Identifying commoners in the Bronze Age: burials outside barrows

• This article discusses the possibility of social division and the presence of commoners in south Scandinavia during the Early Bronze Age. The discussion is based on new scientific and archaeological data generated in the project Travels, transmissions and transformations in temperate northern Europe during the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC: The rise of Bronze Age societies. Based on a comprehensive radiocarbon dating program, we were able to re-assign many skeletons, previously assumed to be Late Neolithic, to the Bronze Age. This accounted for a significant proportion of non-elite burials (including those of children) that had previously been ‘mysteriously’ missing in the archaeological Bronze Age record. Moreover, strontium isotope analyses reveal that individuals seem to be mobile regardless of their wealth status and burial rituals. It suggests a society where workers and perhaps even nonfree labourers were mobile, not only the elite segment.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Arkeologi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- Archaeology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Late Neolithic

passage grave

gallery grave

flat grave

mound

Scania

southern Scandinavia

strontium isotopes

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)