A joke about a “princely grave” turned out to be much closer to the truth than anyone expected.
Archaeologists found a richly furnished grave during preparations for a solar panel installation near the A3 highway in Bad Camburg, in the German state of Hesse. Experts at the State Office for Monument Preservation in Wiesbaden said the mix of gold, weapons and iron wagon fittings makes it an “absolute top” discovery.
“You only make such a find once in your archaeological career,” district archaeologist Kai Mückenberger said in a translated quote from Hessenschau, which first reported the discovery.
Mückenberger was working as a consulting archaeologist on the solar site and ordered a geomagnetic survey, expecting to find nothing. The survey showed the outline of a rectangle inside a circle.
He said as a joke that they had found a “princely grave”. He had actually expected the remains of a building. Then earth-moving equipment struck metal, an iron spearhead, and Mückenberger brought in a team to excavate the site.
The team found heavy gold jewellery, amber, bronze and glass beads, a small knife, and iron fittings from a chariot or wagon. The fittings included hubcaps, an axle and iron bands that would have gone around wooden wheels.
Instead of removing the objects one by one, the team lifted them out in a single large block of earth for preservation. During that work, archaeologists also identified a beaked bronze jug for water or wine that was made by the Etruscans.
One of the three gold rings weighed 5 ounces. One ring was for a finger and another for an arm.
Only two other “wagon burials” have been found in Germany, according to the report. Archaeologists think this grave likely dates to the first half of the 5th century BCE.
The burial is contemporary with the Hallstatt or La Tène cultures, but not from the same geographic region. Researchers have tentatively linked the find to the Hunsrück-Eifel Celtic culture, named after two low mountain ranges.
Archaeologists in Wiesbaden said no other gravesite is comparable in quality to this one.
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