BERLIN’S MEDIEVAL ORIGINS

On a warm, windy day in the spring of 2022, archaeologist Michael Malliaris unlocks the gate in the construction fence that surrounds the most recently uncovered evidence of Berlin’s past. Inside is a broad expanse of light brown soil the size of a football field, dotted with deep pits revealing stone and brick walls and floors dating back nearly 800 years. Across the street is an imposing modern gray stone city administration building. On the other side of the excavation area, several lanes of traffc crawl past. A few redand-white shipping containers inside the fence serve as Malliaris’ offce and headquarters. Malliaris, at the time an archaeologist working for Berlin’s Monument Authority, is a 25-year veteran of rescue excavations. Trained as a classical archaeologist, he found himself caught up in the rush of digs that accompanied a building boom across the former East Germany after the fall of Communism there. But this is the biggest project he’s ever worked on. “It’s a singularly intense excavation,” Malliaris says.

This work promises to fill in major gaps in what historians know of Berlin’s origins. Perhaps surprisingly, given the city’s prominence, there remain numerous open questions. Devastating fires in the fourteenth century destroyed archives from the city’s first years, and between 1618 and 1648, Berlin lost half its population and many of its buildings to the violence of the Thirty Years’ War. In subsequent centuries, the city was conquered many times, including by Napoleon in 1806 and Stalin in 1945. “There are almost no written sources for the early years,” says Ines Garlisch, a local historian who specializes in Berlin’s medieval period. “That’s where archaeology comes into play.”

By 2028, the area under excavation, known as the Molkenmarkt, or Whey Market, perhaps because in its earliest incarnation it was dedicated to selling dairy products, will take shape as a new neighborhood. But first, the team of archaeologists