Welcome to the Grave Reopening Research (GRR) website

GRR is a network of archaeologists who investigate grave disturbance. Current members are Edeltraud Aspöck, Alison Klevnäs, Martine van Haperen, Astrid Noterman, and Stephanie Zintl. We share an interest in grave disturbance in the provinces of early medieval Europe, but also work on grave robbery, reopening, and related practices in other periods and places. GRR is a platform for joint publications, projects, and events. We use this website to highlight our upcoming presentations and publications.

Please contact us if you have a question about archaeological reopening. We’re particularly keen to hear about new excavations of early medieval robbed burials – please do get in touch if you find evidence that looks like ancient reopening.

See below for our latest news.

PresentDead blog post 6: Furto e ritualità? Riaprire le sepolture nell’alto medioevo

Edited by Caterina Giostra, Edeltraud Aspöck and Daniel Winger, a new book has just been published in Italian on early medieval grave disturbance. It’s in the series Archeologia Barbarica published by SAP Società Archeologica and is a result of their 6th International Meeting held in January 2023:

Presentazione – Caterina Giostra, Edeltraud Aspöck, Daniel Winger

Interagire con la morte nell’Europa altomedievale: approcci archeologici alla riapertura delle tombe – Alison Klevnäs, Astrid A. Noterman

Analizzare la riapertura delle tombe di età merovingia: la necropoli di VI secolo di Brunn am Gebirge in Austria nell’ambito delle attuali ricerche – Edeltraud Aspöck

Tombe depredate? Ricerche sulla riapertura delle sepolture di età merovingia presso Regensburg, in Baviera – Stephanie Zintl

Riaperture a confronto: uno sguardo sulle necropoli di Müngersdorf e Junkersdorf a Colonia – Thomas Belling, Daniel Winger

La riapertura delle sepolture in Transilvania tra V e VII secolo: una panoramica – Alpár Dobos

Whodunnit ? Alcune osservazioni sulle tombe (non) disturbate di Szólád, in Ungheria – Daniel Winger

Prime considerazioni sulla riapertura delle sepolture di cultura longobarda in Italia: la necropoli di Povegliano Veronese – Caterina Giostra, Ileana Micarelli, Caterina Vergine

La profanazione di defunti e tombe nella legislazione franca altomedievale e i suoi aspetti economici – Frank Siegmund

Interessi regi e familiari sul saccheggio delle tombe nelle leggi longobarde – Thom Gobbitt

Uno sguardo oltre il tracciato… La riapertura delle tombe del periodo di Hallstatt nella Baviera nord-orientale – Melanie Augstein

The conference from which the book originates brought together several of the researchers who are most engaged with questions of the reopening of early medieval graves from several areas of Europe. Papers draw on archaeological evidence from Transylvania, Germany, Austria, France, England, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Lombard Italy, as well as perspectives from written sources, and from Iron Age Bavaria. The main focus is in setting out the current state of knowledge, as well as how it was reached, but there are also pointers to issues for future consideration.

Three papers are from the PresentDead team and are all freely available to read online. Many thanks to the editors for their hard work with this volume, not least with all the translating!

Here is the preface:

