Grave Reopening Research

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.

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?