Prehistory · c. 380–250 BC · Senden, Bavaria, Germany
Celtic woman buried beside a lamb or young goat found in Bavaria
The Iron Age woman in Senden, southern Germany, wore heavy bronze anklets and a bracelet carved from sapropelite, a dark rock formed from fossilised mud.
Senden, Germany Archaeologists in Bavaria have excavated the grave of a Celtic woman buried more than 2,000 years ago, with the remains of a lamb or young goat beside her. She wore heavy bronze anklets and a bracelet of sapropelite. The grave lies in Senden, in southern Germany.
A team from the firm Archäologie Dr. Arnolds & Kollegen found the burial in 2024 on St.-Florian-Straße. The land is set aside for a business park with warehouses and storage units. Senden is a town of about 23,700 people in the Neu-Ulm district of Swabia, on the border with Baden-Württemberg.
The Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (BLfD) announced the find with the Society for Archaeology in Bavaria (GfA). The BLfD will show part of the finds at a press conference on Friday 30 October at 12:30. It takes place at the Illertal-Forum, Senden's civic centre.
An animal laid beside the body
The animal remains are the most striking part of the grave. Archaeologists read them as a food offering left with the dead. Such offerings do not turn up in every grave.
The press release says the find raises questions about the religious beliefs, social relationships and funeral rituals of Celtic society. It offers no hypothesis. What the animal meant to the woman, or to the people who buried her, has not been explained.
Her bracelet is a typical piece of Iron Age jewellery in Europe. Sapropelite is an organic mud that built up in shallow, stagnant water. Over millions of years it hardened into a dark, tar-rich rock that looks a little like jet. Celtic craftspeople carved and polished it into bracelets.
Where her bracelet's stone came from is not yet known. Studies of pieces from Thuringia pointed to shale deposits in the Swabian Jura and the Black Forest. Sources are also known in Bohemia, in today's Czech Republic. Research on sapropelite from Manching, a large Celtic fortified town in Upper Bavaria, notes that analysis can sometimes trace the raw stone to its source.
Dated by the knot rings
The press release gives no date more precise than "more than 2,000 years". The BLfD also mentions two Knotenringe, or knot rings, among the grave goods. Records from several German museums place this type of ring in the first phase of La Tène, the period of classic Celtic culture that begins around 450 BC.
More precisely, knot rings belong to stage B of that phase, usually dated to roughly 380 to 250 BC. On that basis, the Spanish site La Brújula Verde suggests the woman may have lived in the third century BC or a little earlier.
Stefanie Berg, head of the BLfD's archaeological monuments department, calls the burial an exceptional one-off find within a much bigger story. Across the excavated area, the team recorded traces of settlement from Celtic times to the Roman imperial era. In Berg's view, such finds show the region was heavily used by people for thousands of years.
Senden's municipal bulletin from March 2025 says the dig began as a search for Second World War munitions before construction. BLfD archaeologist Hubert Fehr presented the results to more than 200 residents at the Bürgerhaus, the town's community hall. The bulletin describes settlement from around 250 BC, drawn by the site's position between the Danube and the Iller.
Roman and medieval occupation followed. Some skeletons suggest lives of up to 80 years. Graves with weapons and jewellery were found even for children and ordinary farmers. One girl of about five died of an infection linked to misaligned teeth.
Fehr also reported a woman wearing rings on her hands and feet, and animal bones in some graves. The bulletin does not say whether she is the woman now being presented.
The finds belong to the Free State of Bavaria. Mayor Claudia Schäfer-Rudolf would like Senden to receive them one day. No museum is planned, but a way to put them on public view is being sought. Analyses of the remains and the bracelet could date the grave and show where its black stone came from.
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