Amber Beads in a "Farmer's" Burial?

I found the tone of this article confusing -- it seems to be totally blowing off the discovery of the amber beads in close conjunction with a 4,000 year old Bronze age burial of a woman labeled a "farmer."  I mean - HELLO!  Amber was rare and expensive - it wasn't something that an ordinary farmer - or his wife - just had laying around.  Norfolk was a loooonnnnnggggg way from the Baltic regions where amber came from 4,000 years ago.  There's a bigger story here.  Come on! 

And what about the bone shoulder-blade "digging tool?"  I would like to have read more explanation of this tool -- was it like others that have been uncovered in same period burials?  In the region?  Was it a "typical" tool for neolithic farmers? 

The 4,000-year-old woman's skeleton found
by the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological
 Research Project (SHARP) last year.

And the woman -- which way was she facing?  Was anything else found in the grave with her?  In this photo, is that a stone pot, or a skull (?), close by her hip? 

Woman’s skeleton found at Sedgeford dig sheds light on Norfolk 4,000 years ago
Chris Bishop Monday, July 4, 2011
8:15 AM

Curled up in her burial pit with her amber beads, an ancient woman’s remains show our ancestors farmed a lush Norfolk valley thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

Archaeologists confirmed the significance of the discovery yesterday as work got under way for the summer season at Sedgeford, near Heacham.

Martin Hatton, curator of human remains at the site, was staking out an area of chalk down close to where the find was made last summer, ready for this year’s eagerly-awaited dig to begin.

“It was a total surprise to us,” he said. “You don’t bury people anywhere other than near where they live, so what we can say is that people were farming the land here 4,000 years ago.”

Fifteen years ago, a community dig began to uncover the secrets of the village’s Saxon graveyard. Since then, each summer has shed more light on the past.


"You don’t bury people anywhere other than near where they live, so what we can say is that people were farming the land here 4,000 years ago."

Project director Gary Rossin said the aim of this summer’s dig was to explore a D-shaped ditched enclosure on the side of the chalk down overlooking modern-day Sedgeford.

“We’ve been trying to understand the Anglo-Saxon settlement side of things but over the last two years we’ve had these curve balls thrown at us - burials where we didn’t expect to find burials.

“They’re late-Neolithic, although you’ll find some archaeologists disagree about that.”

As if to prove the point, a man looks up further down the field and shouts: “Bronze Age.”

Mr Rossin went on: “We had radio carbon dating done on the one we found in 2009, which said 2450 - 2200BC. That’s 4,500 years old.

“We haven’t dated the second one but there’s no reason to doubt it’s the same period.”

A body found crouched in a burial pit in 2009 was that of a tall young man. The woman uncovered during last year is believed to be aged from 35 to 45.

Amber beads and a primitive digging tool fashioned from a cow’s shoulder blade were found nearby, a few feet under the surface.

Archaeologists wore forensic suits as they painstakingly recovered her remains - to avoid contaminating the skeleton’s DNA.

“It’s to protect the skeleton from them - not them from the skeleton,” said Mr Hatton.

SHARP - the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project, which runs the dig - hopes to obtain grants to cover the £1,500 needed to carry out carbion dating and tests with radioactive isotopes needed to date the skeleton and reveal the woman’s origins.

The 2009 skeleton pre-dates the building of Seahenge, at nearby Holme-next-the-Sea, by several generations.

Southampton University student Cath Walker, who is researching flints found at Sedgeford for her PhD, said the primitive tools revealed yet more about the human history of the site.

“We’ve got hunter-gatherer communities moving through the landscape following their food sources,” she said. “This is a new chapter, pushing the history of the site back further.”

Significant Neolithic Tomb Uncovered in Orkney!

Like - wow!

Neolithic tomb found in garden 'extremely significant'
Date: 02 October 2010
By CLAIRE SMTIH

WHEN Hamish Mowatt decided to investigate a mysterious mound as he tidied an Orkney garden, he had little idea he would uncover a hoard of bodies that had lain untouched for around 5,000 years.

Archeologists believe the tomb he discovered under a boulder outside a bistro in South Ronaldsay could lead to new insights into how our neolithic ancestors lived and died.

But they could face a race against time as water washing in and out of the newly uncovered tomb could wash away its contents and dissolve any pottery and human remains inside.

