Swedish archaeologists have recently uncovered a 12th century grave during an archaeological dig – and found buried treasure along with it, Fox News reported.
The Jönköping County Museum announced the find in a March 27 press release that was translated from Swedish to English, Fox News said on Monday. The discovery happened during an excavation of a grave in an old church in Visingsö, a Swedish island.
The coins were found in the grave of a man that experts believed was between 20 and 25 years old when he died. The pieces of metal were produced between 1150 and 1180.
"My colleague Kristina Jansson and I found two skeletons in the shaft where the wires were to be laid," project manager Anna Ödéen explained in a statement. "We cleaned out the bones from the buried to get an idea of what the graves looked like."
"All of a sudden three silver coins appeared! We soon realized that many more were lying close to the buried person's left foot."
170 silver bracteates were found in total, said the report. A bracteate is a piece of thin, coin-shaped metal that was used as jewelry.
