Badger Digs up Medieval Warrior Graves

German sculptor Lars Wilhelm lives on a farm in northeastern Germany. For five years he and his wife had been watching a family of badgers dig an ever larger network of tunnels -- called a "set" -- in a corner of his property. He had in mind to install sculptures in the set once the badgers were through with it: "My wife and I - we are both sculptors - wanted to put artworks in there." But then he noticed that the badgers had dug up something interesting. Wilhelm told Der Spiegel,

We spotted a pelvic bone that had been dug up, it was clearly human. It wasn't exactly surprising to us because a whole field of ancient graves had been found on the other side of the road in the 1960s. So we pushed a camera into the badger's sett and took photos by remote control. We found pieces of jewellery, retrieved them and contacted the authorities.

Sadly, none of the German reporters on the scene seems to have asked Wilhelm what sort of art he was planning to install in the badger tunnels, why he owned a remote control camera suitable for exploring badger tunnels, or what the relationship between these two things might have been. Was the camera for documenting art installed below ground where no one could see it? Would it then have been buried by sealing the tunnels? Now we will never know, because the discovery of the graves aborted the art project:

"The bones changed everything," he added.

The graves date to the early 12th century. Both had bronze bowls at their feet, and one had a sword by its side.  The second might also have had a sword that was removed by the grave robbers who visited both tombs, probably in search of jewelry. The excavators assume the bodies were slavic noblemen, because everyone else in the area was Christian by that time, and the habit of lavish grave goods mostly died out when people converted to Christianity. Not entirely, though, so I would not be so quick to assume these people were pagans. I think this, from Brandenburg state archaeologist Thomas Kersting is an even bigger leap:

One of the two lords is believed to have had his sword removed. Such grave robbery may be a sign of the upheaval at the time, said Kersting. "It's interesting because it could mean this happened at a time when social structures were collapsing," said Kersting. "If someone went to this grave and opened it in full view of the local castle and took out the sword -- that's a sign that something's not working anymore. It highlights the time of upheaval when the rule of the Slavic tribes was coming to an end."

Actually grave robbery happened all the time in all manner of societies, often within months of the burial. But, anyway, it's a cool find