Denmark's Bronze Age Skrydstrup Woman not Danish

The discovery in 2015 that the remains of the teenage Egtved Girl discovered in Denmark were not in fact Danish caused an outcry. Partly because this Danish Bronze Age icon turned out not to be Danish after all, and partly because she demonstrated that Bronze Age people travelled far and wide—including women. And the discovery raised one important question: were there others like her?

Skrydstrup Woman was discovered in Denmark in 1935. She is one of the best preserved Bronze Age bodies in Denmark, 
alongside Egtved Girl, who was discovered close by. Both women are now known to have travelled across Europe
 to reach Denmark [Credit: The National Museum of Denmark]

Archaeological scientists from the National Museum of Denmark can now say, yes, there were. They have discovered that a woman who was buried in Skrydstrup, southern Jutland in west Denmark, around 1300 to 1200 BCE, was not Danish.

Analyses suggest that she could have come from south Germany, France, Sweden, or The Czech Republic, and researchers are now trying to pinpoint her exact origins to see just how far she may have travelled.

It opens up for a new understanding of the European Bronze Age, says Professor Karin Frei from The National Museum of Denmark who is behind the discovery.

“We can’t say with 100 per cent certainty where she came from, and we may never be able to, but she definitely wasn’t Danish. It gives us so many new perspectives. Now we know that Egtved Girl was not an isolated case,” says Frei.

Similarities with Egtved Girl

Egtved Girl and Skrydstrup Woman lived at approximately the same time period and both died at a young age--16 to 18 years. They were both buried in oak coffins under a burial mound, which was an elite way to be buried. And they were both foreigners. But this is where the similarities end.

Egtved Girl's grave, from 1370 BC [Credit: The National Museum of Denmark]

Egtved Girl was a frequent traveller in her later years, and only spent a short period of her life at Egtved--probably only a few months--where she died. But Skrydstrup Woman made just one long journey before she died and was buried in what is now Denmark.

It is now clear that she came to Skrydstrup at the age of around 13 or 14, which was considered a marriageable age for girls, and that she lived here until she died. Unlike Egtved Girl, there is nothing in the analyses of her hair, teeth, or nails that suggests she suffered from a prolonged period of illness or malnutrition.

She was buried in the centre of a burial mound. Two men, whose relation to her is not yet known, were found buried on the side of the same mound. All of this points to a woman of great importance.

Skrydstrup Woman was an elegant queen-like figure

Alive, Skrydstrup Woman would have been striking. She was approximately ten centimetres taller that most other women with long, thick hair tied up in an intricate fashionable style, which would have added a further ten centimetres to her already impressive height.

Skrydstrup Woman was buried in an oak-coffin, which helped to preserve her remains 
[Credit: The National Museum of Denmark]

She dressed in beautifully embroidered clothes, with big gold earrings draped over each ear. She had long, sleek limbs, and would have wanted for nothing her entire life.

“I see a very elegant woman. A queen-like figure. I’ve no doubt that when she came in through the door, people thought “wow”,” says Frei.

Srontium reveals our origins

Frei is world-renowned for developing an analytical method to measure the ratio of strontium in a person’s hair and nails, or textiles. She has now applied the method to Skrydstrup Woman.

Recreation of Skrydstrup woman's hairstyle [Credit: Oldtidsllimt/Museum Sønderjylland]

Strontium is found naturally in soils and water, and enters the food chain via plants, the animals that eat them, and so on, until it ends up in people. The composition of the different types of strontium—so-called isotopes—contained in an individual’s teeth, nails, and hair, is directly related to the soils, plants and animals, where they live.

By analysing the strontium isotopic composition of an individual and comparing that with known compositions for different parts of the world, scientists can decipher where an individual may have came from and lived throughout their life.

Skrydstrup Woman's origins overturn earlier theories

Archaeologists already knew quite a lot about Skrydstrup Woman’s life.The area where she was buried is known to have been a centre of wealth, due to the large number of Bronze Age burial mounds and impressive long-houses that have been excavated in the area. Lots of bronze and gold have also been found in the area.

