Overview
- Researchers identified a roughly 10 m × 15 m × 3.5 m disturbed subsurface structure near the deserted medieval village of Neuses outside Erfurt.
- Sediment cores recovered mixed soils with human bone fragments that radiocarbon-date to the 14th century.
- The Leipzig University–led work, published in PLOS One with GWZO and UFZ collaborators, combined historical records with electrical resistivity mapping and coring.
- Authors say this is the first plague burial in Europe systematically located through targeted prospection rather than an accidental find.
- Excavation is planned with the Thuringian heritage authority to secure samples for genetic analyses at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.