2023-08-30 18:00:00
An international research team led by Lukas Waltenberger from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) has gained a deeper insight into Bronze Age rites in cremation burials and the earlier life of the deceased using two urns from St. Pölten.
This was made possible by combining different methods, according to a study published in the journal “Plos One”. “Finding out interesting facts regarding the deceased is much more difficult with cremation than with body burials, where you can usually fall back on whole skeletons,” explained Waltenberger from the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI) of the ÖAW in an interview with the APA. Here, for example, the shape of the pelvis can be used to determine the gender or the wear and tear on the joints to determine the age.
Cremated remains, on the other hand, are often very small fragments. Pieces of bone would only be a half to two centimeters in size and often crumble when the urns are emptied. That is why archaeological methods were combined with anthropology, computed tomography (CT), archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, geochemistry and isotope analysis in order to get the maximum amount of information, according to the anthropologist.
These techniques were used on two Late Bronze Age urns (around 1430 and 1260 BC) that were discovered in 2021 during excavations in the city center of St. Pölten. The researchers found that the two individuals were a 9- to 15-year-old child with deficiency symptoms and a 23- to 32-year-old woman. The age at death was determined by analyzing dental cement – there are ring-like structures here, as in trees. This method comes from forensics and is rarely used in burial finds.
According to the information, clinical pictures might also be determined on the basis of the skull bone: “The child suffered from deficiency symptoms for many years and may have died from an infection due to the weakened immune system,” Waltenberger suspects. In addition, the burial rites have been reconstructed very accurately. The child’s bones were picked out of the remains following being burned at the stake and placed neatly in the urn. In the case of the woman, smaller bone fragments, including charcoal, are likely to have been shoveled into the urn with both hands.
Traditionally, archaeologists would dig up urns and clean the bones with water. “As an anthropologist, you normally get a bag with bone fragments without context and background information. A lot gets lost there,” explained Waltenberger. In this case, on the other hand, a first digital look was taken into the urns using a CT scan and then dug out layer by layer. “We fixed fragile pieces of bone with synthetic resin in order to be able to identify them better in post-processing,” says the expert.
After consulting an archaeozoologist, some bones turned out to be of animal origin – for example from sheep, wild boar, deer and goats. They were burned at the stake as food offerings. “The deer might also be an indication that this person was close to the hunt and that meat was given to the followinglife. The teeth of the wild boar were mainly preserved, which indicates a chain of wild boar teeth as jewelry,” explained Waltenberger .
With the help of archaeobotany, a large amount of plant remains were also found in the urns, which might be traced back to food items – including millet, lentils, emmer, einkorn and elder. For example, elder seeds might come from compote. “There were also threshing residues, i.e. stalks and ears of corn left over from threshing, in the urns. We assume that they were used as a lighter for the pyre,” says the anthropologist.
1693419267
#Backbreaking #work #prehistoric #urns #reveal #cremation