Whatever we dig up from an ancient civilization, we end up learning that, while we may have our differences, we all ultimately had tons of overlap, like how we all came up with roughly similar ways of honoring our dead. Some of those ways were a little more unusual than others, sure, and sometimes we didn’t so much honor the dead as we just stuffed them into whatever space we had available.
For as much as we like to mythologize some cultures, like the Vikings, imagining them sending off their, let’s say, dead warriors on a boat that they’ve lit up with a flaming arrow or whatever you saw the movie one time, real archaeological evidence shows that only a small fraction of traditional cemetery burials actually showed any signs of combat trauma.
According to a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, if you want to find the real remains of ancient iron and Viking Age Scandinavian dead, don’t look in a cemetery, don’t look for evidence of burials at sea; look under the floorboards in their homes.
Human Remains Found Beneath Ancient Scandinavian Homes Reveal a Darker History
Researchers from the BODY-POLITICS project examined 192 human remains discovered in homes across Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Instead of proper cemeteries, tons of fragmented bones were discarded in hearths, wells, post holes, and house floors.
Of the 192, at least 12 individuals had suffered pretty brutal injuries before or around the time of their deaths, which researchers interpret as part of a series of systemic violence inflicted on marginalized members of the community.
For instance, in one Iron Age home, archaeologists found the partial skull of a boy somewhere between the ages of two and four had been cut by a sword. Radiocarbon dating showed the skull was up to two centuries older than the home it was within, meaning that the house’s residents spent years unconsciously stepping all over a child’s head. A likely murdered child, at that.
Another set of remains includes a woman’s slashed skull that had been tossed into a well, and another was a man buried near a royal feasting hall who survived multiple severe skull fractures and broken bones before finally dying.
These were likely all victims of domestic abuse, human sacrifice, or, for one reason or another, the scorn of the community and received the brunt of communal aggression. Their bodies weren’t honored and respected, buried in sacred grounds and whatnot. They were treated as insulation, stuffing for a living space, because not everyone who died in Scandinavia’s past was honored.
The post Why Some of Scandinavia’s Ancient Dead Ended Up Beneath Homes Instead of in Cemeteries appeared first on VICE.
