Emily Chan
Within the ancient burials of influential figures, coins, jewels, weaponry, and other items of value are usually found. But in 2022, a team of archaeologists discovered a grave good that was completely out of the ordinary. It just so happened to be a metal folding chair.
According to the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection (BLfD), the chair was uncovered from the burial of a woman from the early medieval period.
After the initial excavations, the archaeologists were able to determine she was of high social status based on the grave goods from her burial site. Her grave was located in Endsee, a village in southeastern Germany. She was in her 40s or 50s when she died.
The chair dates back to roughly A.D. 600, making it around 1,400-years-old. It measured about 28 by 18 inches and was made out of an iron frame.
Only the metal part of the chair survived after all these years, but it’s possible that the furniture piece was constructed with other materials, such as leather and wood.
Chair burials are extremely rare. In Germany, only one other known burial contained a chair, and across Europe, 29 grave sites from the early medieval period had burials with chairs, but a total of just six were built from iron.
Since most of the seats were crafted with organic materials like wood, leather, ivory, or fabric, they have deteriorated over the years, leaving behind nothing but the nails or metal frames that held them together.
In medieval times, chairs were a symbol of status and power. Because of their rarity and symbolism, archaeologists consider these funerary items as “special gifts.”
“[The folding chair] had a very specific symbolic meaning during antiquity and was used as an insignia or sign of power for bishops, priests, officers and others with high social ranking, which were often men in patriarchal Germany,” said Hubert Fehr, an archaeologist from the BLfD.
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