Death was an important part of life in the Bronze Age of northern and western Europe. Two of the most notable burial rites were the practice of burying individuals under mounds in the early Bronze Age and the widespread change to cremation during the Late Bronze Age. Grave goods were often lavish, and archaeologists debate whether these reflect directly the deceased individual’s status in life or were symbolic and ritual displays by the survivors. The removal of expensive bronze and other exotic materials from the world of the living is a powerful statement of the importance attached to mortuary ritual, as is the investment of time and effort in the construction Of tombs and the arrangement of the body and its associated objects (see Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques).
The tradition of burial of single individuals under small mounds (also known as barrows or tumuli) that began during the Late Neolithic continued into the Bronze Age in northern and western Europe. The deceased individual was usually buried in a small central pit along with grave offerings. Often, a circular trench would be dug around the pit to define the burial site, and then a low barrow built over the grave and its surroundings. As time went on, whole mortuary landscapes of barrows accumulated, sometimes dozens or even hundreds, as are found in the Haguenau Forest in eastern France. In Ireland, the tradition of megalithic burial continued for a while with the construction of
Figure 2 Wedge tombs, like this one at Srahwee in County Mayo, continued the tradition of building megalithic burial monuments into the Early Bronze Age (photo © 2004 by Peter Bogucki).
The small ‘wedge tombs’ (Figure 2). The descendants living among these tombs were continually reminded of their membership in a genealogical lineage and the degree of status and power that this accorded them.
In 2002, about 3 miles from Stonehenge at Ames-bury, rich burial was found that dated to the very beginning of the Bronze Age in southern England, around 2300 BC. The ‘Amesbury Archer’ was between 35 and 45 years old. He was buried on his side in a flexed position in a large rectangular pit, possibly lined with wood. On his forearm was a slate wristguard that protected the arm from the string of the bow. The grave contained several pottery vessels, flint tools, two copper knives, and two gold earrings. The most interesting aspect of the Amesbury Archer was that chemical analysis of his teeth and bones showed that he originally came from central Europe in the region of the Alps.
Some of the most remarkable burials from the early part of the Bronze Age are those of the ‘Wessex culture’ in southern England, which contain many finely crafted artifacts made from gold and imported materials that reflect long-standing and sustained connections to continental Europe. The Bush Barrow, situated about a kilometer from Stonehenge and excavated in the nineteenth century, contained the body of a tall male lying on his back. On his chest was a gold plate, and his right hand held a small bronze dagger. Two larger daggers lay parallel to his right arm, along with an enigmatic gold plate with a hook, while a bronze axe lay by his shoulder. The gold artifacts bear similarities to those found in France, particularly in Brittany. The nature of the probable relationship between this individual and the activities that took place at Stonehenge is unclear.
The Wessex burials of southern England reflect a society that had long-distance connections and whose elite members were part of an international community made possible by the trading connections mentioned earlier. Similar elite burials are found in continental Europe from this period. At Leubingen in central Germany, a timber mortuary structure was covered by a mound about 34 m in diameter. Within the structure was the body of an old man and a younger individual, accompanied by bronze weapons and gold ornaments.
Timber was employed somewhat differently in a number of Bronze Age mound burials in Denmark. Huge oak trunks were hollowed out into massive coffins whose lids formed an airtight seal. A thin iron pan that formed around the cores of the mounds also contributed to extraordinary preservation of cloth, leather, and hair. At Borum Eshqj near Aarhus in Jutland, a mound 38 m across and 9 m high contained three oak coffins. The first contained a woman in her fifties who wore a woolen tunic and long skirt, along with bronze ornaments and a dagger. She was covered with a heavy wool rug and a cowhide. The second coffin held a man in his fifties or sixties on top of a cowhide. He wore a woolen hat, kilt, and cape. The third coffin had been placed into the mound after the first two and contained a younger man. At Egtved in southern Jutland, an oak coffin lined with cowhide contained a young woman about 18-20 years old, wearing a short-sleeved woolen tunic and a short skirt made from cords rather than cloth. A bronze belt disk, decorated with spirals and a raised spike at its center, lay on her abdomen. The blossom of a yarrow flower, found between the hide and the blanket covering the body, indicated that the burial had taken place during the summer, while a birch-bark container held the residue of a fermented beverage made from honey, fruit, and wheat.
Bronze Age barrows in southern Scandinavia were meant to be seen from a distance and are usually at high points in the landscape. In Sweden, their presence was also emphasized by covering them with cairns of stones gathered from the surrounding countryside. A typical Bronze Age cairn is found at Ekornavallen in central Sweden, about 20 m in diameter and 2 m high. It is at the highest point on a ridge sloping toward a nearby river in an area dotted with prehistoric graves built over a period of several millennia. In southeastern Sweden, the Kivik cairn was larger, about 75 m across. Although robbed in 1748 and used as a quarry, it contained two stone cists and several carved slabs that have images that are similar to those on rock carvings and which may depict the funeral ceremony. The largest of the 400 Bronze Age cairns on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea is Uggarde rojr (note lowercase ‘r’), where a central cairn 45 m in diameter and 8 m high was surrounded by a number of smaller cairns.
Later in the Bronze Age, around 1700 BC in the British Isles and by 1300 BC in continental Europe and Scandinavia, the principal burial rite shifted dramatically from the burial of whole bodies to the reduction of the body to ashes through cremation. Across much of continental western Europe, the ashes were placed in urns and buried in cemeteries known as ‘urnfields’, which contain dozens or even hundreds of burials. Grave goods were also modest and consisted largely of the bronze ornaments that might have been on the corpse when it was burned, such as pins and earrings, rather than weapons.
At Telgte, in northwestern Germany, urn burials were found throughout a 2 ha area, although this was probably only part of the whole cemetery. In many of the graves, the pit containing the urn was surrounded by a small ditched enclosure. Some of these were circular, others elongated, and still others had a ‘keyhole’ plan in which the round end encircled the burial pit but the enclosure was extended into a rectangular form on one end. Some of the keyhole graves had traces of mortuary houses constructed from wooden posts over the burial. Many of the elongated enclosures have a common orientation, roughly NW-SE.
In Scandinavia, the Late Bronze Age cremation burials were sometimes placed within settings of stone that suggest the outline of a ship. At Lugnaro in western Sweden, a mound covered a stone ship that was about 8 m long. The cremated remains of four individuals were found in the mound. In one instance, the urn contained burnt human and sheep bones, a piece of wool cloth that survived the funeral pyre, and three bronze objects: a dagger, tweezers, and an awl. The tradition of arranging stones in the form of a ship around a grave continued for many centuries after the end of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia.
The variation in the quantity and quality of grave goods and mortuary architecture has led most archaeologists to conclude that the Bronze Age was characterized by increasing differences in the access by individuals to status, power, and wealth. The amount of physical labor and ceremonial effort that went into some Bronze Age burials and the high value ascribed to the goods buried with the bodies - and thus taken out of use by the living - is consistent with their expectations for such a stratified society. Thus the evidence from burials reflects a society differentiated into elites and commoners, which is not especially apparent from the small and unassuming settlements.
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