Unique soil samples tell us what Ghent looked like long before there was a city here. Archaeologists have now drawn up a timeline going back as far as 18,000 years: from the Ice Age to the Roman period. The samples turned up during excavations at St Bavo's Cathedral.
Archaeologists carried out the excavations around St Bavo's Cathedral a few years ago. Its location in the historical centre of the city was a guarantee that unusual finds would emerge. Researchers encountered a medieval cemetery and an unusual charnel wall made of human remains. A children's cemetery was also discovered.
However, it is now the soil, beneath the finds, that allows the scientists to look further back, thousands of years further in time. There layers of soil have been able to accumulate. They were then covered by the medieval graveyards and this is how they were preserved for centuries.
Going back to prehistory
‘The soil samples go all the way back to prehistory and that is really quite special for Ghent,’ says archaeologist Janiek De Gryse of Ruben Willaert NV. ‘Elsewhere, the soil is very disturbed,’ explains Gunther Stoops of the City of Ghent Archaeology Department. ‘Since the founding of Ghent, there has been enormous compaction of the earth. First a timber construction stood here and from the 13th century stone houses with cellars appear. There are yards with fields and rubbish pits.’
‘The fields later disappear and make way for yet more habitation. No piece of soil is left untouched. In the 20th century, there is once again a building boom. Then come new works, including car parks,’ Mr Stoops continues. The samples that turned up during the excavation around St Bavo's Cathedral are therefore exceptional.
‘We can use the analyses to reconstruct the history of the site,’ Mr De Gryse adds. The oldest deposit is a thick layer of sand deposited by the wind, from the North Sea basin. That happened in prehistoric times (18,000 to 14,650 years ago).