Photo courtesy Arkeologerna.Two 2,500-year-old Bronze Age neck rings have been found in Marby outside Norrköping in southeastern Sweden. They were discovered crammed between two stones on the edge of a burial, an unusual context that suggests they were placed as offerings.
The two rings are different in design: the larger one is thinner, the smaller thicker with much more deeply profiled twists. Made of cast bronze and twisted into spirals, this type of necklace is known as a Wendel ring. They were produced in the late Bronze Age and are typically found in bogs and marshes deposited as part of a group of artifacts. Finding two Wendel rings sandwiched between stones is unprecedented.
They were on the outskirts of a central block grave, a circle of small stones with a large block in the center. Cremated human bones were found in an urn and in several small pits dug into the ground. There were also bone fragments scattered around the stone setting.
Previously known to contain Bronze Age burials, settlement remains and stone shard mounds, the Marby site is being excavated this spring in connection with new construction planned for the area. Archaeologists hope to discover new information about the settlement pattern, what livestock was raised there, who was buried there, what rituals were performed and other aspects of Bronze Age community life.
The focus of the investigation are the two shard mounds, man-made piles of broken stones dating back to the Early Bronze Age. They are often found in settlements, and archaeologists first believed they were midden piles, piles of waste accumulated from cooking and general life. Excavations have found human bones and bronze objects in the stone shard mounds, however, and the Marby site has an unusual combination of a block grave with a circular stone edge that was actually built on top of shard mound.
* This article was originally published here
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