Cave of Souls: The Unidentified Remains of Upper Baraćeve Špilje, Croatia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since 2015, the University of Wyoming and a team of Croatian archaeologists, have recovered human remains from Baraćeve Špilje, a cave located approximately 140 kilometers south of Zegreb, Croatia, on the boarder of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These remains were highly fragmented, intermixed with faunal elements, and predominately documented on the surface. Carbon-14 dating of the remains has established two ages, ranging from the late 1300s to the mid-1400s. Little research has been done on these remains, leaving their identities and the circumstances of their death unclear for the excavators and researchers of the cave. To address this, over 4,000 fragments were examined to determine the Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) and demographics of the individuals interred within the cave. This analysis will attempt to provide context to the remains and pave the way for future research to give a narrative to individuals who have long since lost the ability to tell their own stories. ***This presentation will include images of human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53469