Early Bronze Age Female Burial Uncovered in Scottish Highlands

From The Scotsman

‘Active’ Bronze Age woman found in Highland woods
Saturday 15th February 2014
by ALISTAIR MUNRO

A BRONZE Age grave uncovered in the Highlands has revealed the remains of a woman in her forties who was suffering from toothache before she died 4,000 years ago. [Oh, please!]

Archaeologists from Glasgow-based Guard Archaeology were called in when a cist – a stone burial chest – was inadvertently disturbed by construction workers during landscaping of an access track through Cullaird Wood in West Torbreck, south-west of Inverness.

The team undertook a rescue excavation and found the [that] human remains had been part of a burial.

Osteoarchaeologist Maureen Kilpatrick analysed the bones and discovered that they belonged to a woman aged between 40 and 44.  She said: “As the radiocarbon date demonstrates, this occurred at some point between 1982BC and 1889BC.  Dental disease in the form of periodontal disease and a cyst were present and are probably symptomatic of poor oral hygiene, and are probably secondary to the moderate dental wear observed on most of the teeth.

“Both the right and left femurs appeared quite robust with fairly prominent muscle attachments, suggesting that the individual probably led a physically active lifestyle." 

She added: “Preservation of the skeleton was fair with 50 per cent available for study. Much of the right side, which had been in direct contact with the subsoil, had not survived and those bones that had were affected by surface erosion. A single individual was present and was deemed to be of probable female sex based on pelvic and skull morphology.  Unfortunately, height could not be established due to the incomplete state of the surviving long bones.”

Ms Kilpatrick said: “The burial appeared consistent with the early Bronze Age, which was confirmed by the post-excavation analyses.”

The cist is located within an area rich in prehistoric remains, many of which have only been discovered within the past few years, primarily due to development associated with the expansion of Inverness. The area appeared important for prehistoric groups from early times. Ms Kilpatrick added: “Despite the use of cists spanning a period of at least 300 years, many similarities exist such as location, orientation of burial and material used, suggesting that local traditions may have existed which continued over many decades.

“However, each cist is unique in some way and the West Torbreck burial is no exception.  For instance, pottery vessels are not always included in cists. In this case, a beaker found in the West Torbreck cist was evidently part of the burial rites and its function was to accompany the individual to the afterlife.

“Although a few others have been found in north-east Scotland, they are generally rare in Scotland and Britain as a whole. This find gives weight to the importance of the region and its close links with the River Ness, and possibly the North Sea region beyond.”

The area immediately around West Torbreck cist remains relatively rural, with the nearest known archaeological site being the Torbreck stone circle, which lies approximately 200 metres to the east in an area of agricultural land. This small stone circle consists of nine upright stones and two outliers, which are thought to be the remains of an outer circle.

The sides of the recently discovered cist pit were found to be fairly steep and were completely covered with fallen branches, tree stumps and moss.

Rare Treasures Found in Bronze Age Dartmoor Burial

From BBC News Online
17 February 2013 Last updated at 22:43 ET

'Amazing' treasures revealed in Dartmoor bronze age cist

A rare and "amazing" burial discovery dating back 4,000 years has been described as the most significant find on Dartmoor and has given archaeologists a glimpse into the lives of the people who once lived there.

The discovery of the White Horse Hill cist has increased the number of bronze age beads
found on Dartmoor from eight to more than 150, including two amber beads

The discovery of a bronze age granite cist, or grave, in 2011 in a peat bog on White Horse Hill revealed the first organic remains found on the moor and a hoard of about 150 beads.

As the National Park's archaeologists levered off the lid they were shocked by what lay beneath.

The park's chief archaeologist, Jane Marchand, said: "Much to our surprise we actually found an intact cremation deposit [human bones] which is actually a burial alongside a number of grave goods.

"What was so unusual was the survival of so many organic objects which you never usually get in a grave of this period, they've long since rotted away."

Amongst the grave goods was an animal pelt, containing a delicate bracelet studded with tin beads, a textile fragment with detailed leather fringing and a woven bag.

Ms Marchand said: "The whole thing was actually wrapped up in an animal pelt of fur. As we lifted it up very carefully a bead fell out and the thrill of realising that actually this is a proper burial, this is a bead which belonged to a burial.

"That's what's so exciting, you wouldn't expect to find any archaeology somewhere like this stuck out on this peak hag. You'll never be able to top this ever."

Despite there being about 5,000 remnants of buildings and 200 burial cists on Dartmoor the moor has offered up few of its secrets.

English Heritage archaeologist Win Scutt said: "A lot of it's to do with robbing, some people have actually robbed the stone, some have robbed the artefacts.

