One of the goals of this year’s excavation was to find more human remains. To do this, we used the specially trained archaeology dog Fabel to identify which house to dig. He indicated the presence of human remains both inside the house 4 and in the street outside it.
On the street, we’ve found scattered human remains from at least five people including three children. It is mostly severely fragmented bones, no complete skeletons. Inside the house, we have not quite reached the right level yet, but we have come across human remains in several parts of the house, representing at least two individuals. The total number of human individuals so far, then, is seven.
The children are of different ages, the youngest around 5-6, one around 6-7 and one 10-12 years old. The two adults in the street are also of different ages, around the 20s and one a bit older. Age determinations are based mainly on the teeth, but also on other skeletal details.
These findings reinforce the image that we have had since before: this site has seen a terrible massacre in which the attackers killed everything in its path. The large number of individuals on the street is perhaps somewhat surprising, while the high proportion of children among the individuals identified to date provide a picture of how brutal and horrible the attack has been.
The image shows the teeth of one of the children.