A run-of-the-mill construction site in Mons recently tore into a centuries-old discovery, after construction workers in the small Walloon city unearthed human remains dating from the middle ages.
Around a dozen scattered bones, including femurs, a skull, a pelvis, a rib cage and other smaller bone fragments were dug out by excavators during the renovation of a county wall.The human remains are the only vestiges left from a Medieval cemetery that once belonged to the Saint Waltrude Collegiate Church, a protected monument which stills towers over the construction site.
But the centuries-old finding was not a surprise, Jean-Luc Delcourt, who oversees the construction site, told La Dernière Heure.
“We were aware that there used to be a cemetery here since the start,” he said. “This was not a surprise for us.”
Since the Medieval skeletons did not stir the interest of local archaeologists either, their emergence into this century is set to be only momentary.
The unearthed vestiges will be stocked in the perimeter of the construction zone as they are found, and they will ultimately return to their resting places.
“We will leave them here because the dirt cannot leave the [construction] site,” the architect in charge of the renovation works explained.
“After the earth has been stabilized again, we will put them back in the ground — just like they were before.”
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
