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.

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More Than 100 Cultural Landmarks Have Been Destroyed During Gaza Airstrikes, Report Says

Israel’s repeated airstrikes on Gaza have destroyed more than 100 cultural landmarks and historic sites according to a preliminary report by the Catalonian NGO Heritage for Peace that was released earlier this month.

The airstrikes, which took place after the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,400 Israelis and involved the taking of 240 hostages, have “destroyed or damaged” roughly 45 percent of housing in Gaza, leading to what the United Nations has called a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

Historic religious sites, museums, and archaeological sites have been destroyed, the report says, noting that Gaza has been a cultural hub for every civilization that has conquered the region, from Egypt in the early 15th century BCE, to the Greeks under Alexander the Great, to the Roman and Byzantine Empires.

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New guide aims to highlight Newcastle's rich Roman Wall heritage

Lesser know sections and parts of Hadrian's Wall. Denton West, a section next to the busy A69 at West Denton.

A new guide aims to ensure that visitors to Newcastle don’t miss the Roman heritage under its streets.

The conviction that Newcastle was missing a trick in highlighting its rich heritage had for some time for some time occupied an organisation based in the city’s West End, where there are several examples of visible remains of Hadrian’s Wall. The route of the Wall threads through the main thoroughfares of Newcastle, but the Hadrian’s Wall national path, opened in 2003, diverges from that line and instead skirts the city via a riverside route.

The national trail leaves the line of the world heritage monument at Heddon-on-the Wall and does not rejoin it for another 12 miles until they meet at Segedunum fort in Wallsend. The argument is that visitors are both not following the Wall and are also missing many other nearby historical features from across centuries of Newcastle’s history.

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Roman Fort Of Apsaros Reveal Some Of Its Archaeological Secrets

 

Credit: Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw

This autumn, the Polish-Georgian Gonio-Apsaros expedition completed the 10th season of excavations at the Roman fort of Apsaros, south of Batumi on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. The fieldwork of the team headed by Dr. Radosław Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw) and Prof. Shota Mamuladze (Gonio-Apsaros Archaeological and Architectural Site) has delivered several interesting discoveries.

Based on this observation, Radosław Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski suggested that the material required for making official inscriptions and other complex stonework, such as marble, or high-quality limestone, was brought to Apsaros from afar. Fragments of these stone varieties are rare at the site. Their scarcity is certainly the result of their use in later periods as valued raw materials for the production of lime needed for construction purposes.

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