Archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of about 1,000 Black Death victims in southern Germany in what could be the largest mass grave of its kind in all of Europe.
Excavations in Nuremberg ahead of the construction of new apartments in the city found eight pits each crammed with hundreds of skeletons of adults, children, and babies dating to between the late 15th and early 17th centuries.
So far, three of the pits have been fully excavated, while another four are expected to be examined in the coming weeks, archaeological excavation company In Terra Verita said in a statement.
In two of the mass graves, the dead were tightly packed with the skeletons of the adult persons in a sitting position along the southern end of the pit.
"A discovery like that has never happened before, and quite honestly, no one had thought this to be possible," Melanie Langbein, of Nuremberg's department for heritage conservation, said in the statement. "The site is of enormous importance to the city of Nuremberg."
"Those people were not interred in a regular cemetery, although we have designated plague cemeteries in Nuremberg," Langbein told CNN. "This means a large number of dead people who needed to be buried in a short time frame without regard for Christian burial practices."
"The skeletons are in very good shape for examination, despite the destruction that occurred. We can now detail out all the information that is kept in those bones, e.g., the prevalence of different kinds of cancer, genetic mutations that show up in skulls, age and sex determination, the status of the teeth, and conclusions from that to the general health and life circumstances in this period," said anthropologist Florian Melzer.
As per the statement of the Terra Verita company, the graves themselves are a monument to the struggle that society faced when an unforeseen catastrophe hit one of the most important cities in the Holy Roman Empire.
From an archaeological perspective, these burials give us the possibility of getting a deep look into Nuremberg's society at the dawn of enlightenment. The dead give us a representative sample of society in the pre-war era and at its height. With bodies of men and women alike, babies, toddlers, teenagers, and adults, we can examine the general health status and age structure of the city.
Further anthropological and forensic analysis can give us a more precise knowledge of genetics, heritage, and society in this period-an opportunity that has never been available until now.
