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The archaeologist concluded it was a gathering of merchants because some of them showed skeletal evidence of a lifetime of carrying burdens.
Doesn’t seem sufficient. Isotope or molecular evidence that they were not native?
They could have been builders, local slaves, litter bearers, miners.
1400 people would be a large town for Germany back then.
Large gatherings back then could have been religious primarily, trade second.
Maybe it was a raid on a village, a sacrifice, or a mass punishment.
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