This clay vessel, dating to the early Iron Age, contains the cremated remains of at least four people: a man, a woman and a child – perhaps a family, but researchers don't know for sure.
Archaeological Museum in GdanskThe urn was found in a cist grave made of stone slabs.
The house-shaped urn was first discovered in 2023 at the construction site of a new distribution center for Lidl supermarkets. It was found in a grave made of carefully laid stone slabs, the Archaeological Museum in Gdansk said in a statement.
The urn is rectangular in shape, with long sides and a sloping roof – like a house. It stands on nine legs and has a round door on one of the long sides.
After the urn was discovered, it was taken to the Gdansk Archaeological Museum for preservation and further study. There, archaeologists performed a CT scan of the urn and discovered that the artifact had numerous cracks and fractures in its structure.
In fact, the urn was so cracked that it was only held in place by the soil and human remains that filled the vessel. As a result, the urn underwent a complex conservation process, including the creation of replicas of some of its missing feet.
In addition to the cracks, the CT scan also revealed that the urn contained the remains of several people. Archaeologists were able to identify the remains of an adult male and a child under 10 years old.
They also found the remains of two more people, one of whom was a woman. All of the bodies had been burned on a pyre, turning them into dust and ashes. The urn contained a total of seven pounds of cremated bones.
Extreme rarity of Pomor house-shaped urns in archaeological data
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