Horse sacrifice at Pasewalk
The horse sacrifice near Pasewalk in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was laid in a pit (diameter 1.5 m; depth 1.43 m). The 14-15 year old male came into the pit divided. The skull and neck were deposited on the sole, the torso above. The extremities were found next to it. There were no traces of cuts in the bones of the anatomically complete skeleton. An undivided laying down of the horse was impossible due to lack of space. However, if it had only been about the disposal of the carcass, this could have been done with less effort and care. Therefore everything speaks for a ritual horse sacrifice . Above the horse's skeleton a concentration of burnt clay as well as bone remnants from a one to two year old ruminant (sheep / goat) and the shoulder blade of a pig were found. The remains could have been part of a ritual meal as part of the horse sacrifice.
As comparative finds show, especially among the North Germanic horses, horses were dismembered as part of burial ceremonies or sacrificial cults and completely or partially (pars pro toto) were brought into the ground. The laying down of horses or their skulls took place in Saxons and Slavs also in settlement pits. The practice in which the meat of the animals was consumed as a sacrificial meal led to the horse meat ban by Pope Gregory III in 732 .
Since 2008 excavations have been carried out in the course of the natural gas pipeline OPAL (Baltic Sea Pipeline Connection Line). A study area is located west of Pasewalk in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district . Large parts of a late Slavic settlement of the 11th / 12th centuries were here. Century. It is characterized above all by a dozen or so pits up to 2.1 m deep. The pits, impressive in size and depth, were bag-shaped or spherical. Many contained large quantities of ornate Slavic pottery shards and rock mill fragments . In 2018 a buried stone , a boulder weighing about 10 t with 13 "ground in" (not picked or hacked) bowls was found.
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Coordinates: 53 ° 30 ′ 12.4 " N , 13 ° 57 ′ 14.5" E