A Unique Discovery in Europe: Ancient Stone Circles Cover 2,800-Year-Old Graves of Children in Norway

Archaeologists from the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo discovered an unknown burial site in a quarry near Fredrikstad, in southeastern Norway. This find has been found to contain the remains of mostly children, all of whom died more than 2,000 years ago. The burial field is unique in a European context, according to the Museum of Cultural History.

In December 2023, the team of archaeologists, led by Guro Fossum, was initially investigating ancient Stone Age settlements when they found stone formations that turned out to be burial circles.

The children, whose ages ranged from infancy to six years old at the time of their deaths, had their partially burnt bones interred directly beneath the intriguing stone circles, in exquisitely crafted ceramic pots that had long since broken into fragments. After the skeletal remains were dated, it was discovered that nearly all of the children had been buried during Norway’s Bronze and Iron Ages, between 800 and 400 BC.

“The dating shows that the burial site was used over a long period, so they couldn’t all have died in the same natural disaster or outbreak of disease or epidemic,” says Guro Fossum.

The painstakingly built stone circles were found in 2023 while excavating a rural field close to the southern Norwegian city of Fredrickstad. They were situated close to a Stone Age settlement, which was the original site being investigated, and were only 2-4 inches (5-10 cm) below the earth’s surface.

The stone formations were all between three and six feet (one and two meters) in diameter and were either perfectly round or oval-shaped. Some had larger stones placed in the middle or on their edges, signaling some diversity or creativity in the designs.

The tombs show variations in the arrangement of the cremated remains, some placed in urns and others simply under the stone circles. The amount of bones recovered was minimal in many cases, between 0.1 and 240 grams per tomb, which presented a considerable challenge for the archaeologists and osteologists involved in the study.

The children’s graves date from the transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages, with most of them buried between 800 and 400 years BCE. Photo: Museum of Cultural History

Aside from the children’s tombs, everyday objects like fire pits and kitchen pits were discovered near the site. This implies that the location may have functioned as a community gathering spot in addition to a cemetery, possibly for funeral-related events.

There was something special about the whole place. The tombs are very close together. They must have been in an open landscape, with nearby communication routes, so everyone knew about them. Furthermore, all the tombs were very beautiful and meticulously worked. Each stone came from a different place and was precisely placed in the formation. We wondered who had made such an effort, says Fossum.

The burial site, unique in the European context, has sparked interest not only for its rarity but also for its emotional implications.

An associate professor of archaeology at the University of Stavanger, Håkon Reiersen emphasizes that this find connects us deeply with the universal human emotions related to the loss and mourning of children, showing that people in the past were not so different from us in terms of how they honored their dead.

Fossum finds it interesting that men, women, and especially children had their own tombs and received the same treatment for centuries.

“It seems that the social structure was more egalitarian, as there wasn’t much difference between the graves. The same types of graves, grave goods, and burial methods were used. This suggests a society where community was important,” she said.

Only one of the graves in the field is dated to after the year 0. From that point on, burial practices gradually changed, with hierarchies and large burial mounds reserved only for those with status.

ScienceNorway

Museum of Cultural History

Cover Photo: Museum of Cultural History

By Leman Altuntaş29 June 2024

Tags: Featured, Fredrickstad, Guro Fossum, Norway, Norway Museum of Cultural History, Stone Age settlement, Stone Circles, unique in the European context, University of Stavanger in News

  

Oldest living culture: Our new research shows an Indigenous ritual passed down for 500 generations

by Russell Mullett, Ashleigh Rogers, Bruno David, Carney D. Matheson, Fiona Petchey and Nathan Wright, The Conversation

GunaiKurnai Elder Uncle Russell Mullett at entrance to Cloggs Cave, East Gippsland. 

Credit: Jess Shapiro, courtesy GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation

We often hear that Aboriginal peoples have been in Australia for 65,000 years, "the oldest living cultures in the world." But what does this mean, given all living peoples on Earth have an ancestry that goes back into the mists of time?

Our new discoveries, published July 1 in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour, shed new light on this question.

Under the guidance of GunaiKurnai Elders, archaeologists from the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation and Monash University excavated at Cloggs Cave near Buchan, in the foothills of the high country near the Snowy River in East Gippsland, Victoria.