L’incontro internazionale di cui si pubblicano gli atti scaturisce da una feconda e stimolante collaborazione fra i curatori e dalla partecipazione di relatori di differenti Paesi, che hanno permesso di dare un respiro internazionale all’evento. È stato infatti possibile coinvolgere i colleghi maggiormente impegnati sul tema della riapertura delle tombe di ambito barbarico a livello europeo, al fine di fare il punto sullo stato delle ricerche e soprattutto di attirare l’attenzione su tale fenomeno anche in Italia. In gran parte dell’Europa, dalla Transilvania all’Inghilterra, gli archeologi dell’alto medioevo hanno da tempo ricono-sciuto un numero significativo di tombe che mostrano prove di disturbi intenzionali post-deposizionali di scheletri e manufatti. Pratiche di riapertura e manipolazione delle tombe subito dopo la sepoltura sono ora considerati un trat-tamento dei defunti, ampiamente condiviso per alcune generazioni, in particolare nel VI e VII secolo. Da circa un ventennio gruppi di ricerca, convegni, tesi di dottorato e pubblicazioni riflettono sul tema, trasformando un “danno” per l’archeologia funeraria in uno specifico fenomeno delle pratiche rituali. Se ne indaga la possibile molteplicità di atteggiamenti, positivi o negativi, leciti o illeciti, in una complessità sia materiale che di significato. Esso dilata la storia delle sepolture nel tempo e nelle relazioni con le comunità che si rapportavano con esse. Il quadro di sintesi delle attuali conoscenze che ci viene presentato, che dà conto dell’ampiezza delle ricerche, ana-lizza indicatori archeologici e tafonomici per comprendere i tempi, i modi e le ragioni della riapertura e della mani-polazione di resti ossei e manufatti. Ci vengono così indicati possibili percorsi di scavo e di studio, per una migliore comprensione della ritualità funeraria e del rapporto con la morte presso le comunità barbariche. Pensiamo che i contributi possano costituire preziosi riferimenti anche per la ricerca in Italia, soprattutto di ambito barbarico (ma forse stimolante anche in termini metodologici più ampi), dove questo tema in relazione all’alto medioevo non è ancora stato avviato in modo organico. Siamo molto grati a tutti coloro che hanno voluto condividere la loro esperienza e le loro ricerche, per la ricchezza di dati, spunti di riflessione, indicazioni metodologiche e chiavi di lettura interpretativa che hanno riversato nei con-tributi che seguono. Un altro degli Incontri per l’Archeologia barbarica che vede la luce; anche questa volta con il sostegno del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cividale del Friuli. Questa volta, inoltre, la discussione si inserisce in due più ampi pro-getti: l’uno finanziato dall’European Research Council, coordinato da Edeltraud Aspöck, e l’altro dal Ministero del-l’Università e della Ricerca (PRIN 2022), coordinato da Caterina Giostra.

 

PresentDead blog post 5: PresentDead microarchaeological excavations season 1 – Cemetery Achau, Lower Austria

Trenches of the 2024 PresentDead excavations at Achau, Lower Austria. Cropmarks indicate the surrounding graves that were excavated in 2020 (Photo: OeAW-OeAI/Moisés Hernandez Cordero).

Part of the PresentDead approach to early medieval reopened inhumation graves is to reconstruct how the archaeological record of the grave developed. The formation of early medieval inhumation graves started in the early medieval period, when the corpse was buried, usually dressed, accompanied by artefacts and placed within a container or some other form of grave furniture. After that many different processes took place: most importantly, the decomposition of the corpse; the slow breakdown of organic structures such as the wooden grave furniture or container; movement of sediments into hollow spaces that were created through these breakdowns (e.g. Aspöck 2018, Figure 8 ). When the grave was re-entered, humans changed the contents of the grave too. It is these re-entries and interactions with the contents of the grave that are the focus of the PresentDead project. However, to identify what people did when they re-entered the graves (and to distinguish that from the natural changes described before) requires an understanding of the whole process of how the archaeological evidence of the grave formed.

To this end we shall carry out a small number of microarchaeological excavations of (reopened) inhumation graves. In these excavations, we collect high-resolution data for the reconstruction of the formation processes. We record the exact position of each find 1cm and larger; take undisturbed soil samples from areas of the grave that are of specific interest and that will later be processed in the laboratory to create thin sections for analysis (Aspöck and Banerjea 2016 ); we carry out flotation of sediments for small finds and botanical remains. Excavation itself advances in small spits within the stratigraphic units, to get a very fine-grained picture of their composition.

The project’s first excavations took place in May and June 2024, at the Avar-period cemetery at Achau in Mödling, Lower Austria – just south of Vienna. 21 graves were already excavated at the site in 2020, most of which had been reopened (Özyurt et al 2023 ). The chances were therefore high, that if we excavated in the same area of the cemetery, we would encounter reopened graves.

In May we opened two trenches, located around graves or parts of graves that had been identified in 2020, but that were not excavated. It soon turned out that we were three times lucky – in trench 1 we soon found a third pit, a child grave-sized grave, located very close to the adult grave. We excavated the remains of an about 2-year-old child which was found buried with rich grave goods, including a belt with many metal fittings, a pot and a shell that contained small beads. The adult grave next to it was much deeper than the child grave and which, like the child grave, appeared not to have been reopened. The micro-archaeological method allowed us to carefully trace what appeared to be the remains of a wooden board that was found above the human remains of the adult grave.

