On 20 May 2021, we opened the 19th-century tomb in the parish church. Today, thanks to archaeological and anthropological studies and carbon-14 analyses, we have been able to determine the type of individual to whom the bones found in the sarcophagus belonged. It could not have been Berthe, as the study of the bones revealed a male individual with an average age of between 30 and 60 at the time of death. What’s more, carbon-14 dating indicates the fifteenth century, between 1420 and 1495, with a reliability rate of 94%, which definitively rules out the queen. While the whereabouts of Queen Berthe’s remains remain a mystery, and whether they will ever be found, these discoveries narrow down the range of possible future investigations. They also open up new avenues of study, thanks to the discovery of 15th-century bones in an older sarcophagus dating from around the 10th century, something already observed on the Abbey Church site during the 2015-2016 excavations. Below, a video by Simon Brunet Production to relive the highlights of the opening of the tomb.
Video of the opening of the tomb
Press conference