What we found was extraordinary. Under the low, subdued light in the depth of the cave, buried under layers of ash and silt, two unusual fireplaces were revealed by the tip of the trowel. They each contained a single trimmed stick associated with a tiny patch of ash.

A sequence of 69 radiocarbon dates, including on wood filaments from the sticks, date one of the fireplaces to 11,000 years ago, and the deeper of the two to 12,000 years ago, at the very end of the last Ice Age.

Matching the observed physical characteristics of the fireplaces with GunaiKurnai ethnographic records from the 19th century shows this type of fireplace has been in continuous use for at least 12,000 years.

Enigmatic sticks smeared with fat

These were no ordinary fireplaces: the upper one was the size of the palm of a human hand.

Sticking out from the middle of it was a stick, one slightly burned end still stuck into the middle of the ashes of the fire. The fire had not burned for long, nor did it reach any significant heat. No food remains were associated with the fireplace.

The 11,000 year old ritual fire in Cloggs Cave, East Gippsland. 

Credit: Bruno David, courtesy GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation

Two small twigs that once grew from the stick had been trimmed off, so the stem was now straight and smooth.

We performed microscopic and biochemical analyses on the stick, showing it had come into contact with animal fat. Parts of the stick were covered with lipids—fatty acids that cannot dissolve in water and can therefore remain on objects for vast lengths of time.

The trimmings and layout of the stick, tiny size of the fire, absence of food remains, and presence of smeared fat on the stick suggest the fireplace was used for something other than cooking.

11,000-year-old lipid residues from fat covering parts of the Cloggs Cave ritual stick

 photographed at 400x magnification. 

Credit: Birgitta Stephenson, courtesy GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation

The stick had come from a Casuarina tree, a she-oak. The branch had been broken and cut when green. We know this because of the splayed fibers at the broken end. The stick was never removed from the fire during its use; we found it where it was placed.

A second miniature fireplace slightly deeper down in the excavation also had a single branch emanating from it, this one with an angled-back end like on a throwing stick, and with five small twigs trimmed flush with the stem. It had keratin-like faunal tissue fragments on its surface; it too had come into contact with fat.

The role of these fireplaces in ritual

Local 19th-century ethnography has good descriptions of such fireplaces, so we know they were made for ritual practices performed by mulla-mullung, powerful GunaiKurnai medicine men and women.

Alfred Howitt, government geologist and pioneer ethnographer, wrote in 1887:

"The Kurnai practice is to fasten the article [something that belonged to the victim] to the end of a throwing stick, together with some eaglehawk feathers, and some human or kangaroo fat. The throwing stick is then stuck slanting in the ground before a fire, and it is of course placed in such a position that by-and-by it falls down. The wizard has during this time been singing his charm; as it is usually expressed, he "sings the man's name," and when the stick falls the charm is complete. The practice still exists."

Howitt noted that such ritual sticks were made from Casuarina wood. Sometimes the stick mimicked a throwing stick, with a hooked end. No such miniature fireplace with a single trimmed Casuarina stem smeared with fat had ever been found archaeologically before.

500 generations

The miniature fireplaces are the remarkably preserved remains of two ritual events dating back 500 generations.

Nowhere else on Earth have archaeological expressions of a very specific cultural practice known from ethnography, yet traceable so far back, previously been found.

GunaiKurnai ancestors had transmitted on Country a very detailed, very particular cultural knowledge and practice for some 500 generations.

GunaiKurnai Elder Uncle Russell Mullett was on site when the fireplaces were excavated. As the first one was revealed, he was astounded:

"For it to survive is just amazing. It's telling us a story. It's been waiting here all this time for us to learn from it. Reminding us that we are a living culture still connected to our ancient past. It's a unique opportunity to be able to read the memoirs of our Ancestors and share that with our community."

What does it mean to be one of the oldest living cultures in the world? It means despite millennia of cultural innovations, the Old Ancestors also continued to pass down cultural knowledge and know-how, generation after generation, and have done so since the last Ice Age and beyond.

More information: Bruno David et al, Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01912-w

Journal information: Nature Human Behaviou

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

Sorcery in Australian Cloggs Cave may be World’s Oldest Known Culturally Transmitted Ritual

Two sticks found in a cave in Australia show signs of processing that perfectly match Aboriginal sorcery and curse-making practices described in the 19th century. Approximately 11,000–12,000 years have been estimated for the sticks, making this the longest period of time that we have evidence for a cultural practice continuing anywhere in the world.