In trench 2, we immediately saw the dark outlines of a pit positioned within the grave pit. So, this grave had been reopened. We excavated the grave fill and the fill of the reopening pit, which showed dense layers of gravel and dark sediment and stopped before reaching the bottom of the grave where the human remains were originally placed to excavate them in a second campaign next year.

The excavations were carried out by the PresentDead project team, supported by colleagues from the Austrian Archaeological Institute, from the excavation company Novetus GmbH and students from the University of Vienna’s Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology. It remains to thank everyone for their good work and spirits, it was a pleasure to work together and we will continue next year!

Aspöck, E. 2018. “A High-resolution Approach to the Formation Processes of a Reopened Early Bronze Age Inhumation Grave in Austria: Taphonomy of Human Remains. Quaternary International 474.B, 131–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.02.028

Aspöck, E. & R.Y. Banerjea. 2016. “Formation Processes of a Re-opened Early Bronze Age Inhumation Grave in Austria: The soil Thin Section Analyses”. Journal of Archaeological Science Reports 10, 791–809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.003

Jasmin Özyurt, Sheridan Strang, Paul Klostermann, Jana Pfneiszl, Bendeguz Tobias, Jeanette Horvath und Michaela Binder 2023: „Nicht schon wieder ein awarenzeitliches Gräberfeld!“ Neue Erkenntnisse anhand interdisziplinärer Erforschung des neu entdeckten Gräberfelds von Achau. In: Franz Pieler/Elisabeth Nowotny (Hrsg.) Beiträge zum Tag der Niederösterreichischen Landesarchäologie 2023, 26-33.

Surface of the reopened adult grave in trench 2.

PresentDead blog post 4: Presenting the PresentDead at the IMAFO – The Historian’s View

by Thom Gobbitt

 

On Tuesday 16 April, we took the PresentDead project across the street from our regular home, into Otto Wagnar’s Postsparkasse, and presented the aims and goals of the historical perspective at the Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO) of the OEAW. This was in part to strengthen connections with the members of the Histogenes project, but we had a great turnout from the various departments of the Institute, but especially from the department for “Historical Identity Research”. There was a lot of engagement and some very good and thought-provoking questions, that will certainly inform our thinking over the coming months and years.

 

The presentation began with Edeltraud outlining the aims and objectives of the project, looking at the archaeological underpinnings and scope, while offering a synopsis of the historical sources and scholarship that archaeologists have employed from the late nineteenth century to the modern day, to inform interpretations of re-opened graves. This began with Ludwig Lindenschmidt’s observation in his three volume Handbuch der Deutschen Alterthumskunde (1880-1889), that if an early medieval grave has less previous metals and jewellery than one would expect, then this should probably be attributed to grave-robbing. He had also already outlined those of the early medieval historical source texts that have in the century-and-a-half since then informed most interpretations on graverobbing: On the one hand, the legislative sources, especially the so called “barbarian laws”, and naming specifically the law-codes of the Salian Franks, Lombards, Visigoths, Alamanns and Bavarians. These remain the sources most frequently referred to up to the modern day, although particularly through the filter of the 1977 “Grabfrevel” conference and the subsequent publication of its proceedings in 1978. On the other hand, the historiographical accounts of the reopening of the graves of the Lombard kings Rothari and Alboin as recounted by Paul the Deacon in his Historia Langobardorum, and the plundering of the recent grave of a relative of the wife of one Guntram Boso by his servants – although probably at his instruction. More recently, Patrick Geary’s work has brought attention to grave-reopening in terms of otherworldly encounters both in the translation of saints and their miraculous powers as well as in secular terms. Archaeologists, however have given little weight to the perspective that Geary offers, and instead their focus has been more on the negative sense of Grabfrevel, the violation of graves. As Edeltraud noted, there has not really been a comprehensive study of the written contexts of grave-reopening in the early medieval period since the 1977 “Grabfrevel” symposium, and for the last almost half a century since its publication, the emphasis on such activity being only grave robbery as underscored in that volume has had a significant influence on archaeological interpretation. Edeltraud concluded her section of our presentation with the key point underlining the project’s historical objectives – the texts need to be re-examined in the light of current historical and literary analysis.

