Archaeologists digging through an ancient burial complex on Peru’s desert coast stumbled upon a dog mummy that looked almost too well preserved to be ancient. Its skeleton was nearly complete, and even its skin was still intact. They initially thought this was a relatively recent burial, perhaps dating to the looting that had ravaged the site some 50 years earlier.

But radiocarbon analysis showed that dog hadn’t been buried 50 years ago. It had been dead for roughly 1.200 years.

The animal had lived sometime between 688 and 870 CE, when the Wari Empire ruled much of what is now Peru, centuries before the rise of the Incas.

By examining its skin and an unusual pattern of missing teeth, researchers traced it to an ancient form of the Peruvian hairless dog, a distinctive breed still found in Peru today. And it wasn’t alone. Dozens of other canine remains were found scattered across the burial complex.

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Vedeler also argues that the well-known carved animal heads found in the grave may be connected to this possible bed.

“We actually know very little about it. What we can say is that they were found in each corner of this huge accumulation of down,” she says.

One of the animal heads from the Oseberg grave. It is called the Lion's Head. (Photo: Kirsten Helgeland / Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The animal heads were found in the burial chamber, tied together with rope, Vedeler wrote in this article.

It is therefore possible that the unknown women in the grave were laid on a huge mattress filled with down. Remnants of what could be a plant-based fabric were also found, which could have been the mattress cover, according to Vedeler.

Much of this is speculation.

Although a great deal of the Oseberg Ship and the objects in the grave were so well-preserved that even the down survived over a thousand years in the soil, the grave had been heavily disturbed.

I recently discovered the LIDAR tool and was practicing with it in my area and stumbled upon this. Does this feature appear to be ancient earthworks?