"But the biggest loss we've got is all the organic stuff, the bones have all been dissolved by the acid soil up here. The flowers, the gifts of drink and food which would have gone in, most of their life was organic, it was stuff that would rot away.

"If we could get the perishable items, the organic materials, it would really shine a big light into pre-history."

This discovery has provided a rare glimpse into history with an ear stud or libret found in the bag while it was being examined at the Wiltshire Conservation Lab.

Ms Marchand said: "I don't remember studs being recorded at any other excavation from this period. I've worked on Dartmoor for over 20 years and never anticipated getting anything like this.

"It's just amazing, it suddenly brings them to life and actually you feel much closer to them because this is someone who likes their jewellery, I like jewellery, and actually you can identify with that side of things.

"We're only at the beginning really I just can't wait for the results to start coming in."

Woman's Bronze Age Burial Uncoverd in Kazakhstan

From Caspio.net
June 11, 2012

Archeological excavations in West Kazakhstan region

She was buried in a fetal position, facing west, ready to be born again...

Specialists of the West Kazakhstan Centre of History and Archeology have found the burial of a young lady dated back to the Bronze Age.
It is situated in the territory of the ancient city of Zhaiyk some 12 kilometres from Uralsk. Archeologists claim that their discovery is unique. The woman was buried in the fetal position and her body was directed to the west. It is believed that a person buried like that will receive the second birth. People buried their relatives and friends in such a manner in the Bronze Age, over 2 thousand years ago. It means that if earlier archeological information dated Uralsk back to the 14th century, today there is proof that this city is much older. The ancient skeleton was situated near the 800-year old brick furnace. The team accidentally found the landmark site during routine excavations. It means that the two discoveries located in close proximity were in fact two millennia apart.

Murat Kalmenov, SENIOR FELLOW, WEST KAZAKHSTAN REGION CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY:
-The burial was higher than the base of the furnace. Then we have found an inscription, which said that there was a burial mound here in the 14th century. I believe that people living here hadn’t recognised it and built a furnace near it.
There are a lot of such historical complex areas in the territory of this region. This year excavations in Akzhaiyk, Chingirlau and Kaztal regions are planned to be launched.

Serik Ramazanov, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY:
-In 2009 we found a similar ancient city in the Kaztal region. It was bigger than Zhaiyk. The length of this city was 900 metres and the width was estimated at 300 metres. We also excavated one residential area within the city and we are going to continue working.
An open-air museum is going to be set up in the place of the ancient city of Zhaiyk, where archeologists would like to collect all historical and archeological monuments of the region.

Bronze Age Burial Found in Aosta Valley (Northern Italy)

From stonepages.com

17 July 2011
5,000-year-old skeleton unearthed in Northern Italy

The 5,000-year-old skeleton of a woman was recently found in Aosta Valley (Northern Italy). "The Lady of Introd", as it has been nicknamed, was in perfect conditions, but the archaeologists found no sign of any burial items apart from the bones themselves.

The tomb was discovered in the small Alpine village of Introd, today home to about 600 people and located not far from the main town Aosta. An archaeological survey made before a planned extension of the local kindergarten allowed scientists to discover the ancient burial. The human remains have been found on a hill near the village; in the same area there is also a castle, the parish church and a shack. The skeleton found at Introd is contemporary to Oetzi, the famous iceman found 20 years ago in Trentino-Alto Adige, the mountainous region on the border between Austria and Italy.

"This discovery is of great importance, and we are looking forward to organizing special meetings in order to allow local community to fully understand the value and the related historical information of such a find. We'd like to give access to our heritage to as many people as possible," regional Cultural assessor Laurent Vierin said.

The remains are now in a lab, and they will be carefully studied to assess the cause of death. In any case, the children of the local kindergarten have been granted the right to choose the official name of their ancestor.

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This is very interesting.  A lone burial with no artifacts in the burial at all - not a single pot or offering of food? I wonder if this woman's burial was a lucky "escape" - it sounds as if there has been quite a bit of development in the immediate vicinity of the grave over the years and who knows what may have been destroyed along the way, unknowingly - or knowingly?  It's sad in a way.  Her body has survived 5,000 years (incredible when you think about it), but we may never know any more about her other than her approximate age, maybe a cause of death, and maybe a guess at ethnicity unless a DNA sample is taken and analyzed. 

The "Prince" of Leubingen

Here is a fascinating article from Der Spiegel that further explores and examines a burial discovered in 1877 in the light of recent discoveries from further current excavation of the area surrounding the burial mound.