 

For my own part of the presentation, I began by outlining some of the general parameters of the study: the most significant of which being that for the core geographical area and timeframe where our project focuses – broadly speaking, from what are now Transylvania to eastern Austria, in the fifth to eighth centuries, where different contexts of grave re-opening than just robbery can be observed – written texts are incredibly sparse. Written sources begin to appear towards the western edges of the project area at the end of the time frame, but for the most part it’s not a case of texts which were directly written within the project scope, or even such texts that survive only in their later transmission and reception. Instead, a broader net has to be cast, looking at texts that were written or transmitted outside the project area, later, or most often, both. This broader focus, beginning with the identification of relevant passages from texts written in both Western Europe and Byzantium, will prioritise texts that look into or back into the area and period of interest to the project. But identification of texts will also serve to contextualise grave reopening and interactions with the dead more broadly – what kind of strategies and processes could be imagined in the early middle ages? The types of sources where interactions with the dead and their materials are mentioned are quite varied, especially with the broader focus beyond just the reopening of graves, let alone grave robbing. The main two types of source on which the project at least begins with are regulatory texts and historiographical accounts:

 

  • Regulatory texts incorporate both the secular “barbarian” laws, and the Roman law inheritance which continued to be developed, as well religiously based normative texts from biblical exemplars through to penitentials, monastic rules and church canons.
  • Historiographical texts incorporate hagiography and, especially, the translation of saints or miracles in their graves, as well as the more worldly accounts of death, burial and grave re-openings – although often the line between the secular and the religious is blurred, especially when written by with religiously-situated authors.

 

The remainder of the paper comprised deeper dives into some of the specific historical texts and issues that have been drawn on by archaeologists, demonstrating some of the limits that have come from the narrowly focused attention given to just the literal account of re-opening a grave. Here let us finish by revisiting just one of those exemplars: Paul the Deacons recounting of the re-opening of Alboin’s grave in his own time by Giselpert, Duke of Verona – an event that Patrick Geary in his Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (1994) has already re-framed from the terms of superstition and vanity that Paul had used, to instead reveal an otherworldly encounter with the dead king, one which in turn legitimised Giselpert’s claims to power and enhanced his status.

 

Paul’s account included a look back into the account of Alboin’s earlier life – so we see Paul the Deacon’s literary gaze looking a little further back into time, and into the plains of Pannonia – within the edges of where our project’s study focuses. In contrast to the extensive archaeological evidence, however, Paul makes no recounts of grave reopenings here. But amongst the mentions of death, bones and bits of corpses, he also recounts Alboin being given his arma [weaponry] at a feast by the Gepid king, Turismund, a ritualised encounter legitimising Alboin’s political and social power and permitting him from then on to be able to feast in the hall with his own father. But as I spoke about in the presentation, Alboin’s receiving of his arma and his consequent legitimisation, echoes the story of Duke Giselpert of Verona entering Alboin’s grave a couple of centuries later, encountering Alboin and receiving (or winning) his sword from him. Perhaps even, although Paul does not make it clear, the very same sword that Alboin had once received from Turismond – and it would appear that the sword continues to accumulate greater significance in the telling, as it weaves its way back and forth between the living and the dead.

 

But as I argued, this also raises the point that historiographical accounts of the reopening of a grave gain their significance from their broader contexts. We must not just look widely to discover such accounts, but also delve deep into why they were written and how such texts function in their social and intellectual climates. Focusing closely on the specific account of a grave-reopening can already tell us much about how such an event might happen, but when set in its broader contexts we began to reveal how such an act might be understood at a deeper level, and the ways in which the living interacted with the dead and their materials. History and archaeology bring two very different approaches, ones which are often difficult to integrate, let alone unite – but they also offer the potential of wider and multiple perspectives when we instead ask how does each discipline relate to the reopened grave – and what can we dig up together?

PresentDead blog post 3

PresentDead blog post 3

As part of the PresentDead project, I spent a week in Vienna to take a preliminary look at the human skeletal remains from Brunn am Gebirge, Achau and Globasnitz. The aim was to test a recording system that we are currently developing for bone surface modifications and bone breakage.

