1,000-year-old skeleton of noblewoman with hollowed-out skull found buried next to 'husband' in Germany

The 1,000-year-old noblewoman’s skeleton was found without a face.

(Image credit: Jan Woitas/dpa)

The skeletal remains of a man and a woman buried in Germany caught archaeologists off guard when they discovered that the skull of one of the skeletons was completely hollowed out.

Archaeologists made the unusual finding during ongoing excavations near a 1,000-year-old former royal palace built by Roman Emperor Otto the Great (also known as Otto I) in Helfta, a village in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The two skeletons were buried directly next to each other, suggesting that they were "possibly a married couple," Oliver Dietrich, an archaeologist with the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin who worked on the excavation, told Live Science in an email.

Read the rest of this article...