A burial mound that had gone unnoticed for roughly 5,000 years has turned up on the edge of a much younger cemetery near Żórawina, a village bordering Wrocław in southwestern Poland. Inside it, researchers found a necklace strung from 42 drilled teeth resting above the skeleton of an adult man, together with a stone battle axe, flint blades, and the remains of two additional human skulls.
The mound sits beside a cemetery that had been under study since earlier this year, one dated to the close of the Roman-influence period and the start of the Migration Period, roughly AD 350 to 430 – objects already about 1,600 years old in their own right. The far older grave came to light only in the final days of that fieldwork, a discovery none of the team had anticipated.
A find at the edge of a Roman-era cemetery
The excavation was led by Tomasz Gralak, an archaeologist who heads the Department of Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Archaeology at the University of Wrocław, working with students and volunteers from two universities. The anthropological side of the project was directed by Paweł Dąbrowski, an anatomist at Wrocław Medical University’s Department of Normal Anatomy. Dąbrowski said the mound, roughly four metres across, appeared close to the Roman-period burials just as the team was preparing to close the site, and that it mattered most for the palaeoanatomical work he had planned that season.
Forty-two drilled teeth strung like a cord
Inside the mound, researchers found teeth arranged in the unmistakable pattern of a necklace: 42 single-rooted teeth, a mix of incisors and canines, each pierced through the root so it could be threaded onto a cord. Dąbrowski said the teeth came from large mammals, likely including canids such as wolves, deer, and a young bear, though he added that human teeth within the set could not yet be excluded. Bone and amber beads lay close by, alongside the necklace itself.
A man, two skulls and a battle axe
Somewhat deeper in the mound, researchers uncovered the skeleton of an adult man together with two flint tools, a small point and a knife-like blade. Close to the necklace lay the remains of two human skulls, raising the possibility that the burial belonged to an important figure in the community and that the heads had been placed in the grave as a kind of offering alongside the more conventional goods. A stone battle axe found beside the male skeleton showed clear signs of wear, leading Dąbrowski to describe it as more a weapon used in combat than a purely symbolic ornament. He suggested the grave could belong to a warrior or a hunter, but said the elaborate necklace pointed to someone of real standing in the community – possibly the leader of a family clan, or, in Gralak’s assessment, even a clan patriarch.
Dating a burial to shortly after 2900 BC
The axe, made of serpentinite, gave researchers a first, rough date for the grave: shortly after 2900 BC, making the burial roughly 5,000 years old. Dąbrowski said bone samples had already been prepared for radiocarbon dating, with results expected in autumn 2026, and that he did not expect the final date to shift by more than about 200 years in either direction. The same radiocarbon work should establish whether the man and the two partial skulls belong to the same period or were deposited at different times, and whether the skulls show signs of intentional damage.
A second mound at Iwiny widens the picture
A broadly similar mound turned up at almost the same time a few kilometres away, near the village of Iwiny, during rescue excavations that an archaeological firm was carrying out ahead of construction work. That burial also contained a human skeleton, two stone axes, flint tools, and amber ornaments. Researchers now plan to study material from both sites together, and reported that a second mound has since turned up at Iwiny as well, this one containing the bones of a calf – a detail the team suspects points to an animal sacrifice rather than a human burial. Dąbrowski said no comparable finds had previously come from this part of Lower Silesia, calling it an unusually productive season for material of this age.
What isotopes and DNA could still reveal
The research plan extends well beyond dating. Genetic testing of the necklace’s teeth should identify the animal species involved, while DNA and morphological study of the two skull fragments aim to establish the sex and age of the people they belonged to. Haplogroup analysis of the human remains is intended to trace population origins, since Corded Ware groups are thought to have moved into Europe along river corridors from the Caspian and Black Seas, via the Dniester, Dnieper, and Danube, and are credited with introducing wheeled transport and a gene for lactose tolerance to the continent. Such groups were generally thought to have settled mainly in what is now eastern Poland, so a kurhan this far west, on the outskirts of Wrocław, suggests the migrations reached further than previously assumed. Isotope and bone-chemistry studies should indicate whether the man’s diet leaned toward meat or toward early domesticated grains such as wheat and barley, while microscopic wear on the skull teeth may show whether food was eaten raw, roasted, or boiled. Because many of the bones are already close to crumbling, the team lifted them still encased in soil and plans to X-ray the blocks before attempting to clean them.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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