The infant graves of Krems Wachtberg

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

The Wachtberg is a hill to the north of the historic old town of Krems, which drops steeply to the west into the Kremstal valley. Throughout the area of the Wachtberg itself and its southern foothills, the Hundssteig, excavation work has regularly found bones, charcoal and stone implements from the Palaeolithic era. In the 1930s, the first archaeological excavation uncovered mammoth bones, which may have been the remains of a dwelling. Highlights of the finds include fragments of a number of animal figures made from burnt clay.

Buried by the loess

More recent excavations were carried out on the Hundssteig from 2000 to 2002 and on the Wachtberg from 2005 to 2011 by a team from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. On the Hundssteig, the team investigated an area of approx. 250 m² in which they documented several cultural layers with a number of hearths from around 29,000 to 19,000 years ago in a layer of loess about 8 m thick. The Palaeolithic people appear to have visited the site regularly over many generations.

The oldest infant burials in the world

The most remarkable finds were made on the Wachtberg, where a number of “archaeological horizons” were uncovered as the remains of former camp sites within a 9.5 m layer of loess. In 2005, a double burial of two newborn babies was found here beneath a mammoth’s shoulder blade. It is considered to be the world’s oldest grave of this kind. The following year, another burial of an infant a few months old was discovered close by. These are the remains of a camp site that was inhabited for at least several weeks around 27,000 years ago.