The infant graves of Krems Wachtberg

The world's oldest infant burials were found on the outskirts of Krems.

The Wachtberg is a hill north of the old town of Krems, which drops steeply to the west into the Krems Valley ("Kremstal" in German). Bones, charcoal and stone tools from the Palaeolithic period have been repeatedly found during excavations in the entire area of the Wachtberg itself and its southern foothills, the Hundssteig. In the 1930s, the first archaeological excavation uncovered mammoth bones, which may have been the remains of a dwelling. Fragments of several animal figurines made of baked clay stand out among the finds.

Buried by loess

More recent excavations by a team from the Austrian Academy of Sciences took place from 2000 to 2002 at Hundssteig and from 2005 to 2011 at Wachtberg. An area of around 250m² was investigated at Hundssteig, where several cultural layers with a number of hearths dating from around 29,000 to 19,000 years ago were documented in a layer of loess around 8 m thick. Apparently, Palaeolithic people had visited the site repeatedly over many generations.

The oldest infant burials in the world

The most sensational finds were made on the Wachtberg, where several so-called "archaeological horizons" (AH) were uncovered within a 9.5 m high layer of loess as the remains of former campsites. In 2005, the double burial of two newborn babies under a mammoth shoulder blade was found here - it is considered to be the oldest grave of its kind in the world. The following year, another burial of a child just a few months old was discovered close by. These are the remains of a camp site inhabited for at least several weeks around 27,000 years ago.