The Skull Tower (or Ćele-kula in Serbian) is a tower that was built by a conquering Turkish army in the nineteenth century using the skulls of Serb rebels. Ćele-kula, located in Niš, in southern Serbia, stood as a cautionary tale… Read More ›
Archaeology
Skull of Finland’s medieval swordsman may show evidence of a violent death.
Last November the grave of a swordsman was found in a field in southern Finland by group of “amateur historians” using a metal detector. Archaeologists recently finished initial examinations on remains, thought to date to the medieval period, and they… Read More ›
Archaeologists believe the bones found in an Edinburgh garden may belong to the victims of body snatchers
In September 2012 construction workers renovating a townhouse in Edinburgh made a gruesome discovery in the garden…human bones in a shallow grave. According to The Scotsman, researchers now think it’s likely these remains may belong to the unfortunate victims of… Read More ›
The lost remains of the mysterious Pedro Mountain mummy
In June of 1934, two prospectors, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, were using explosives to mine for gold in the San Pedro Mountains of Wyoming. After the dust of one of their blasts cleared, Main and Carr discovered a small… Read More ›
The 1700-year-old skeletons of a martyred couple who were buried alive
In 2008, a cathedral in Northern Italy was undergoing renovations, when workers discovered more than 300 bones belonging to two skeletons in one of the sealed crypts. The skulls were packed inside a pair of silver-and-gold busts deep in a… Read More ›
Ancient funerary facial reconstruction
The people of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (7000-6000 BCE) culture in the Southern Levant had a mortuary practice of removing the skulls of deceased family members and remodeling them with plaster. After the body of a family member was decapitated the… Read More ›
These graves may contain the skeletal remains of people who participated in a reincarnation sex ritual
The Siberian Times reports that archaeologists have been excavating a Bronze Age necropolis, made up of about 600 tombs, in Staryi Tartas village of the Novosibirsk region (map) in Russia. Researchers were able identify these graves as belonging to the… Read More ›
Archaeologists find evidence of an ancient medical school where students practiced trepanation techniques
UC Santa Barbara bioarchaeologist Danielle Kurin and her archaeological team unearthed the remains of individuals from burial caves in the Andean province of Andahuaylas in south-central Peru that date to the Wari empire between AD 1000-1250. Among the 32 crania… Read More ›
The skeletal remains of the ‘Irish Giant’ at the Hunterian
Charles Byrne (1761–1783) worked as a “freak” known as “the Irish Giant” at the Cox Museum in London in the 1780’s. It was rumored that he was so tall that he could light his pipe from a street lamp. During… Read More ›
Dozens of Bronze Age graves containing the skeletal remains of couples embracing unearthed in Siberia
Siberian archaeologists excavating in the Novosibirsk region (map) of Russia have found a necropolis containing about 600 graves believed to belong to the Andronovo culture. In this necropolis are dozens of burials containing the skeletal remains of couples embracing each other, estimated… Read More ›
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