The discovery may represent the oldest known, culturally transmitted ritual—one that persisted among local people from the last ice age to colonial times, according to a study published today in Nature Human Behaviour.

The finds were made in southeast Australia’s Cloggs Cave, a rich archeological site. Situated atop a limestone bluff with a view of the verdant Australian Alps foothills, the cavern descended approximately 12 meters below the surface, preserving an extensive legacy of Aboriginal culture. Human activity there dates back up to 25,000 years, according to earlier research.

Cloggs Cave, in Victoria’s Gippsland region, lies within the lands of the GunaiKurnai people. Representatives of the GunaiKurnai decided in 2009 that they wanted their history properly investigated and began working with anthropologists at Monash University.

Around 6,000 years ago, a large portion of the cave turned into a sinkhole, which resulted in the juxtaposition of objects from wildly disparate ages. Professor Bruno David and associates decided to concentrate on a section of the cave that was not damaged in the collapse as a result.  A 40-centimeter (16-inch) long, slightly burned Casuarina stick that was surrounded by limestone rocks emerged from a hand-sized fireplace. The stick was carbon-dated as approximately 12,000 years old, making it the oldest surviving wooden artifact found in Australia.

GunaiKurnai Elder Uncle Russell Mullett and Monash University’s Professor Bruno David in Cloggs cave where evidence of the oldest continuously practiced ritual in the world has been found. Photo: Monash University

Anything wooden would rarely last that long, and the stick displayed even more remarkable qualities. Nothing like what is seen for something that was once part of a fire for warmth or food, the singeing at one end suggested it had been briefly placed in a cool fire. The stick carried lipids from human or animal fat, and twigs branching off had been carefully removed.

Further digging revealed a similar Casuarina stick, approximately a thousand years younger, but processed in the same way. Further research yielded a more comprehensive picture: Both sticks rested atop miniature fireplaces, which were little more than stone enclosures the size of palms filled with grass and twig ashes that seemed to have burned for a very short time. The sticks, the older one about 40 centimeters long and the younger one about half that length came from two species of Casuarina, flowering pine trees native to Australia with a long history of ceremonial use.

Surviving GunaiKurnai people had lost the cultural memory of what the sticks might have been used for. Researchers have therefore analyzed old ethnographic texts, which put everything in context as the evidence accumulated.  In 1887, government geologist Alfred Howitt described rituals of the sorcerers who the local people called mulla-mullung. Other ethnographic texts associated Casuarina sticks with sorcery as well.

Howitt wrote in-depth accounts of mystical practices to cure the sick or curse enemies, drawing on both personal observations and accounts from Aboriginal people. One of these reports has a startling resemblance to the evidence found in the cave. A piece of clothing, a hairpiece, or a piece of food scrap was obtained by the sorcerer and attached to the end of a stick dipped in human or kangaroo fat in order to harm an enemy. The stick was then placed next to a small fire, and the mulla-mullung sung the name of the intended victim until the stick fell into the flames, enacting a fateful spell.

The stick as it was found in the cave, one end still in the fireplace in which it was lightly charred. Photo: Monash University

According to Bruno David, a lead author of the new paper and an archaeologist at Monash, the convergence of archaeological evidence and ethnographic accounts shows just how long Aboriginal traditions have survived.

 “That’s 12,000 years of continuity, passing down knowledge from one generation to the next, of a cultural practice that has remained almost intact along 500 generations,” he says. “That’s absolutely remarkable.”

Rather than being a living space, the cave seems to have served mostly as a secluded den of ritual. In a series of discoveries spanning about 23,000 years, archaeologists have found ceremonial arrangements of stones, broken stalactites, a small grindstone, patches of calcite powder, and quartz crystals.

The discovery is published open access in Nature Human Behaviour.

Cover Photo: Jean-Jacques Delannoy 2019.

By Leman Altuntaş1 July 2024

 

6th Century Anglo-Saxon Warriors May Have Fought in Northern Syria

Researchers have suggested compelling evidence that Anglo-Saxon warriors from late sixth-century Britain participated in Byzantine military campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria.

