Late Neolithic Stenildgård Grave: Re-Excavated, Re-Analysed and Re-Interpreted

Abstract

Occasionally, it becomes possible to re‐excavate and re‐analyse prehistoric monuments. Within the geographical area managed by Vesthimmerlands Museum, this happened in the case of the Late Neolithic Stenildgård grave on the western periphery of the town of Aars, Northern Danmark. The grave was excavated for the first time at the early 1930s and re‐excavated in 2015 in connection with the construction of a ring road around the southern parts of Aars. In 2015, a series of state‐of‐the‐art scientific analyses were conducted in relation to this grave. Following a detailed presentation of the original publication and later interpretations, this article presents the results of the new excavation and scientific analyses. The new results include identification of the human bones, the development of the stratigraphy, strontium isotope analysis, pollen analysis, macro‐fossil analysis, and the analysis of pitch. Since the 1930s, the Stenildgård grave has been considered a burial, which, to a great extent, deviated from usual practice showing one of the earliest examples of cremation in prehistoric Denmark. Furthermore, the recent investigation revealed that the grave was equipped with a surrounding wooden structure and possibly influenced by West European Bell Beaker Cultures. Also, the grave seems to form part of an extensive Late Neolithic burial and settlement system, where complex rituals were carried out.

visiting the Roman Iron Age Hoby chieftain burial after 100 years of its discovery - adding the strontium isotopic perspective

“…In Denmark, strontium isotope analyses on human remains have been conducted on individuals dating from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages, with strong focus on the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Viking Age (e.g. Croix et al 2020;Felding et al 2020;Frei et al 2019;Frei et al 2015;Frei et al 2017;Nielsen et al 2020a;Nielsen et al 2020b;Price et al 2011;Reiter et al 2019). However, relatively few individuals from the Iron Age have been investigated using this technique thus far.…”

Homogeneous Glacial Landscapes Can Have High Local Variability of Strontium Isotope Signatures: Implications for Prehistoric Migration Studies

“…Accepting that 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values up to 0.716 (or more conservative 0.715) are obtainable in central Jutland and that values up 0.71328 are obtainable in western Zealand, it appears that many provenance and migration interpretations of prehistoric artifacts and individuals from Denmark warrant revision (e.g., Frei et al, 2017bFrei et al, , 2019Nielsen et al, 2020;Van der Sluis et al, 2020). Below we will comment in more detail on four investigations, which are within the realm of our study areas.…”

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

“…We can see that the persons on whom cremation was practiced present dissimilar ranges of non-local 87 Sr/ 86 Sr. The four Neolithic samples' 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ranged from 0.711437-0.711825 [15], which suggest origins which are both outside the local baselines established for the Stenildgård area [15,102] as well as for present day Denmark [15,20,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]102]. In addition, the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr from the Late Neolithic non-local dataset is very closely grouped (samples KM113, KM214 and KM216 are all 87 Sr/ 86 Sr = 0.7114 and samples KM113 and KM214 are both 87 Sr/ 86 Sr = 0.71146).…”

“…While all the contexts sampled for the present research from the Stenildgård region are Late Bronze Age, they nonetheless come from an area in which early cremations have already been documented and investigated in terms of provenance [ 15 ]. In addition to Single Grave Culture and Dagger Period contexts, the region also includes a series of Late Neolithic/Bronze Age mounds, which are the primary interest of the current research.…”

“…Given the mounting evidence underscoring Neolithic and Bronze Age mobility throughout Europe [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], it seems tempting to imagine a scenario in which the avant garde trendsetters who introduced cremation would have been non-locals. (Within this context, we consider locals to be persons whose 87 Sr/ 86 Sr lies within the strontium isotope baseline range for present-day Denmark of 0.7081-0.71111.…”