Here is a drawing/overview of the tomb structure, which was discovered to have been untouched since antiquity when first excavated:

Note the child laid across the man's pelvis, clothed in what appears to be a dress. Does this denote that the child (about aged 10 per the article, below) was a female?

07/01/2011
The Pharaoh of Thuringia
Archaeologists Puzzle Over Opulent Prehistoric Burial Find
By Matthias Schulz

In 1877, when archeology was still in its infancy, art professor Friedrich Klopfleisch climbed an almost nine-meter (20-foot) mound of earth in Leubingen, a district in the eastern German state of Thuringia lying near a range of hills in eastern Germany known as the Kyffhäuser. He was there to "kettle" the hill, which entailed having workers dig a hole from the top of the burial mound into the burial chamber below.

When they finally arrived at the burial chamber, everything lay untouched: There were the remains of a man, shiny gold cloak pins, precious tools, a dagger, a pot for food or drink near the man's feet, and the skeleton of a child lying across his lap.

The "prince" of Leubingen was clearly a member of the elite. Farmers who had little to eat themselves had piled up at least 3,000 cubic meters (106,000 cubic feet) of earth to fashion the burial mound. They had also built a tent-shaped vault out of oak beams and covered it with a mound of stones, as if he had been a pharaoh.

For years, scholars have puzzled over the source of the prince's power. But Thuringia's state office of historical preservation has now come a step closer to solving the mystery. Agency archeologists used heavy machinery to excavate 25 hectares (62 acres) of ground in the mound's immediate surroundings, exposing a buried infrastructure. They discovered the remains of one of the largest buildings in prehistoric Germany, with 470 square meters (5,057 square feet) of floor space; a treasure trove of bronze objects; and a cemetery in which 44 farmers were buried in simple, unadorned graves.

A Mysterious Cache

With its unearthed remains of huts and palaces, of humble living next to ostentatious luxury, the Leubingen site provides an example of stark social differences. But the dig also sheds light on the moment in history when mankind lost its economic innocence.

In the Neolithic age, farming communities were still egalitarian because everyone was equally poor. But then came the Bronze Age, which saw the emergence of a privileged upper-class caste of chieftains. They lived relatively luxurious lives, were buried in even greater opulence, and adorned their wives with gold jewelry and amber necklaces.

Archeologists are particularly excited about the cache of weapons they publicly unveiled on Monday. The weapons are still packed in dirt within a ceramic pot. Tests conducted with a particle accelerator have already shown that the pot contains roughly 100 bronze hatchet blades.

This strange practice of burying valuable items is typical for the era. But the reason for doing so remains a mystery. "It's as if someone had buried 100 Mercedes sports cars," says project director Mario Küssner.

The cache was buried directly along the exterior of the recently discovered giant house. Trees as thick as telephone poles were felled to build the 44-meter-long (144-foot-long) house. The roof was covered with reeds or wood shingles and was about eight meters high. The structure apparently never contained livestock.

The Dawning of the Bronze Age

Some scholars have hypothesized that the building was a temple and have interpreted the hatchets as offerings to the gods of the underworld. But Küssner believes the building was the residence of the "prince," who lived there with a group of his minions and extorted duties and fees from long-distance traders.

It is known that merchants brought salt and amber through the region at the time. The trade in bronze, a new luxury material, also flourished. The technology of mixing copper with tin or arsenic to make bronze, which had been developed in the Orient, became widespread in Europe after about 2,200 B.C. For the first time, a hard material was available that could be poured into molds.

The blacksmiths stoked their furnaces with blowing irons and poured the molten metal into their crucibles. Meanwhile, miners searched for ore veins. The raw material was scarce. Caravans brought bars of unprocessed copper from as far away as the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps. Most of the tin came from Cornwall.

Blacksmiths gradually forged harder and harder weapons, better tools and more beautiful jewelry -- but only for those who could afford it. Thus, the world became divided into rich and poor.

A Valuable Location on a Trade Route

Küssner estimates that the "prince" and his guards kept watch over a "radius of 80 kilometers" and profited exorbitantly as a result. He believes that chieftain's gang of extortionists provided the hatchet blades in the valuable cache as a sign of their loyalty.

Another item found in his tomb, a small anvil, suggests that the man had something to do with metallurgy. It is possible that he was a blacksmith himself. But, either way, it is clear that he controlled others through the use of force.

In the end, a child followed him into the grave as a bloody sacrifice. The child was only about 10.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

"Queen of Inch" to be Reinterred

From BBC Online:
18 August 2010 Last updated at 07:43 ET
Queen of the Inch to be re-interred

A 4,000-year-old skeleton, known as the Queen of the Inch, is to be re-interred in the tiny island of Inchmarnock in the Firth of Clyde.

