Archaeologists investigating a construction corridor in Nauendorf, Saxony-Anhalt, have found the remains of two foals buried beside a Late Bronze Age burial mound. The discovery was made during work ahead of construction of the SuedOstLink electricity transmission line.
The excavations revealed part of a settlement landscape dating from the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, with traces of houses, storage and oven pits, ditches, and a burial ground. Although the mound itself had disappeared from the flat landscape, its circular surrounding ditch survived, along with an earthen entrance or bridge on the eastern side.
Within the enclosure were two west–east-oriented graves lined with stone. Both had been robbed in antiquity, leaving only fragments of bronze pins, a small bronze ring, and pieces of a pottery vessel. Investigators then examined a deeper pit cut into the south-eastern section of the ditch. Instead of the secondary human burial that such features can contain, they found a horse skeleton lying on its right side. Expanding the excavation revealed a second nearby horse burial.
Both animals had been placed on their sides with their limbs naturally bent. One lay directly in the mound’s surrounding ditch, while the other was buried a short distance away and aligned in the same direction as the stone-lined graves. The foals were approximately five to nine months old. Their skulls and long limb bones survived most clearly, while the arrangement of the remains indicates that complete carcasses—not selected body parts—had originally been placed in the pits.
The hind legs of one animal were almost parallel. Archaeologists said this may indicate that its body had been constricted or bound around the hindquarters before burial, although the evidence does not establish how this was done.
Radiocarbon dating placed the two deposits in approximately the same period: one dates to 1212–1055 BC and the other to 1211–1052 BC. Both belong to the beginning of the Late Bronze Age.
According to the excavation reporting, complete horse burials from this period are exceptionally rare, despite other horse remains being known from prehistoric funerary sites in Saxony-Anhalt. The young age of the animals is especially significant because sacrificing them so soon after birth meant giving up years of potential economic value. Archaeologists suggest that the burials may reflect the importance of the funerary ceremony and possibly the elevated status of the people originally buried beneath the mound.
