Found: A Fancy 14th Century Baby Boot

In the 14th century in St. Ursanne, Switzerland, lived a very chic baby. Nobody knows the name of the baby, but we know that the child liked a lot because of their beautiful tiny shoes: leather boots finely decorated with buttons and clasps. Archaeologists have uncovered fragments of this well-preserved and frankly adorable artifact during ongoing excavations of an old town in Canton Jura, Switzerland, according to a story Local Switzerland.

After having spent the last seven centuries in the groundwater of a vast wet depression left by the Doubs, the baby boot surfaced under the cobblestones of the eastern part of the old town of Jura. Archaeologists quickly brought the boots to Marquita and Serge Volken, shoe specialists at the Lausanne Shoe Museum, according to a statement from the Office of Jura Culture. The Volkens have identified the shoe as a particularly rare find, joining the ranks of five other known shoes of similar design previously discovered in Europe.

The Volkens believe that the shoe probably belonged to a child of one year. The fragment measures approximately seven out of five inches, with a goatskin top and a cowhide sole. But the most amazing facet of the shoe is perhaps its decoration. The back of the boot has a delicately engraved floral pattern with leaves spreading over the tongue, while the heel has a geometric arrangement of squares. Apparently, power was in vogue in the 14th century Jura.

Today, the Jura remains a remarkably medieval place, with preserved Romanesque architecture still present throughout the canton. The city of Saint-Ursanne also hosts a medieval festival every two years in July, during which people dress in period clothes and participate in activities of that era, including blacksmithing and construction. of catapults. And the canton of Jura has a unique claim to prehistoric fame, since its surrounding mountain range dates back to the time of the sauropods and thus gives its name to the Jurassic period.

An anaerobic material that occurs when an artifact is soaked in the water table, with no access to air, helps preserve organic materials such as leather and wood, through clogging by water, according to a report from Historic England. Waterlogging, which occurs most often in peatlands, can create extremely perfect storage conditions. Imagine the furrowed front of Tollund Man in the fourth century BC or the lingering scent of the secular bog butter dairy. Although perfect for topographic details such as leaf carvings or laugh lines, waterlogging can not preserve the color of the artifact in which they are buried, thus obscuring the original colors of this boot now brown. Meanwhile, in the Jura, the excavations continue, leaving hope that this single boot could be reunited with his companion.