Schoolchildren have been left horrified after they encountered an ancient skeleton sitting upright in a playground in France. Pupils at a primary school in eastern France encountered an unusual sight beside their playground this week - an ancient skeleton seated upright, emerging from a circular burial pit. The remarkably intact remains were unearthed adjacent to the Josephine Baker Primary School in Dijon, marking the latest in an extraordinary sequence of Gallic burials discovered in the city. Researchers are now attempting to understand why this ancient Celtic civilisation chose to bury certain individuals in this distinctive seated posture, with their gaze directed towards the west. TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say The mystery deepens as scientists also investigate whether these people may have been buried whilst still alive. The bodies are thought to date from approximately 300BC to 200BC, a period when Gallic culture flourished across much of western Europe, the Guardian reports. The newly discovered skeleton sits at the bottom of a pit measuring one metre across with its hands positioned in its lap. Like the others, the body rests with its back pressed against the eastern wall of the grave, oriented to face westward. Four additional bodies were uncovered in the same area earlier this month, all arranged in identical fashion. Last year, archaeologists found 13 more skeletons approximately 20 metres from the current excavation site in western France. The burials form part of a construction project that has yielded an unprecedented concentration of these distinctive Gallic graves. Three decades of archaeological work have established that Dijon held particular importance for the Gauls - the Celtic people perhaps most familiar to modern audiences through the French Asterix and Obelix comic series. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS Ancient Roman treasure found in Americas could rewrite history of the New World Pompeii victims seen frozen in heartbreaking last hug before being buried alive in Vesuvius's ash Mystery of 2,000-year-old coin used to pay Leeds bus fare may finally be solved The Gauls emerged around the fifth century BC, eventually occupying vast territories across present day France, Belgium, Switzerland and regions further east. Knowledge of their culture remains limited, derived largely from potentially biased accounts such as those written by Julius Caesar following his conquest of Gaul, an ancient region in western Europe, in 50BC. Within a compact area of central Dijon, roughly 20 tombs containing seated Gauls have now been identified, including finds dating back to 1992. This represents more than a quarter of the 75 such burial sites documented globally, with others located across France, Switzerland and the UK. Regis Labeaune, a researcher at the French archaeological institute Inrap, described the recent finds as "particularly impressive discoveries". He said: "Given the number and quality of these discoveries, we can say there was a significant Gallic settlement in Dijon." The skeletons were almost exclusively male, ranging in height from 1.62 to 1.82 metres, with only a single child discovered among the 1992 finds. Their dental condition remained remarkably good across the centuries, "probably because they did not know about sugar", according to Annamaria Latron, a researcher at Inrap, a French archaeological organisation. She said: "Their bones display traces of osteoarthritis, suggesting intense physical activity." Particularly in their legs, she added. Five of the bodies bear evidence of violent deaths, including one individual with a fatal skull wound. Apart from a single armband that helped date the settlement to the Gallic era, no personal items or decorative objects accompanied the dead. Whether this unusual burial practice served as punishment or honour remains unclear. Ms Latron said: "We do not have a preferred hypothesis. "Being an archaeologist can be a very frustrating profession." Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter