Mostly babies were buried here over 2,000 years ago. What have the archaeologists discovered?
The newly discovered burial site consists almost entirely of babies, buried over several hundred years. How do researchers determine that the majority of those buried here were infants, especially when the bodies were cremated?
Published
In December 2023, archaeologists from the Museum of Cultural History uncovered an unknown burial site at a quarry near Fredrikstad in southeastern Norway.
They recently announced the discovery, and the archaeologists are in the midst of describing and analysing the remains of the people buried here.
The archaeologists have excavated 41 similar graves at this site.
Emotions related to the grief of losing a child make this so powerful and human. It shows that people in the past were not so different from us.
Håkon Reiersen
“There were large, impressive stone circles ranging from one to two and a half metres in diameter,” Guro Fossum tells sciencenorway.no. She is an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History and the leader of the excavation.
Fossum explains that they were originally supposed to investigate some much older settlements from the Stone Age, but then these stone formations emerged.
The circles turned out to be graves containing cremated human remains. These graves date primarily from 800 to 200 BCE, and most of them contain the remains of small children. But how did the archaeologists determine this when the remains were burned?
Very few remains
“In almost all the graves, we found some cremated human remains, but there were very few bones,” Fossum says.
She explains that each grave contained between 0.1 and 240 grams of bone.
There are some differences between the graves. Some remains were placed in urns, while in other graves, both ashes and bones from the funeral pyre were placed in a pit under the stone circles. In many graves, only a few burned bones were placed beneath the stones.
These are so-called cremation graves, which were the common burial method in this period in Norway.
Mostly babies
The bones from all these graves were sent to a bone expert – an osteologist.
“She contacted us quickly and said they appeared to be children's graves." Fossum says.
The archaeologists had not noticed this during the excavation, but the osteologist specifically noted fragments of the skull roof. This is the outer part of the skull, which is very thin in small children.
It turned out that many of the graves contained the remains of very young children.
“There’s a large predominance of babies. 16 of them are newborns, and some may not have been full-term pregnancies,” she says.
Unique
The archaeologists also found a small jawbone where the teeth had not yet emerged.
“It’s incredibly unique to find so many infant graves in one place. What’s special here is that the children have their own burial site. We know of very few similar finds,” Fossum says.
There are also only two adults buried here, but one of these graves is a few hundred years younger than the youngest children's graves. There are also some graves with slightly older children aged four to six years, but most are very young.
Radiocarbon dating of the remains from the graves shows that most were buried between 800 and 200 BCE, according to the Museum of Cultural History. There are also two graves that are older, from around 1300 to 1000 BCE.
A gathering place
“We also found numerous cooking pits and fireplaces around the graves,” says Fossum.
These were in use at the same time as many of the burials. This might indicate that this was a place where people gathered and held events, possibly in connection with the funerals.
These are not burial mounds; they are stone circles and spirals on flat ground.
Guro Fossum mentions a similar burial site nearby called Gunnarstorp. It was excavated in the 1950s, but there, many different people were buried, including the elderly, adults, and children.
Despite this, the graves are very similar to the infant graves found at the current site. This might indicate that the people treated deceased infants and other deceased individuals in the same manner.
“In this period, everyone received a grave; infants were considered part of the community. We can’t rule out a ritualistic element, such as sacrifices. However, the graves do not differ from other graves from the period, and there is nothing to suggest they were sacrificed,” she says.
She also mentions that several ancient pathways, known as sunken lanes, run right beside the burial site. These are depressions in the landscape, remnants of paths and roads that have been used for a long time.
"Given that the burial site and the sunken lanes are right next to each other, it's reasonable to believe they were used simultaneously," Fossum says.
“This is a place that people have travelled through. Perhaps a local community used this site as a burial ground for their children, a tradition that lasted for several centuries.”
So very human
“It’s a very exciting find, especially since it’s rare to have such good data and be able to draw such clear conclusions about practices surrounding children's graves,” Håkon Reiersen tells sciencenorway.no.
He is an associate professor of archeology at the University of Stavanger, specialising in the Iron Age and Viking Age. He has reviewed the Museum of Cultural History’s descriptions of the new findings.
“Emotions related to the grief of losing a child make this so powerful and human. It shows that people in the past were not so different from us,” he says.
"This burial site provided a dedicated place for the community to process and mourn the unimaginable over centuries."
A significant burial site
The burial site is unique in a European context, according to the Museum of Cultural History.
Reiersen agrees with this.
“I’m not aware of any previous discovery of a site with only children's graves, making this burial site very important,” he says.
There may have been similar burial sites elsewhere, but they have either not been uncovered yet or the remains are not well-preserved enough to determine the age of those buried.
He points out that there was likely a high infant mortality rate during this time.
“A study of skeletons from the Bronze Age and Iron Age in Rogaland, Western Norway, showed that over 40 per cent of the deceased were infants, children, or teenagers,” he says.
Reiersen notes that large burial sites from this period are not very common in Norway, but present-day Østfold is one of the areas that seems to have the most of them.
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Translated by Alette Bjordal Gjellesvik
Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no
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