2,500-year-old pantry — still partly stocked — unearthed during construction in Germany

Aspen Pflughoeft
Fri, January 6, 2023 

A school district in Germany called in archaeologists to excavate the area where a new school would be built. For months, the excavations found nothing, then they had a breakthrough.

Archaeologists at the site in Gaukönigshofen uncovered the remains of a pantry, the Würzburg District Office said in a Dec. 15 news release. The 2,500-year-old storage pit held a number of artifacts buried in a cone shape.

Unearthed from the pantry, archaeologists found broken fragments of ceramic pots, simple stone tools, two bronze fragments and animal bones indicating either food or food waste, the release said, Photos show two of the potshards.

Potshards found in the storage pit.

These items are traces of the Hallstatt culture, from an early Celtic period between 800 B.C. and 600 B.C., the excavation manager Ulrich Müller said in the release.

The excavation uncovered more than 40 artifacts, Müller said. Some of these finds came from the early middle ages, a period from 700 A.D. to 900 A.D.

Researchers will remove the artifacts from the site before continuing to study and preserve them, the release said.

Gaukönigshofen is about 315 miles southwest of Berlin.