© M.Kot
The discovery was made several decades ago, but it has never been published and analysed.
"About 10-year-old child was buried very shallowly under the surface in one of the two chambers of the cave" - says Dr. Małgorzata Kot from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw. Researchers have taken samples from the child's remains for radiocarbon studies to determine their age. It turned out that the child was buried in the second half of the 18th century or at the turn of the 19th century,
The biggest surprise for archaeologists was that the child was buried with a bird (
chaffinch) skull in the mouth. Another similar skull was found next to the child's cheek.
"This burial is a big surprise for us.
This practice is not known among the ethnologists we have asked for opinions. It remains a mystery why the child was buried in a cave in this way, not in a cemetery in a nearby village" - says Dr. Kot.
Dr. Małgorzata Kot is conducting an extensive project, the purpose of which is to analyse artefacts and bones discovered by archaeologists several decades ago during excavations in caves located in Sąspowska Valley - one of the valleys of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. Most of the finds were boxes and ended up in storage immediately after the excavations. During the analysis of materials from these forgotten boxes, there was an unexpected discovery concerning an unusual burial of a child.
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