ALKMAAR, THE NETHERLANDS—According to a report in the NL Times, tile flooring repaired with cattle bones has been unearthed in an early seventeenth-century building in the center of the city of Alkmaar, which is located in the northwestern province of North Holland. Archaeologists were called to the site after the floor was discovered during a renovation project. The bones, all from the mid-foot, had been cut to the same size, and arranged to form a pattern. Similar bone floors have been found in other northern areas of the country. This floor is thought to date to the fifteenth century, and to have been part of an earlier structure that once stood on the site. “The floor tiles were worn down from intense use, and it is possible that the bones were placed there either for practical or symbolic reasons,” said archaeologist Nancy de Jong. “They may have fit well with the craft being practiced in this space, or they could have been an inexpensive way to complete the floor,” she explained. To read about how researchers virtually read a sealed seventeenth-century letter addressed to a merchant in The Hague, go to "Return to Sender."
