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Reiter SS, Møller NA, Nielsen BH, Bech JH, Olsen ALH, Jørkov MLS, Kaul F, Mannering U, Frei KM. Into the fire: Investigating the introduction of cremation to Nordic Bronze Age Denmark: A comparative study between different regions applying strontium isotope analyses and archaeological methods. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0249476. [PMID: 33979332 PMCID: PMC8115792 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249476] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2020] [Accepted: 03/18/2021] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Changes in funerary practices are key to the understanding of social transformations of past societies. Over the course of the Nordic Bronze Age, funerary practices changed from inhumation to cremation. The aim of this study is to shed light on this fundamental change through a cross-examination of archaeometric provenance data and archaeological discussions of the context and layouts of early cremation graves. To this end, we conducted 19 new provenance analyses of strontium isotopes from Early Nordic Bronze age contexts in Thisted County and Zealand and Late Bronze Age contexts from Thisted County and Vesthimmerland (Denmark). These data are subsequently compared with data from other extant relevant studies, including those from Late Bronze Age Fraugde on the Danish island of Fyn. Overall, the variations within our provenience data suggest that the integration and establishment of cremation may not have had a one-to-one relationship with in-migration to Nordic Bronze Age Denmark. Moreover, there seems to be no single blanket scenario which dictated the uptake of cremation as a practice within this part of Southern Scandinavia. By addressing habitus in relation to the deposition of cremations as juxtaposed with these provenance data¸ we hypothesize several potential pathways for the uptake of cremation as a new cultural practice within the Danish Nordic Bronze Age and suggest that this may have been a highly individual process, whose tempo may have been dictated by the specificities of the region(s) concerned.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samantha S. Reiter
- Department of Environmental Archaeology and Materials Science, The National Museum of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby (Brede), Denmark
| | | | | | | | | | | | - Flemming Kaul
- Department of Ancient Cultures of Denmark and the Mediterranean, The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Ulla Mannering
- Department of Ancient Cultures of Denmark and the Mediterranean, The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Karin M. Frei
- Department of Environmental Archaeology and Materials Science, The National Museum of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby (Brede), Denmark
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Frei KM, Villa C, Jørkov ML, Allentoft ME, Kaul F, Ethelberg P, Reiter SS, Wilson AS, Taube M, Olsen J, Lynnerup N, Willerslev E, Kristiansen K, Frei R. A matter of months: High precision migration chronology of a Bronze Age female. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0178834. [PMID: 28582402 PMCID: PMC5459461 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0178834] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/16/2017] [Accepted: 05/19/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Establishing the age at which prehistoric individuals move away from their childhood residential location holds crucial information about the socio dynamics and mobility patterns in ancient societies. We present a novel combination of strontium isotope analyses performed on the over 3000 year old “Skrydstrup Woman” from Denmark, for whom we compiled a highly detailed month-scale model of her migration timeline. When combined with physical anthropological analyses this timeline can be related to the chronological age at which the residential location changed. We conducted a series of high-resolution strontium isotope analyses of hard and soft human tissues and combined these with anthropological investigations including CT-scanning and 3D visualizations. The Skrydstrup Woman lived during a pan-European period characterized by technical innovation and great social transformations stimulated by long-distance connections; consequently she represents an important part of both Danish and European prehistory. Our multidisciplinary study involves complementary biochemical, biomolecular and microscopy analyses of her scalp hair. Our results reveal that the Skrydstrup Woman was between 17–18 years old when she died, and that she moved from her place of origin -outside present day Denmark- to the Skrydstrup area in Denmark 47 to 42 months before she died. Hence, she was between 13 to 14 years old when she migrated to and resided in the area around Skrydstrup for the rest of her life. From an archaeological standpoint, this one-time and one-way movement of an elite female during the possible “age of marriageability” might suggest that she migrated with the aim of establishing an alliance between chiefdoms. Consequently, this detailed multidisciplinary investigation provides a novel tool to reconstruct high resolution chronology of individual mobility with the perspective of studying complex patterns of social and economic interaction in prehistory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Karin Margarita Frei
- National Museum of Denmark, Department of Conservation and Natural Sciences, Environmental Archaeology and Material Science, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
- * E-mail:
| | - Chiara Villa
- University of Copenhagen, Department of Forensic Medicine, Laboratory of Biological Anthropology, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Marie Louise Jørkov
- University of Copenhagen, Department of Forensic Medicine, Laboratory of Biological Anthropology, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Morten E. Allentoft
- Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Flemming Kaul
- National Museum of Denmark, Department of Research and Exhibition, Ancient Cultures of Denmark and the Mediterranean, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Per Ethelberg
- Museum Sønderjylland, Archaeology, Haderslev, Denmark
| | - Samantha S. Reiter
- National Museum of Denmark, Department of Conservation and Natural Sciences, Environmental Archaeology and Material Science, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
| | - Andrew S. Wilson
- School of Archaeological Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, United Kingdom
| | - Michelle Taube
- National Museum of Denmark, Department of Conservation and Natural Sciences, Environmental Archaeology and Material Science, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
| | - Jesper Olsen
- University of Aarhus, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Niels Lynnerup
- University of Copenhagen, Department of Forensic Medicine, Laboratory of Biological Anthropology, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Eske Willerslev
- Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | | | - Robert Frei
- Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
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