5,000-year-old burials in Germany hold 3 women with bedazzled baby carriers

Archaeologists in Germany have discovered the remains of three Copper Age women who were buried with what may have been blinged-out "baby carriers" — large pouches decorated with hundreds of dog and wolf teeth.

The pouches' fabric or leather is long gone, but pierced animal teeth unearthed from the three separate graves suggest the pouches were sewn onto the bags in a staggered pattern similar to roof tiles, the researchers said.

The pouches are from the Corded Ware culture, whose people lived across Europe — from Scandinavia, to the Alps, to what is now Ukraine — between 2900 and 2350 B.C.

"The arrangement of the teeth in the graves is a rare hint at a usually completely perished find category," Oliver Dietrich, an archaeologist and spokesperson for the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany who was not involved in the find, told Live Science in an email. It would have been challenging to procure the dog teeth and make the pouches, so these decorated bags were "most likely markers of a high social status," he said.

Archaeologists think the pouches were about 12 inches (30 centimeters) wide and 8 inches (20 cm) deep. Each was covered in nearly 350 dog teeth, specifically the canines and incisors of medium-size dogs similar to modern small Münsterlanders that were bred for this purpose and were killed at a young age, according to a translated statement.

The elite women likely carried the pouches on a wide strap decorated with wolf teeth. A handful of fox teeth and imitations carved out of bone suggest they were used to replace dog or wolf teeth if they were lost, the statement reported.

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The dimensions of the pouches and the presence of infant bones inside one of them indicate that the pouches were used as baby carriers. A baby's head, arms and legs wouldn't have fit inside the pouch, but infants lying on their backs were likely covered with small blankets that were lined with dog molars, according to the statement. The blankets were sequined, but it's unclear what material these ornaments were made of.

The preciousness of the pouches may explain why they have been found in only a small number of burials from the Corded Ware culture, Dietrich said. The new excavations, which were conducted ahead of a planned power line near the village of Krauschwitz in Saxony-Anhalt, uncovered 10 female burials from the Corded Ware culture, but only two held pouches. A third burial with a pouch was unearthed in Nessa, a village a little more than 1 mile (1.7 kilometers) away from the main archaeological site.

"Similar pouches are known for some other sites in Saxony-Anhalt," meaning these aren't the first finds of their kind, Dietrich said.

At the burial in Nessa, the pouch contained the remains of a newborn. Researchers will analyze the woman's remains to determine her age at death. If enough of the newborn's DNA is preserved, they will also test the child's relationship to the woman, Dietrich said.

The burials near Krauschwitz were located near the much older 6,000-year-old burial mounds from the Baalberg culture, which existed between 4100 and 3600 B.C., during the Neolithic period. People from the Baalberg culture buried their dead beneath wooden structures, but these had gone out of style by the time the Corded Ware culture emerged in the Copper Age, also known as the Eneolithic.

"Each culture has a unique set of rules and norms along which social relations evolve," Dietrich said. "Unlike the earlier Middle Neolithic Cultures, the Eneolithic people intentionally emphasized the gender of the deceased in burials as well as certain social roles."

Men in the Corded Ware culture were buried lying on their right side, while women were typically buried lying on their left side. Grave goods such as axes were reserved for male warriors, while jewelry and ornaments were placed in female graves. Both sexes were almost always buried with their heads facing south, according to the statement.