The findings, supported by artifacts from prominent Anglo-Saxon burial sites (Sutton Hoo, Taplow, and Prittlewell, among other sites), suggest a previously unrecognized international dimension to their history.

Dr. St John Simpson, a senior curator at the British Museum, said there was compelling evidence that Anglo-Saxon princes also fought for the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean against the Iranian Sassanids, due to items found at burial sites in Sutton Hoo, Taplow, and Prittlewell in England.

“The pearl roundel on the Prittlewell flagon is unique and puts its iconography firmly within a Sasanian design language, suggesting that it was made farther east, in a Sasanian workshop,” Simpson said, according to The Guardian.

Dr. Simpson has worked closely with Oxford University medieval historian Helen Gittos to carefully examine the unusual objects unearthed at Sutton Hoo, Taplow, and Prittlewell. They have come to the conclusion that the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria are most likely the origins of these artifacts. These artifacts suggest that Anglo-Saxon warriors had been involved in Byzantine military campaigns against the Sasanian Empire, a powerful Iranian dynasty controlling vast territories.

Simpson said, according to The Guardian, “The eastern connections of the warrior tunics at Prittlewell and Taplow, coupled with the design of the shoulder clasps from Sutton Hoo, strengthen the idea that these individuals returned from Syria aligned even more closely with the late antique fashions of Byzantine-Sasanian elite warrior society.”

Anglo-Saxon Shoulder-Clasp from Sutton Hoo ship burial, (c. AD 560/70-610). Photo: British Museum

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a man at Taplow in Buckinghamshire who was dressed in an unusual and distinctive Eurasian-style riding jacket. In the meantime, a copper flagon bearing a unique pearl roundel picturing St. Sergius in a Sasanian-style roundel was discovered in the Prittlewell burial chamber in Essex. This iconography suggests that the flagon was made in a Sasanian workshop and firmly situates it within a Sasanian design language.

After centuries of Roman rule, the early Anglo-Saxon period of English history was generally seen as a violent, insular, and relatively backward time.

Simpson said that the number of items found at the burial sites, including the armor of Eurasian design, flies in the face of the “simplistic” view that non-local goods found on the isles arrived via trade and could help us rethink life in Anglo-Saxon England.

“These finds put the Anglo-Saxon princes and their followers center-stage in one of the last great wars of late antiquity. It takes them out of insular England into the plains of Syria and Iraq in a world of conflict and competition between the Byzantines and the Sasanians and gave those Anglo-Saxons literally a taste for something much more global than they probably could have imagined,” Simpson said.

Anglo-Saxon Sword Belt End Ornament from Sutton Hoo Burial, 625-630 AD. Photo: Gary Todd

The discovery of bitumen lumps at Sutton Hoo, which were previously thought to be related to the ship’s caulking, was another fascinating discovery. However scientific examination has revealed that these bitumen lumps came from a particular source in northeastern Syria. The Sasanians believed bitumen had therapeutic benefits and used it to line their ceramic vessels.

Simpson suggested, “I think that’s another item that’s been brought back with perceived or real curative power by superstitious warriors who’ve possibly even converted to Christianity on effectively Byzantine crusades against the Sasanians.”

The evidence gathered by Simpson and Gittos points to Anglo-Saxon warriors serving under Byzantine emperors Tiberius II and Maurice, who recorded in his military handbook that “Britons” were skilled fighters in wooded areas.

The Byzantines, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled a vast territory in southeastern Europe and northwestern Asia until their defeat by Muslim Arabs and later Ottoman armies.

A reconstruction drawing of the Prittlewell princely burial chamber. Photo: MOLA

 This involvement likely stemmed from a combination of adventure and the prospect of pay, as the Byzantines were known to recruit mercenaries from across Western Europe to bolster their mobile armies. They frequently hired mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe to handle waves of attacks from Sassanid and other forces, with potentially rich rewards for foreign fighters.

Gittos, a fellow and tutor in medieval history at the University of Oxford, said: “This opens up a startlingly new view on to early medieval British history.” The discoveries suggest that the Anglo-Saxon elite were not only aware of but actively participated in the broader geopolitical and military conflicts of their time, far beyond the shores of Britain.

Cover Photo: Bayeux Tapestry. Anglo-Saxon shield wall against Norman cavalry in the Battle of Hastings. Photo: Gabriel Seah

By oguz kayra7 July 2024