist burials — chambers with vertical slab walls topped by massive stone slabs — were found with ceramic grave goods. Some of the stone funerary architecture is very subtle, like one large stone placed on its edge at the head of a grave.

Another burial (5413), dated between 4337 and 4065 BC. BC, shows more imposing stone architecture. Its location is marked by a slab of peperite which was collected more than a kilometer away (at the nearest). This heavy, wide and thick slab rests on two smaller slabs laid on edge. Below was an individual without funerary goods and in the same position as his contemporaries.

Other tombs are characterized by the presence of large slabs laid horizontally. After removal of this covering, one of the burials (5130), dated between 4344 and 4061 BC. AD shows slabs laid on edge which outline a main chest and a secondary one, each having yielded an immature individual, without associated furniture. This type of architecture in a box covered with a slab finds comparisons in the “Chamblandes cists” mainly attested to the south of Lake Geneva and in Valais at the same time.

This stone funerary architecture finds its climax in a burial (5201), containing three individuals, one of which was dated between 4344 and 4061 BC. BC, is strictly in the same chronological horizon as the rest of the necropolis, despite a very different conception.

The domestic structures return in the first half of the 4th millennium and come the second half of the millennium, cremation burials appear as well as inhumation burials. The oldest cremation burial combines stone cist with ceramic cinerary urn. Burial 5280 consists of a cist of sideways limestone slabs containing two round urns and two smaller pots flipped upside-down.

The largest funeral urn is a spherical bottle of a very particular type, decorated with two paired buttons opposite two vertical cords. These vases qualified as gynecomorphs find comparison in Switzerland in Cortaillod. This example opposing breasts and stylized arms can be described as anthropomorphic. Like another urn from this tomb, it was “sacrificed” by a pickaxe struck between the breasts.

Another “sacrificed” ax was found in an enclosure that used to be a low mound. The enclosure contained no surviving human remains, but it was heavily eroded and limestone blocks arranged in a rectangle may be all that’s left of the central burial. Less than three feet away from the center of the enclosure, the INRAP team found a perforated double-headed ax broken into three parts. The quality of the workmanship is exceptionally high. Carved out of serpentine, axes of this type were made in Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland between 3300 and 3100 B.C.

New burials and structures emerge in the beginning of the 3rd millennium albeit on a smaller scale indicating a lower population density that persisted until the Early and Middle Bronze Age. The final burials associated with the settlement date to the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd millennium. Three individuals were found in one grave placed on top of the skeletal remains of oxen quarters. Two were buried together at the same time, then the third added after some time had passed. A flint arrowhead was found in the pelvic basin of the third person. This is likely what killed him. Radiocarbon dating places the burial to between 2888 and 2632 B.C.

Etruscan tomb hidden by vegetation revealed

Archaeologists have uncovered a large Etruscan tomb in the San Giuliano Rock Necropolis in the Lazio region of central Italy that was hidden for centuries under thick vegetation. The tomb is approximately 2,300 years old.

About 45 miles northwest of Rome, the San Giuliano necropolis is one of several Etruscan rock necropolises located along the Via Clodia, a Roman road built in the 3rd century B.C. connecting Rome to Etruscan towns in central Italy along a far more ancient route that was part of the Vie Cave road network. The necropolis was associated with an Etruscan town occupied from the 7th through the 4th centuries B.C. that was built on top of a plateau. The Etruscan name of this town is unknown and almost nothing of it remains today, but the imposing size and rich variety of rock tombs in the necropolis bear witness to the wealth of its residents.

The tombs predominantly date to the Archaic period (7th-5th century B.C.) although the necropolis continued to be used through the 3rd century B.C. Many different types of Etruscan tombs were cut out of the soft tufa of the hill, including tumuli, cube tombs, pit tombs, niche tombs and two-story upper loggia tombs that are unique to San Giuliano. More than 500 tombs have been documented so far, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The tombs are located on steep slopes in thick scrub accessed by hiking through ravines, so much of the site remains unexcavated.

The newly-discovered tomb came to light after funds were secured for a three-year project to clean and restore some of the most important tombs in the necropolis. The first site chosen was the area around the monument Queen’s Tomb, a 5th century B.C. two-story tomb 46 feet wide and 33 feet high with a side staircase leading to the upper terrace and two Doric doors leading into the two funeral chambers. It is the largest known tomb in the necropolis.

The clean-up the façade revealed a previously unknown three-chamber tomb next to the Queen’s. It is a semi-cube type tomb and has three unfinished fake doors carved into the top half.

This operation is thus proving to be fundamental to shed light on a part of necropolis previously unclear and that will increase knowledge of the varieties of tombs of the 5th and 4th sec. a.C. as well as the “urbanistic” plant of what presents itself as a real “city” dug on multiple levels and which includes more than 500 known graves so far from the 7th c. B.C. to the 3rd c. B.C.

Roman marble bust found under Burghley parking lot

Craig Crawley with the head of the sculpture. A Roman marble sculpture of the head of a woman has been discovered during construction in the parking lot of Burghley House, the stately home near Stamford in Lincolnshire built by the Cecil family in the 16th century. The head of a sculpture was unearthed by mechanical digger operator Craig Crawley in April of 2023. Two weeks later the marble bust the head used to be attached to was found.

After being cleaned, experts dated the sculpture from the First or Second Century, with an iron dowel added later, allowing it to be attached to a bust or pedestal.

This type of adaptation was often carried out by Italian dealers in antiquities during the late 18th Century to make excavated ancient fragments more attractive to aristocrats travelling in Italy on what was known as the Grand Tour.

It is believed that it was during one of the ninth Earl’s two tours to Italy in the 1760s, when he purchased many antiquities, that he brought the sculpture back to Burghley.

Nobody knows how the head escaped from the house and would up buried where the car park was later built. The two parts were examined by the curator of Burghley’s collection and then transferred to a professional conservator for cleaning and reassembly.

The head and the bust have now been conserved and reassembled. The sculpture will be on display on the dramatic Hell Staircase (named after the Baroque inferno painted on the walls and ceiling by Antonio Verrio in the 1690s) at Burghley House when it reopens for the season on March 16th. It will join other sculptures acquired by the ninth Earl during his travels.