A reconstruction of how Skrydstrup woman's impressive house may have been decorated 
[Credit: Oldtidsllimt/Museum Sønderjylland]

Close to where Skrydstrup Woman was buried, archaeologists have discovered two large long-houses. One of which is the largest known “three-aisled” houses from the early Bronze Age—it was 500 square metres in size.

Archaeologists had thought that Skrydstrup Woman’s grandparents or great-grandparents built the house, but the new results overturn that interpretation.

A young girl travelled to make an alliance

Skrydstrup Woman was originally discovered in 1935. The inner part of the mound, which was dedicated to her, was 13 metres in diameter, according to Museum Sønderjylland. It was later covered by a larger grave, in which two men were buried. The burial itself is an important part of Skrydstrup Woman’s story, says Frei.

A quick overview of Skrydstrup Woman and Egtved Girl: where they were discovered and where they 

may have come from [Credit:ScienceNordic/Charlotte Price Persson/Mette Friis-Mikkelsen]

“Skrydstrup Woman travelled once and stayed in the Skrydstrup area the rest of her life. So perhaps she came to make an alliance. That could have been through marriage, but we don’t know. And we don’t know who the two men were. We can only tell that it was possible for women to travel and that people could integrate quickly into that society. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been buried in this way,” says Frei.

Skrydstrup Woman probably died of an infection

Analyses of Skrydstrup Woman’s bones reveal her age and sex, but also whether she had suffered from a period of prolonged illness, malnutrition, or stress.

Analyses of Skrydstrup Woman’s teeth and hair show that she only made one long journey during her life 
[Credit: Charlotte Price Persson]

“We haven’t found any signs of chronic disease. On the contrary, her bones indicate that she was probably a well-nourished girl,” says post-doc Marie Louise Jørkov, from the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who conducted the analyses.

“In all probability she probably died of an infection: flu or some virus that did not show up in her skeleton. It would show up in the blood, which obviously isn’t preserved today,” says Jørkov.

Skrydstrup Woman’s bones are witness to her impressive height, which would have been around 170 centimetres tall, says Jørkov.

“The bones were very long, she was certainly a tall girl compared with her contemporaries. We don’t have many other finds, because people began cremating their dead not long after this. But we can see in corresponding discoveries for example from Borum Eshøj [another Bronze Age burial mound in Denmark] that they had shorter and more robust bones,” she says.

 Part of a larger project investigating women's roles in Bronze Age societies

The results have been submitted to a scientific journal and will now go through a peer review before they are published. ScienceNordic will follow up with Frei and her colleagues progress.

In the meantime, the archaeologists will continue with the project Tales of Bronze Age Women, in which Frei and her colleagues are studying a number of well-preserved oak-coffins of Bronze Age women to investigate their role in Bronze Age society.

This approach is “fruitful” says archaeologist Professor Helle Vandkilde from Aarhus University, Denmark.

“Oak-coffins are such fantastically well-preserved source materials that make it possible to focus on each individual to an exceptional degree. This biographical perspective is especially new and exciting,” she says.

Vandkilde is not involved in the project herself and has not yet seen the unpublished results, but she is familiar with Frei’s work in general. While the precise interpretation of Skrydstrup Woman’s origins are not yet a done-deal, one thing is clear she says: both Egtved girl and Skrydstrup Woman have “definitely travelled.”

Frei is now planning to investigate some of the other well-preserved  burials in Denmark.

Next on the list are the individuals buried at Borum Eshøj mound in Central Jutland, which contained the remains of an older woman, and two men. Only time will tell if this woman also travelled from far away.

“Suddenly, these women have a much larger role in this society, because they're outsiders with new knowledge and know-how that would have been of great value. I’m beginning to think that they had a greater importance than we have previously attributed to them. But all of that still remains to be seen,” says Frei.

Author: Charlotte Price Persson | Source: ScienceNordic [April 11, 2017]

byUnknown

in Anthropology, Denmark, Europe, Forensics, Northern Europe

April 11, 2017

Denmark's Bronze Age Skrydstrup Woman not Danish

The discovery in 2015 that the remains of the teenage Egtved Girl discovered in Denmark were not in fact Danish caused an outcry. Partly b...

