Extremely Rare Medieval Folding Chair Reveals Its Secrets

 

A rarity: this iron folding chair was found during an excavation in Steinsfeld, Bavaria. Credit:BLfD/​dpa

In 2022, archaeologists made a very unusual find. A Medieval folding chair was discovered in a woman's grave in Steinsfeld in Central Franconia in the Ansbach district, Germany.

Examinations of the woman's skeleton showed she was around 40 to 50 when she died. The dead woman had a necklace of colored glass beads around her neck.

At the time of the discovery, the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments was only the second discovery of an iron folding chair from the early Middle Ages in Germany. Across Europe, 29 sites of early medieval graves with folding chairs have been handed down, only six of which are made of iron.

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