Stone Age · c. 8500 BC · Lüchow LA 11, Duvensee Moor, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Stone Age aurochs skull mounted on a post found beside cremation grave in Germany
The skull of a wild ox, impaled on a pine post about 10,500 years ago, stood in front of the oldest known cremation burial in northern Germany.
Official announcement
Lüchow LA 11, Duvensee Moor, Germany Archaeologists in northern Germany have found the complete skull of an aurochs that had been mounted on a pine post. It stood in front of a cremation burial around 10,500 years old, in the Duvensee Moor in Schleswig-Holstein. The grave is the oldest known cremation in northern Germany.
The team thinks the skull was set up on purpose. In their view, it was part of the funeral rites of early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
Harald Lübke leads the excavation at the site, known as Lüchow LA 11. He heads the project Early Mesolithic in the Duvenseer Moor at the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology (LEIZA) in Schleswig. LEIZA works with the Schleswig-Holstein State Office for Archaeology and the Museum of Archaeology at Schloss Gottorf.
A cremation grave preserved on an old lakeshore
The Duvensee Moor lies in the district of Herzogtum Lauenburg. It is one of the most important groups of early Mesolithic sites in northern Europe. After the glaciers retreated, hunter-gatherers camped beside the lake that once filled the basin.
Peat later grew over their camps. The peat created oxygen-free conditions, which preserved wood, plant remains and bone. It also preserved the original ground surfaces people walked on.
Lübke's team found a human cremation during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. It lay on what was once the lake edge. The burnt bones had been placed in a pit together with remains of the funeral pyre. The pit stayed visible for a long time afterwards.
Only two other cremations of similar age are known in Europe, one in the Netherlands and one in Denmark. At Lüchow, the peat sealed the ground surface as it was when the bones were buried. This let the researchers study the area around the grave in unusual detail.
An aurochs skull with no butchery marks
In the summer of 2025 the team opened new trenches directly in front of the grave, in what was once shallow water. A few metres away, they found a complete aurochs skull (Bos primigenius) lying where it had been left. The aurochs was the large wild ox from which domestic cattle descend.
Lübke explained that aurochs bones from other Mesolithic sites are broken and are read as food waste. One such site is Bedburg-Königshoven in the Rhineland. The Lüchow skull has no cut marks and no sign that it was processed for meat.
The bone was fragile, so the team lifted the skull inside a block of sediment. They took it to the laboratory at Schloss Gottorf. There, conservators removing loose fragments found a piece of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) lodged inside the skull.
The wood had entered through the foramen magnum. This is the opening at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes.
LEIZA then had the block scanned by the Fraunhofer Institute for Individualized Medical Engineering (IMTE) in Lübeck. Together with the company Comet Yxlon, the institute runs a high-energy industrial computed tomography system for large archaeological blocks.
The scans confirmed that the skull had been impaled on a pine post. At some point the post broke, and its end stayed inside the braincase. The team says this arrangement cannot have come about by natural processes or by chance.
The excavators had already found a large poplar post in 2022, on the same stretch of shore in front of the grave. Someone had driven it about a metre into the sediment with considerable force. No other remains of a larger structure were found with it.
The two posts are of different wood, so the researchers treat them as separate elements. They suggest the grave may once have been ringed by several posts topped with animal skulls. Only two posts have been identified so far.
Lübke compares the find with practices that ethnographers have recorded among recent hunter-gatherers in Europe, Asia and North America. These groups often lay their dead on raised platforms or in prominent places. They frequently add totemic objects, which stand for a group's bond with particular animals.
On this reading, the skull in front of the grave could express animistic beliefs. In such beliefs, animals and other parts of nature have a spirit. Or the skull could be a totem marking kinship or protection between the group and the aurochs.
If the hypothesis holds, Lüchow LA 11 would be the first material evidence of such rituals in northern Europe at the start of the Holocene. The Holocene is the warm period that followed the last Ice Age.
Since 2023 the excavation has run as a field school. Students from the universities of Kiel and Rostock and the Free University of Berlin train there in wetland excavation. Arkeonews reports that the drying of peatlands threatens the organic remains that survive in the bog.
The next seasons will widen the excavated area around the cremation. The team wants to see whether more posts or skulls once stood around the grave.
Sources
Spotted a mistake? Tell the editor about a spelling error or a fact that is wrong. We correct stories openly.
Readers' picks show on the front page.
Follow @AncientHeraldHQ on X for the day's finds as they come in.
Comments
House rules. Stay on the subject, be kind to other readers and say where your facts come from. No advertising and no personal attacks. The editor reads along and hides comments that break these rules.
Loading comments…