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Archaeologists search for Viking settlement under saint king’s church

Archaeologists in Norway are using laser scanning technology to help reveal the ancient Viking settlement hidden beneath a saint-king’s church.

The excavation site in Trondheim, Norway [Credit: NIKU]

Last year researchers in Trondheim, Norway unearthed the church where Viking King Olaf Haraldsson was first enshrined as a saint. Experts uncovered the stone foundations of a wooden stave church where Haraldsson was likely enshrined after he was declared a saint in the 11th century.

Olaf Haraldsson, or Olaf II of Norway, is the country’s patron saint and the discovery was heralded as a significant find.

The church, St. Clement’s, dates from around 1015, but it was demolished in the 13th century. Its location remained a mystery until Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) archaeologists unearthed the site, which was dated to the time of Olaf’s rule.

Archaeologists believe wooden foundations uncovered in its recent dig date back to the time of Olaf and are likely the site 
of St Clement's. Pictured is are the remains found at the east of the church, with a skull resting on the foundations 
[Credit: NIKU]

The second phase of the excavation began in February and experts are now surveying a larger area. Below the ruins of the church lie more archaeological remains, according to NIKU, which include an even older church, as well as an ancient settlement.

"We have identified rich remains of an Iron Age settlement on the site, most likely belonging to a Viking Age ‘kaupang,’ sealed under thick deposits of natural sand that have been formed by a flooding of the river Nidelva,” NIKU’s excavation leader Anna Petersén explained in a statement emailed to Fox News. A kaupang was a Viking trade center.

Before accessing the kaupang site, however, experts have a lot of work to do.

The likely foundation for the altar where St. Olaf’s coffin was placed in 1031 [Credit: NIKU]

“The oldest of the two churches is constructed with heavy posts dug down from the upper horizon of the sand,” Petersén added. Archaeologists plan to dismantle the stone ruins of St. Clement’s to gain access to the layers below. In order for the stones to be removed, the ruin is being laser and photo scanned with the data used to create an exact model of the ruin. Archaeologists also plan to use 3-D models of the site in a future visitor center.

“We will soon begin to remove the remains of the upper church and are eager to find more posts and postholes relating to the previous building in the sand,” Petersén explained. “And as the last of many highlights from this spectacular site we will explore the Viking Age settlement."

Excavation work at the site is expected to finish by the summer.

Author: James Rogers | Source: Fox News [April 07, 2017]

byUnknown

in Archaeology, Europe, Northern Europe, Norway

April 07, 2017

Archaeologists search for Viking settlement under saint king’s church

Archaeologists in Norway are using laser scanning technology to help reveal the ancient Viking settlement hidden beneath a saint-king’s chur...

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Steppe migrant thugs pacified by Stone Age farming women

In an earlier study Professor Kristian Kristiansen from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willerslev from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, and their research teams, showed that the large demographic changes during the first part of the Bronze Age happened as a result of massive migrations of Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into Neolithic Europe. They were also able to show that plague was widespread in both Europe and Central Asia at this time.

Corded ware vessel, an axe and two discs made of amber from an early male grave 
[Credit: Danish National Museum]

Now Professor Kristiansen and Professor Willerslev with co-authors reveal a more detailed view of the mechanism behind the emerging culture known as the Corded Ware Culture -- the result of the encounter between the Yamnaya and the Neolithic people.

Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: "We are now for the first time able to combine results from genetics, strontium isotopes on mobility and diet, and historical linguistics on language change, to demonstrate how the integration process unfolded on the ground after the Yamnaya migrations from the steppe. In our grand synthesis we argue that Yamnaya migrants were predominantly males, who married women who came from neighbouring Stone Age farming societies"

These Stone Age Neolithic societies were based on large farming communities reflected in their collective burial ritual often in big stone chambers, so called megaliths. Very different from the traditions of the incoming migrants.

The origin of the Yamnaya

The Yamnaya people originated on the Caspian steppes where they lived as pastoralists and herders, using wagons as mobile homes. From burial pits archaeologists have found extensive use of thick plant mats and felt covers.

