There are copious beliefs and practices surrounding the big question: what happens after life? A similarly confounding question arises next—what to bring? Various cultures throughout history have formulated their own answers.
Popular belief would have that the Vikings sent their dead out to sea on a ship before it bursts into flames. However, building such ships was likely a costly affair, and indeed, Lindholm Høje in Denmark (Figure 1) tells a different story. Considered to be Scandinavia’s largest burial sites at 682 graves and 150 stone ships, Lindholm Høje boasts burials from both the Iron Age and the Viking Age (VisitAalborg 2012).
Figure 1. Graves at Lindholm Høje. Notice the many oval graves that resemble the outline of a ship. Photo: Knud Erik Christensen.
The typical grave was shaped like either a triangle or a ship, perhaps to symbolically act as the vessel upon which the deceased may travel to the afterlife. Archaeologists have found numerous possessions, from jewelry and weapons to animals and slaves, buried with their owners–these were probably for the dead to bring with them into the next world. Some were even buried with actual boats, but that was reserved for those of high status, such as the case of the Oseberg ship (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The Oseberg Viking ship excavation. Housed a Viking queen of AD 834. (Morgan 2018) Photo: Museum of Cultural History, UiO/Olaf Væring.
Another reason for the burial of goods might have been to satisfy the dead, so they may not return as draugr–revenants–and cause trouble for the living (Mingren 2018). In addition to the clues about Viking beliefs left within the burial sites, archaeologists have also been able to date many of the graves based on their associated artifacts.
Archaeologists can learn a lot about the life of a culture through the way it treats its dead; sometimes, burial sites become the only worthy sources of investigation. For example, the horse-riding nomads of the Eurasian Steppes known as Scythians left little trace, with the exception of their grand kurgans–royal mounds of earth often reaching up to 15 meters in height (Parzinger 2017), under which reside catacombs filled with ornate treasures (Figures 3 & 4).
Figure 3. A reconstruction of a kurgan and the underlying catacombs. Photo: Rolle et al. as used by Herman Parzinger.
Figure 4. A golden diadem found inside of a kurgan.The diadem depicts a horned creature, a winged creature, and a creature being ridden by a human. Photo: Central State Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Almaty, as used by Kat McAlpine.
The artifacts from the kurgans, paired with the feat of building the kurgans themselves, show the immense wealth of those buried.
Besides the evidence of social class, there is a lot to be learned of the Scythians’ belief system. In a kurgan unearthed in 2013, two golden vases were discovered with black residue–tests later came back positive for opium and cannabis, suggesting drug-fueled rituals (Curry 2016). In another kurgan, the buried were accompanied by 13 sacrificed horses, which were all “decorated to resemble supernatural creatures, and wearing leather masks with wooden horns painstakingly decorated with gold leaf” (McAlpine 2012, par. 6). Often, horses seem to be deified in the artifacts left by Scythians, which suggests that they were in fact regarded as divine. There is still mystery surrounding the Scythians’ beliefs however, as other supernatural animals, such as snow leopards with wings, can be seen depicted in Scythian artifacts.
Numerous other cultures have their variations of burial rites, and such rites strongly reflect their belief systems. Clearly, how a culture treats its dead is indicative of its ways of life.
Further reading:
More About Lindholm Høje
http://www.viking.no/e/info-sheets/denmark/norresundby/lind.htm
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUiIbWxsGC-ZWqAGWxiDStA
Two Viking Boat Graves—With a Warrior Inside—Found in Sweden
https://www.history.com/news/viking-boat-grave-discovery-sweden
More About Scythians
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scythian#ref1216725
Other Burial Customs Today
https://ideas.ted.com/11-fascinating-funeral-traditions-from-around-the-globe/
https://www.thoughtco.com/death-and-burial-customs-1421757
References:
Curry, Andrew
August 2016 Spectacular new discoveries from the Caucasus set the stage for a
dramatic hilltop ritual. Archaeological Institute of America. Electronic Document.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/220-1607/features/4560-rites-of-the-scythians
McAlpine, Katy J.
August 2012 Burial Mounds Preserve Culture of Ancient Nomads in Kazakhstan.
Smithsonian. Electronic Document.
Mingren, Wu
December 2018 What Really Happened at Viking Funerals? It’s Not What You Think!
Ancient Origins. Electronic Document.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/viking-funerals-0011109
Morgan, Thad
November 2018 How Did The Vikings Honor Their Dead? History. Electronic Document.
https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-vikings-honor-their-dead
Parzinger, Herman
November 2017 Burial mounds of Scythian elites in the Eurasian steppe: New
discoveries. Journal of the British Academy, 5: 331–355.
DOI https://doi.org/10.85871/jba/005.331
VisitAalborg
2012 Lindholm Høje. VisitAalborg. Electronic Document.
https://www.visitaalborg.com/ln-int/lindholm-hoje-gdk596081
Images:
Figure 1. https://files.guidedanmark.org/files/483/483_309972.jpg?qfix
Figure 3. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/12%20Parzinger%201836%20%28Final%29_0.pdf
You write, “Archaeologists can learn a lot about the life of a culture through the way it treats its dead”. This is definitely true but I wonder, what potential risks accompany this claim? What could go wrong if we rely too heavily on burial sites as places that reveal cultural truths?
It would be misleading, to say the least, to treat burial sites as representative of the whole culture at a particular point in time. There are many variables that can affect the population of a burial site, who is buried there, why they are buried at that particular spot, and when the burial site was used over time, to cite just a few of many factors to evaluate. Renfrew (2015:241) makes note of the problematic assumption “that everyone was buried…regardless of age, sex, or status; that nobody died elsewhere; and that the cemetery was not reused at another time.”
To put this into perspective, consider a cemetery from St. John’s Anglican Church in Sydney, Australia. Data of the age-at-death distribution per decade from the cemetery would, at face value, indicate that life expectancy increased over time between the first burials of the cemetery in 1840 up until 1950. The people who were buried there later were older, so they must have been able to live longer, right?
Consider the timeline of the area. When the church is consecrated, Sydney is growing, and young people are moving in and starting families. Nicer houses begin construction around the church, and wealthier Anglicans take residence in these houses away from the bustle of central Sydney. Enter World War I, and these Anglicans whose sons have been lost to the war begin moving away. Then, a Roman Catholic church is built in the area for Irish working families. Industries move into town, and large, single-family houses are replaced with condensed residences. (Jackes 2011)
If we follow the timeline with while thinking about the life-expectancy data, we can actually realize that the influx of younger people caused an influx of younger deaths early on in the cemetery’s use. Then young males who perished in WWI were buried elsewhere, leaving behind older relatives. Economic and social status allowed some to move away, leaving the less well-off to be buried at that particular location. Next, a new church was built, so some were buried in a different cemetery altogether.
As demonstrated here, an accurate conclusion cannot be drawn of the data from St. John’s cemetery to reflect the community as a whole, since it is biased in so many ways. The same attitude should be taken into account for other burial sites, whether we are assessing life expectancy or cultural values.
References:
Jackes, Mary
2011 Representativeness and Bias in Archaeological Skeletal Samples. In Social
Bioarchaeology, edited by Sabrina Agarwal and Bonnie Glencross, pp. 107-146. Blackwell
Publishing Ltd, New Jersey.
Renfrew, Colin and Paul Bahn
2015 Archaeology Essentials. 3rd edition. Thames & Hudson, New York.