Hundreds of years ago , someone in the Netherlands concluded that the best path to fill the gaps in their floor was not with tile , but with bones .
Municipal archaeologists working in the historical eye of the Dutch city of Alkmaar have expose a historical floor partly tiled with animal bones . This uncommon feature , denote in a December 13 municipalstatement , has only ever been documented in the state of North Holland , usually in fifteenth - one C trading floor .
“ We were very happy to have the chance to see this bone floor with our own centre . It is always a privilege to uncover something from a bygone era and supply new information to the history of Alkmaar , ” Nancy de Jong , an Alkmaar municipal archeologist , said in the statement .
The bone floor in Alkmaar.© Municipality of Alkmaar archeology team.
The bones are parts of oxen metacarpal bone and metatarsals ( pes finger cymbals ) , and were all cut to the same size . Despite how worn the floor is , archaeologist were able to detect a kind of pattern to the osseous tissue arrangement . Specifically , the bone were place vertically , with either the ridged destruction or the sawed - off conclusion facing upwards .
archeologist have seen this sort of matter before , having antecedently discovered like bone feature in floor in Hoorn , Enkhuizen , and Edam , with the Hoorn floor displaying a particularly exchangeable pattern . expert are now wondering whether this may have been a coarse fifteenth - C take aback root or design in the Netherlands .
Archaeologists have yet to date the recently excavate bone floor . The corresponding house was progress at the beginning of the seventeenth one C , but that does n’t necessarily mean the floor itself is from the same century . In fact , it was not uncommon for raw house to be build on top of honest-to-goodness origination , allot to the archaeologists , meaning the floor could conceivably still date to the 15th century , like most of the other bone flooring case .
A close-up of the bone flooring. © Municipality of Alkmaar archeology team.
Possibly even more interesting than the date is the inquiry ofwhysomeone would choose to fill the holes in their trading floor with bones . roofing tile were not expensive at the time , the archaeologists explained , so there was no obvious economic vantage to using bones . Perhaps , then , they were meant plainly as a woof , and not as tile . The team also hypothesized that the characteristic might have made horse sense in the context of the case of craft make there .
“ There are an awful lot of hidden report still preserved , wait for our team of archeologist to fall and get them , ” said Anjo van de Ven , an Alkmaar municipal representative for inheritance . “ I ’m always delirious when they call me with an update on a breakthrough . What coolheaded thing have they discovered now ? – I cerebrate . ”
Ultimately , the mystery of the bone floor persists , but hopefully not for long as the archaeologists continue to investigate the breakthrough . In the meantime , the rest period of the world has clearly let out a novel long - lasting flooring solution .
Archaeologybonesthe netherlands
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