Their economy was based on meat, dairy products and fish, they were tall and rather healthy with little caries in their teeth. No agriculture is documented. Barrows were aligned in groups forming lines in the landscape to mark seasonal routes and after death diseased people were put into individual graves under small family barrows.

Their burial ritual thus embodied a new perception of the individual and of small monogamous family groups as the foundation of society. The continent encountered by the Yamnaya people around 3000 BC had seen a decline in the agrarian Stone Age societies, thereby allowing space for incoming migrants. This decline was probably the result of a widespread plague from Siberia to the Baltic.

"The disease dynamic here may have been comparable to the European colonization process in America after Christopher Columbus," says Kristiansen. "Perhaps Yamnaya brought plague to Europe and caused a massive collapse in the population."

Barrows in the Danish landscape [Credit: Danish National Museum]

"Black Youth" as migrating males and their marriage to Neolithic women

In the new article, Kristiansen and colleagues argue for a dominance of males during the early phase after the migrations, and correspond to the old Indo-European mythology of later times. These sources talk about war-bands of youths -- called "Black Youth" -- who were employed in pioneer migrations as a dynamic force.

Evidence from strontium isotopic analyses, published in 2016 by Kristiansen together with Douglas Price and Karl Goran Sjogren, showed that a majority of the women in Corded Ware burials in south Germany were non-locals who had married in from Neolithic societies, since they had a Neolithic diet in their childhood. These results now form part of the new synthesis.

Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: "Existing archaeological evidence of a strong 90% male dominance in the early phase of the Corded Ware/Single Grave Culture settlement in Jutland, Denmark, and elsewhere can now be explained by the old Indo-European tradition of war bands of young males who did not have any inheritance to look forward to. Therefore they were probably more willing to make a career as migrating war bands."

These Neolithic women also brought new knowledge of pottery production, and started to imitate pottery containers made of wood from the Yamnaya migrants. In this way a new pottery culture was created called Corded Ware, because of the cord impressions around the neck of the pots. They were made for beer drinking, and the new migrants also learned how to grow barley from the in-married Neolithic women in order to produce beer.

Rapid genetic changeover from Neolithic to Corded Ware cultures after 3000 BC

Eske Willerslev undertook the ancient DNA analyses together with Morten Allentoft and Martin Sikora. Professor Willerslev says:

Typical group of Danish Bronze Age barrows [Credit: Kristian Kristiansen]

"In our big Bronze Age study, published in 2015 we were astonished to see how strong and fast the genetic changeover was from the Neolithic to the Corded Ware. There was a heavy reduction of Neolithic DNA in temperate Europe, and a dramatic increase of the new Yamnaya genomic component that was only marginally present in Europe prior to 3000 BC. Moreover, the apparent abruptness with which this change occurred indicates that it was a large-scale migration event, rather than a slow periodic inflow of people."

New words and new Proto-Germanic dialect

The Yamnaya brought the Indo-European languages into Bronze Age Europe, but as herders, they did not have words for crops or cultivation, unlike the Neolithic farmers. As the Corded Ware Culture developed it adopted words related to farming from the indigenous Neolithic people, which they were admixing with.

Guus Kroonen, a historical linguist, was able to demonstrate that these new words did not belong to the original Indo-European languages. Therefore it was possible to conclude that the Neolithic people were not speaking an Indo-European language, as did the Yamnaya migrants. Thus, the process of genetic and cultural admixture was accompanied by a process of language admixture, creating the foundations for later Germanic languages, termed Proto-Germanic.

The birth of the Bronze Age

The Yamnaya migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into temperate Europe changed the course of history: they brought not only a new language, but also new ideas about how society was organized around small monogamous families with individual ownership to animals and land. This new society became the foundation for the Bronze Age, and for the way European societies continued to develop to the present.

Source: Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen [April 04, 2017]

byUnknown

in Anthropology, Central Asia, Europe, Genetics, Northern Europe

April 04, 2017

Steppe migrant thugs pacified by Stone Age farming women

In an earlier study Professor Kristian Kristiansen from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willer...

Read More