Archaeologists were surprised to discover the exceptional grave of a medieval knight under a ice cream store in the Polish city in Gdańsk. The burial of the 13th century includes a rare sculpture which probably represents the knight himself.
“We discovered a large sculpted limestone tomb with the image of a whole knight track armor“” Sylwia KurzyńskaArchaeologist with Archaeoscan Who co-directed the excavations, told Live Science in an email. The carved slab is rare in medieval Poland because “only a few images presented the deceased,” she said.
Kurzyńska and his team found the monument in the historic center of Gdańsk in July, when they excited the land of a bastion used from the 11th to the 14th century. In the bastion were the remains of a castle, a church and a cemetery.
The sculpted tombstone was preliminary dated from the end of the 13th or early 14th century, Kurzyńska said. About 59 inches (150 centimeters) long and limestone imported from GotlandSweden, the slab shows a standing man full armor and holding a sword and a shield.
“Since it was made of sweet limestone and was buried for centuries,” said Kurzyńska, “the preservation of the slab is remarkable – sculpture, armor and shield are still well defined.”
Shortly after their discovery of the slab, the Archaeoscan team withdrew the stone and dug more deeply. They found a well -preserved male skeleton but no serious goods.
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“All the evidence suggests that the commemorated person was of high social status, most likely a knight or a person organizing a military function,” said Kurzyńska. Although the date and location of this burial coincide with the rise Teutonic knightsThe researchers found no registration or symbol to definitively link it to this order.
The discovery is important in Gdańsk, said Kurzyńska because it represents “a direct link with the years of training in the city, offering a rare overview of the lives and burials of its medieval elite”.
Additional work on the tomb slab and the skeleton is already underway. The researchers document the slab using high resolution 3D scanning, in order to reconstruct and preserve the unique sculpture. In addition, a chemical and genetic analysis of bones will help them better understand who this man was and what his life looked like.
“We also plan to create a facial reconstruction based on the skull,” said Kurzyńska, to understand what the knight, that the The public nicknamed The “Gdańsk Lancelot”, perhaps resembled life.