The archaeological focus on secondary interventions has traditionally been on the artefacts and the reasons why some of them were removed and others left behind. But in recent years, more attention has been paid to skeletal remains. In fact, focus has shifted from the basic description of the anatomical area of the body that has been disturbed to the taphonomic and technical consequences of the reopening. Today, archaeologists are increasingly interested in the traces left on bones by tools. The most classic example is the holes that are sometimes seen, made by the penetration of a probe – a tool that seems to have been used to detect graves in some regions. We can mention grave 8 from Friedberg-Bruchenbrücken (Germany) with a 4 mm hole on the upper part of the left tibia of the individual (Thiedmann, Schleifring 1992, pp. 435-439).
The marks left by the use of a sharp tool such as a knife are interesting for understanding the modus operandi of the reopening, and by extension for reconstructing funerary costume. Such marks are sometimes recorded, like at Vendenheim in eastern France (Chenal, Barrand-Emam 2014).

There are in fact a whole range of traces that secondary intrusions can leave on the bones, and one of the aims of the PresentDead is to better understand them in order to find out more about the practice of reopening, but also about the way in which individuals were dressed at the time of burial.
So during a week I looked at a selection of graves from three collections and ‘chased’ these marks. The bone preservation was uneven, making the process rather challenging. Eventually, I identified a few chopping & cut marks, sun bleaching and coffin wear.

The next steps now are to adjust the recording protocol to make it even more effective and to carry out a full, in-depth osteological study of the human remains from the sites.

Picture: chopping mark on the left femur from grave 3 from Brunn am Gebirge (NHM collection, photo by A. A. Noterman).

PresentDead blog post 2

Turning ideas into practice

Ha! PresentDead has already been running for half a year. And it is four months since the last (and first) blog post… so much for me thinking that the initial enthusiasm of starting the PresentDead project will finally turn me into a very active online communicator. Well, I am still the same as I ever was.

Saying that, the months since then have been quite exciting and really important ones as we have been working on transforming the more abstract project ideas into concrete workplans and tasks. This process, however, does not really lend itself into short, easy to communicate and ideally somewhat entertaining blog-post pieces. Anyway. So far, we have been defining workplans and goals and discussing how to implement them. And in an even more concrete fashion, Astrid has worked on the development of protocols for the analysis of bone taphonomy, which includes an analysis of the impact of reopening on the human remains as well as potential evidence of fragmentation. Fragmentation in the sense of fragmentation theory (e.g. Chapman, J. 2000. Fragmentation in Archaeology, People, Places and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of South-Eastern Europe. London, Routledge) – that is the idea that objects might be deliberately broken in order to create fragments for use in other practices. Astrid has also come to  Vienna to take a look at the human remains of selected individuals from three collections (Brunn am Gebirge , Achau , Globasnitz ) to ‘test’ the protocols she is developing. (This will certainly also be worth a dedicated blog post in the very near future!)

Thom Gobbitt and I have been working together quite closely since the start of the project (as was planned, my vision has always been to have an integrated archaeological-historical research in PresentDead, and with Thom, who is also trained as an archaeologist we have the right candidate for this endeavour!). This has meant a lot of discussion about how to proceed with the historical part of the project (we decided to follow two strands of research, a data-driven one and a more ‘traditional’ one, where Thom will organise workshops and collaborate with other historians on the topic); we have also been discussing how to organise the historical part of the data platform and how to achieve semantic integration of data (that, basically, is to integrate archaeological and historical data based on their “meaning”), among other things. Finally, we also realised that we really need to start the project with a historian’s review of how historical sources related to the reopening of graves have been used to inform the archaeological work and interpretation. And this is what Thom is working on now (and which has already brought to light many small but very important results, and these will certainly also be worthy of a blog post written by the third social media enthusiast in this project )

Ali Klevnäs has in the meantime been looking into Carpathian basin evidence for the reopening of graves prior to our main period of interest of the 5th to 8th centuries CE. The so-called “Sarmatian” cemeteries show plenty of evidence for reopening of graves and it will be important to establish if and how these practices can be related to what we find in the later “row grave cemeteries”.

Apart from being engaged, to varying degrees, with all of the above research threads, I have primarily been working on the data modelling, and, most importantly, have been establishing connections with archaeologists and other cooperation partners. We had a very fruitful first official meeting with Walter Pohl and the Viennese team from the HistoGenes project (Histogenes meets PresentDead), exchanging very practical ideas on the handling of the data and case studies, and with some very concrete outcomes about collaborations already being proposed (more to come on those when they happen). And for me, personally, it has been a nice experience to re-connect with several colleagues who are excavating in Vienna and the surroundings, and to breath the air of excavation once more while searching for potential sites for micro-archaeological excavations (as well as for analysis).