Why Were All of These Bodies Buried Sitting Upright and Facing West More Than 2,000 Years Ago?
Archaeologists are still unraveling the mysteries of an unusual burial site in Dijon, France, which dates to between 450 and 25 B.C.E.
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Archaeologists have discovered a mysterious burial site in France that contains the remains of humans who are sitting upright and facing west.
They found the unusual seated burials during a renovation project at a school in Dijon, a city in France’s east-central Burgundy region, according to an announcement from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP).
The individuals were likely interred more than 2,000 years ago, with their graves dating to between 450 and 25 B.C.E. The remains belong to 13 deceased adults, who all appear to have been positioned in an identical manner. They were each lowered into a pit in a seated position, with their backs resting against the pit’s eastern wall and their faces pointing west. Their legs are bent, and their hands are situated near their femur or pelvic bones.
“This seated position is atypical,” Annamaria Latron, an archaeo-anthropologist at INRAP, tells Le Monde’s Pierre Barthélémy. “We are more used to burials of reclining individuals, in general on their backs, with the lower limbs extended and not bent like this.”
The pits measure roughly three feet in diameter and are evenly spaced apart in an 82-foot-long strip of land. Archaeologists didn’t find any artifacts in the graves, except for a black armband made of stone that dates to between 300 and 200 B.C.E.
Similar seated burial sites have been unearthed in France and Switzerland. Previously, archaeologists thought such burials belonged to criminals who were placed in an offensive position as part of their punishment, per Le Monde. But now, they suspect this treatment may have been reserved for high-status individuals, such as members of prominent families or high-ranking political or religious figures.
“It is undeniable that we are encountering individuals there from a specific social class,” says INRAP’s Hervé Laganier, who is leading the excavation, to Le Point’s Baudouin Eschapasse.
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The individuals buried at the site are thought to be Gauls, a group of Celtic farmers who lived in what is now France, Belgium, Germany and Italy during the Iron Age.
Moving forward, archaeologists hope to learn more about the individuals by performing DNA and chemical analyses; they also hope to use radiocarbon dating techniques to more definitively pin down the dates of the burials, per Le Point.
At the same site, archaeologists also found the graves of 22 children who were likely buried during the first century C.E.. These individuals, who probably died within their first year of life, are all positioned on their sides or backs. They did not find the remains of any adults, which suggests this cemetery was reserved exclusively for very young children.
Archaeologists also found stone casings and nails, which suggests the children were once buried in wooden coffins that have disintegrated over time. In some of the graves, they found coins, ceramics and other grave goods.
Though the area was long used as a cemetery, it appears to have been later repurposed for farming. Archaeologists found a series of planting pits arranged in parallel rows, along with fragments of ceramics dating to the Gallo-Roman period.
They also identified several cow skulls, which indicates the space was later used for animal butchery—likely during the 16th or 17th century C.E.