"Model" of the "Queen of Inch" and the
actual jet necklace from the grave site.

The grave was found by a farmer in the 1950s as he ploughed a field.  Preserved in an ancient cist, the remains included a necklace and dagger.

Despite being examined by archaeologists and reburied in the 1960s, the skeleton was recently exhumed and studied using modern research techniques.  Scientists have since been able to determine that the woman lived on Inchmarnock and came from the Clyde Estuary and that she did not eat seafood, despite the fact she lived on an island.

'Spectacular necklace'

Anne Spiers, curator of archaeology at Bute Museum, said: "She must have been a queen or chieftain or something very important in her own right.

"There were plenty of people who lived on the island but very very few were given cist burials and with something as spectacular as the necklace, which obviously she was allowed to keep. It was buried with her. It didn't pass on to anyone else."

The reconstruction of the queen's head and the necklace, which was found to be made of Whitby jet, are now on show at Bute Museum.

The current owner of Inchmarnock Island, Lord Smith of Kelvin, said it was now time for the remains to be reburied.  He said: "It right that she goes back. When you speak with the researchers and scientists, obviously they wanted her for a period of time.

"But I was always clear that once they had actually looked at her properly, because we all need to understand what her forebears were like and what they did and so on, she had to go back.

"It's where she belongs and it's where she was buried and that's where she's going back to, to rest for ever."

Spectacular Viking Find in Irish Burial Dave

The article's title calls the discovery "bizarre" but it's not, really.  The article itself suggests one possible way the necklace got into the burial - through trade; another could be by purchase or, this is the the one my romantic side prefers, it was part of a dowery of a much-beloved Viking wife who moved away from her home and her family for the man she loved.

From The Irish Examiner.com

Archaeologists baffled over ‘bizarre’ Viking discovery
By Gordon Deegan
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A TEAM of Irish archaeologists is puzzled by the "bizarre" discovery of a 1,150-year-old Viking necklace in a cave in the Burren.

Besides being the largest by far – up to 12 times longer than previous finds – the team is puzzled by how such a "high-status" Viking treasure came to lie in the Burren, an area never settled by the Norsemen.

The site where the necklace was found at Glencurran Cave was described by team leader Dr Marion Dowd of Sligo IT as a "treasure trove" for archaeologists.

The necklace is one of a number of major items discovered in the dig, funded by the Department of the Environment and the Royal Irish Academy.

Dr Dowd said yesterday: "The necklace is the largest Viking necklace to have been found in Ireland. Normally, Vikings necklaces that have been found have five to six glass beads, but this has 71 glass beads covered with gold foil."

A leading expert on Irish cave archaeology, Dr Dowd was puzzled by how such a "stunning piece of jewellery" came to rest in the Burren.

"There is no parallel for it in Ireland and it is puzzling on a number of fronts," he said.

Dr Dowd said that the Vikings never settled in the Burren, but that Limerick was one of the Irish cities that they did settle in and speculated that the necklace – dating from the mid 9th century – could have been the result of a trade with Vikings from Limerick and Gaelic chieftains in the Burren.

Already, the skeletal remains of a two to four-year-old child that were placed in the cave in the Bronze Age, about 3,500 years ago, were subject to ancient DNA analysis

In all, the excavation has discovered the remains of seven adults, two children and one baby. A 10,000-year-old bear shoulder bone, a scapula, has also been found.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Ceramic Beads Recovered from Irish Bronze Age Burial