Rest of article.

4,000 Year Old Russian Tombs Discovered

Archeologists Discover 4000-Year-Old Tombs A sad story - unfortunately these tombs were looted.  No way of knowing what may have been removed.

From russia-ic.com
Archeologists Discover 4000-Year-Old Tombs
28.07.2010

Remnants of early people of the Neolith epoch have been discovered near Shagara Lake, Klepikov District of the Ryazan Region. The entombments are already 4 thousand years old.

Digging works go on there now. There could have been more archeological sensations there, but for the “black diggers”, researchers say.

Chisels, hatchets, scrapers, arrowheads, crocks of vessels – these things can be found nearby the graves.

Archeologists have found out big holes that adjoin the last year's archeological pits. They had been scooped mainly orthogonally, with the cultural layer spoilt and, most likely, plundered.

Source: rzn.info

A Skeleton Comes Home

How about a skeleton who has her own Facebook page? And Twitter, too. Rather ghoulish the way they've got her displayed, but the article is interesting.

From the BBC
Skeleton Blodwen, aged 5,500, comes home to Llandudno
Saturday, 3 July 2010 14:12 UK

The skeleton of a woman who lived 5,500 years ago has gone on display in her home town, more than a century after she was discovered.

Blodwen is the nickname given to a Neolithic skeleton found on Little Orme in Llandudno, Conwy county, in 1891.

Until now, the remains have been housed at a museum in Bacup, Lancashire.

The exhibition forms part of a three-month tomb builders' display at Llandudno Museum.

It also celebrates the Council for British Archaeology's national festival in the last two weeks of July.

The skeleton was discovered in a fissure by an engineer excavating quarry works, who then donated her to the museum in his home town of Bacup.

Carbon dating tests carried out at Oxford University have revealed that Blodwen died around 3510 BC, aged somewhere between her late fifties and early sixties.

Orthopaedic examinations show that she was about 5ft (1.52m), powerfully built, and her bone structure suggests she was accustomed to carrying heavy loads, both on her head and in her arms.

There are signs, however, that this lifestyle took its toll on Blodwen, with clear evidence of severe arthritis in her neck and knees.

At the time of her death she was also suffering from secondary cancer, although it is not obvious whether it was this which killed her.

Pig bones dating from the same period found close to Blodwen's skeleton would seem to suggest that she came from a farming background.

'Pastoral life'

Shirley Williams, Museum Education Officer for Llandudno Museum, organised the exhibition to form part of the Festival of British Archaeology, including getting the Bacup Natural History Society to agree to the loan of Blodwen.

She, said: "She was found in a deep fissure on the Little Orme, and way down below her were the bones of ancient animals - hyena, rhinoceros, bear.

"She was found midway and above her there was a bronze age spear head but the radio carbon testing found she was actually older than the spear head."

Ms Williams said it would be "great" if she could stay in Llandudno, but said Bacup was very interested in keeping Blodwen.

Adele Thackray, the field monument warden for north west Wales for Cadw, the Welsh heritage body, said: "During the Neolithic period we start to see a cross-over from a semi-nomadic hunter-gathering society to a more settled, pastoral way of life.

"The pig bones found with Blodwen seem to suggest that she was part of this new farming society, and that impression is backed up by isotope tests on her bones which show that she ate more meat and cultivated crops than fish and wild plants."

She added that the manner of Blodwen's burial pointed towards "a more settled society, fixed around a locality".  [What manner - no description provided!]

"Her extraordinary age for the time could also have a lot to do with her memorial - at 60 or so, she would almost certainly have been an elder of her community, and someone who would have been looked up to a great deal."

She also has a presence on both Facebook and Twitter, as Blodwen Chardon, named after the Chardon Trust, which runs the museum.

**********************************************************

Are the pig bones taken as evidence that the woman had been buried with food offerings?  Was her body dumped into this fissure (whatever that means - to me a fissure is just a large crack in rock, not like it's a cave where people could walk in and arrange a burial and then walk out), or was it discovered carefully buried with evidence of food and some prize possessions left in the burial, and was she wrapped or her body arranged in a certain position?  Were the pig bones just tossed into the fissure as so much refuse, i.e., it was used as a garbage disposal?