Archaeologists are puzzled by the discovery of dozens of Bronze and Iron Age child graves in southern Norway.
The graves, each marked by circles of precisely placed stones, were found last year by a team from the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History near Fredrikstad, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Oslo, close to the Swedish border.
“They were lying here as a secret until we found them,” says museum archaeologist Guro Fossum told Science Norway“We discovered one formation after another and ended up with 41 round stones.”
The circles of stones, up to 2 metres wide, were laid on top of each other like cobblestones, but were buried a few centimetres below the surface.
Several circles were placed around a large central stone. Further investigation revealed that burnt bones and pottery shards were found under the stones.
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A new analysis now shows that nearly all of the graves contain children who died between 800 and 200 BC. Many of the children were infants, but others were between 3 and 6 years old.
“The dating shows that the cemetery was used over a long period of time. So they cannot all have died in the same natural disaster or in an outbreak of a disease or epidemic,” Fossum said.
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Unique site
Such a concentration of ancient children’s graves is unique in Europe, according to a statement from the museum.
According to the statement, the area around the cemetery is littered with rock carvings describing travel and sun worship.
Experts say that infant mortality was probably high at the time, but otherwise they have no explanation for the children’s graves.
After securing and extensively photographing key samples from the site, archaeologists covered up their excavations, the website reported. However, one of the stone formations will soon be on display in an exhibition titled “In Memory of the Children” at the Cultural History Museum in Oslo.
Archaeologists also plan to analyze artifacts from the site, including pieces of pottery and what may be a metal brooch.
“Analyses of the pottery fragments can tell us a lot,” Fossum said. “It seems that not all of the vessels were containers for burned bones; some were placed among the graves and we are very curious about what was in them.”
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Accidental discovery
Archaeologists discovered the cemetery after investigating a nearby Stone Age settlement, Fossum said.
During the Nordic Bronze and Iron Ages, it was common to cremate the dead on funeral pyres and bury or scatter the remaining bones, Fossum said. A flat layer of stones in a spiral or wheel pattern was then often built over the cremation site, she said.
But the Fredrikstad cemetery is unusual. “The graves are very close together,” Fossum said. “They must have been in an open landscape, with roads nearby, so everyone must have known about them. Cooking pits and fireplaces around the site suggest that meetings and ceremonies were held in connection with burials.”
Moreover, the graves were meticulously crafted. “Each stone came from a different location and was placed precisely in the formation,” Fossum said. “We wondered who had put so much effort into it.”
The answer came with the revelation that most of the dead were children. “They were small children’s graves,” she said. “This was done with such care.”