Infant Burial from Austria

Here’s one from a month or so ago that I was hoping would get a bit more coverage, only to have it get lost in my email box … from the Austrian Independent:

Builders digging up land for a bypass at Schützen am Gebirge in Burgenland have unearthed a child’s grave dating back to Roman times.

Archeologists say that the tiny grave surrounded by heavy stones had been undisturbed until it was found by the road workers, and that it dated back to the first century after Christ.

They said the grave still had pottery and glass items inside which in many other cases had been stolen by grave robbers.

Archeologist Kurt Fiebig from the organisation PannArch that is doing the dig said: “It was a child’s grave, which unusually for the time was a whole body burial and not a cremation. We have found milk teeth in the skull that will help us identify the age of the body.”

The team said they had also found another grave nearby and what was the foundations of a house. The second grave however had already been plundered.

There are some photos of the finds here: