Bronze Age mass burial found in Scotland
A Bronze Age barrow containing the cinerary remains of at least eight people buried in a single event between 1439-1287 B.C. was found in southwest Scotland. Five urns were buried packed tightly inside a pit, indicating it was a single mass burial, perhaps of a family group.The barrow was discovered in an archaeological investigation during the construction of a new access route to Twentyshilling Wind Farm. In a pit in the center of a ring ditch were five urns in fragments. The burial pit and urns contain fill with a mixture of alder, birch and hazel charcoal. Some hazel nutshells were also recovered from the pit and the urns. The different woods, nutshells and grains suggest the cremation pyres were built with a variety of local woods and that the ritual may have included food offerings on the pyres.One urn, which survived in 54 sherds, contained the cinerary remains of one adult and an animal. The second urn, composed of 245 sherds, contained the cremated bones of one adult and one adolescent. The third, consisting of 200 sherds, also contained the remains of an adult and a juvenile. The fourth urn, surviving in 350 sherds, contained the cinerary remains of one adult, plus grains of emmer wheat and barley. The most damaged vessel consisted of only 30 sherds in poor condition, but the fill was still packed in the space well enough to identify the remains of one adult, one juvenile, plus willow charcoal and a grain of barley. Additional human remains were found when the fill of the burial pit was sieved.The ring ditch also contained a mixed assemblage of alder, birch and hazel wood charcoal with traces of hazel nutshell. Moderate size stones on top of the fill are believe to be the remains of cairn erected over the burial pit.This is an unusual cremation burial for the period and location, and contributes new information on the Bronze Age funerary practices in southwestern Scotland.The bodies of the deceased at Twentyshilling had not been left out for a lengthy period of time to partially decay, as is common in other barrows. This also indicates that they were interred at once, rather than over a longer period of time. At Broughton in the Scottish Borders, another barrow GUARD Archaeologists have excavated in recent years, the bodies of the deceased had all been exposed for a long time prior to cremation indicating an extended period of time between death and interment. And at Broughton as in many other Bronze Age barrows in Scotland, the burials were inserted over a protracted period, not all at once.This was not apparent at Twentyshilling, perhaps because the local community here had less time to perform the burial rituals. The Bronze Age in Dumfries and Galloway may have been a time of particular stress as other burials, such as at Blairbuy in the Machars show evidence of famine and abandonment.
English
Arabic
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)