Double Medieval child burial, one Pagan, one Christian, mystifies German researchers

Archaeologists say the circumstances of the death and double burial of two little children who died in Medieval Frankfurt, Germany, will probably never be known. One of the children had an apparently royal Merovingian, Christian burial, and the other a pagan Scandinavian burial. The children were honored many years after their death by careful placement of a royal chapel around their grave.

Their remains were found in 1992, and archaeologists are just now releasing the results of the scientific examination of the bodies and gravesite. The team announced the children were buried sometime between 700 and 730 AD. The grave is in a priest’s residence, the priory of a tiny church at what later would become the Frankfurt Cathedral in the 1300s.