The discovery was made on Tuesday October 29late in the morning. Workers were digging on an earthworks site in Saint-Louis, in Haut-Rhin, when the bucket of a machine picked up unusual finds, according to our information. Arriving on site, the police identified several skulls and bones on this land where a seven-story building with social housing is to be built, on behalf of the town hall.
The Neolithic or the Iron Age
Transferred to the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) in Strasbourg, the skulls and bones could not be dated. They were classified as archaeological finds. These latter are likely to come froma silo burialdating from the Neolithic (between 6,000 and 2,200 BCE) or the Iron Age (between 800 BCE and the end of the 1st century), according to a specialist from the Grand-Est Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (Drac), who came to the construction site this Wednesday, November 5.
“These silo structures, long called 'relegation graves', covered a gesture of exclusion of a part of the populationburied in underground grain silos”explains the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) on his website.
A precise dating of the skulls and bones is planned by the Drac. The construction site is stopped for at least several weeks, time to carry out archaeological excavations. The area is inaccessible to the public.