Archaeological find on N9 Published Date: 17 December 2009 By Maeve McGovern CERAMIC beads dating back 3,500 years and described as being of great significance have been discovered on the route of the new N9/N10 Athy Link Road. The series of 25 small ceramic beads, the only ones of their kind from the Bronze Age and a major coup for Irish archaeology, were discovered along with the cremated remains of a human body on the route. The cremated remains were discovered recently in a shallow pit adjacent to the site of a Bronze Age burial mound or barrow, which was discovered in the summer of 2007. As part of a routine process of sieving soil associated with human burials, technicians from Headland Archaeology, the firm contracted to carry out the archaeological dig, uncovered the precious beads. They were passed to a leading expert in prehistoric ceramics who confirmed that the beads belonged to a necklace or bracelet for which he could find no comparison. Further study into the archaeology associated with the beads produced some intriguing information, according to a spokesperson for Headland Archeology. "Although the fragmentary nature of the cremated bone made analysis very difficult, it was possible to determine that the individual was an adult rather than a child, and probably female. A sample of the burnt bone was sent to the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre where it was subjected to radiocarbon dating. This confirmed that the individual was cremated around 3,500 years ago, and it would appear the body was cremated while wearing the beads." There have been significant finds of Bronze Age jewellery from Ireland, notably the gold collection in the National Museum; however these ceramic beads are a unique discovery for Irish archaeology. A total of 87 cremation burials were identified on the sections of the N9/N10 investigated by Headland Archaeology, and although this particular find was one of many cremations recovered dating to the Bronze Age along the route of the proposed new road, processing of samples taken from the burial revealed that this was by no means a normal burial. "Personal adornment was important in the Bronze Age. It is thought that beads would have been worn by both sexes and jewellery was not gender specific. The beads could signify that the individual was of a higher status, simply because such objects are generally not found associated with cremations. However, it is possible that less durable materials /or combustible materials were used for personal adornment and simply didn't survive the thousands of years in the ground or were burnt on the pyre," the spokesperson added. Colm Moloney MD of Headland Archaeology said the find was a great reward for all those people who invest so much time in the less glamorous side of archaeology such as processing soil samples.

Remarkable Bronze Age Burial Uncovered in Germany

I don't recall that I covered this story earlier, so here it is just in case. From The National Geographic November 4, 2009--This "extraordinary" skeleton of a woman buried in a seated position was discovered during an archaeological survey before the planned construction of a high-speed train track in central Germany, scientists said in a statement.The woman, who lived in the early Bronze Age (roughly 2200 to 1600 B.C.), was found near the town of Bad Lauchstadt and is one of several burials found so far during the dig, which runs from September 2008 to June 2010. "From an archaeological point of view, the excavation is a great chance to learn about the development of settlement on the Querfurter Platte," a geological plate between the Saale and Unstrut river valleys, according to Ralf Bockmann, a spokesperson for the Saxony-Anhalt Office for Monument Protection and Archaeology in Saale, Germany, via email.For example, according to the statement, "the broad range of traces from ancient cultures and the number and quality of the individual finds show how important this region has been for thousands of years not just as a settlement area, but as a transport route."Bockman added: "The region has fertile soils and has been used for settlement for a very long time. But until now there had been no large-scale excavations in that region." —Photograph courtesy Saxony-Anhalt State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology I wish we knew more about her.

Grave of Bronze Kurgan Warrior in Iran

Information from CAIS NEWS © Latest Archaeological and Cultural News of Iran and the Iranian World Grave of Kurgan Warrior Discovered at Khoda-Afarin Dam Reservoir 08 December 2008 LONDON, (CAIS) -- Iranian archaeological teams working at the reservoir area of the Khoda-Afarin Dam have recently discovered a burial site of a Kurgan warrior during their rescue excavations. A bull statuette, a number of ancient weapons, dishes, and bronze artefacts have also been found in the warrior’s grave, Archaeological Research Centre of Iran (ARCI) Director Mohammad-Hassan Fazeli Nashli told the Persian service of CHN on Sunday. “According to the archaeologists, the warrior enjoyed a special status among his people,” he added.The Kurgans were an Indo-European culture living in northern Europe, from Russia across Germany during the fifth, fourth, and third millennia BCE. A number of the people also immigrated to northwestern Iran and lived there around 1500 to 2000 BCE, when the Bronze Age was ending in Iran. So far, a total of 20 graves of Kurgans have been dug out at the site, nine of which were discovered during the recent excavations, Fazeli Nashli said. “Along with the bull, a number of grey pottery dishes bearing geometrical shapes and weapons such as a dagger, sword, and bayonet have been presented to the warrior in the grave,” he explained. The archaeologists had previously discovered Kurgan graves containing skeletons of a horse, sheep and other animals during the previous season of excavations last year. The warrior’s grave, which measures about 6 x 1.5 meters, has been constructed by mud and stones. The stones are larger in lower part of the grave and become smaller in upper part. “This is the first time the Kurgan people are being studied in Iran, however we don’t know much about their architecture and residential areas in Iran,” Fazeli Nashli noted. The teams have also discovered strata dating back to the Parthian and Achaemenid dynastic periods. They also hope to find signs of habitation by Kurgans in the strata. Five teams of experts are currently working at the reservoir area of the Khoda-Afarin Dam, which is home to many archaeological sites. The dam has been completed one year ago and its filling was postponed following an ARCI’s appeal for rescue excavations. However, it is not clear how the team can continue working at the site, because the dam was officially launched by the Islamic Republic’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his tour of East Azarbaijan Province last week.