5,500-year-old burial chamber — mysteriously missing some bones — excavated in Sweden
In a field of southern Sweden sat some slab-like stones. The rocks were clearly arranged in a pattern but, overall, seemed relatively mundane looking.
However, as archaeologists recently uncovered, the ancient site was anything but ordinary.
The stones were discovered in Tiarp in 1929 by a farmer, according to a study published Dec. 22 in the Journal of Neolithic Archaeology. Archaeologists quickly identified the site as an ancient stone burial chamber, or dolmen, but took over 80 years to realize the grave still had bones inside.
Archaeologists returned to the ancient grave in 2023 to excavate and analyze its contents for the first time, according to a Jan. 29 news release from the University of Gothenburg. A photo shows the filled-in grave before excavations.
The results of the excavation were surprising for two reasons.
First, the burial chamber contained bones from at least 12 people, but some bones were mysteriously missing, the university said.
“Skulls and large bones are missing and may have been removed from the grave,” Karl-Göran Sjögren, an archaeologist and one of the study co-authors, said in the news release. Instead, the grave contained mainly smaller bones like hands, feet and teeth.
“We don’t know whether that has to do with burial rituals or what’s behind it,” Sjögren said. “This differs from what we usually see in (more recent) megalith graves. … Usually, the bones that are missing are smaller bones from feet and hands.”
Researchers have not identified the cause of death for the grave’s occupants.
“We haven’t seen any injuries on the people buried so we don’t think violence is involved,” Sjögren said. A photo shows the grave from the side.
Second, researchers were surprised to find that the grave was about 5,500 years old.
“It’s an early grave which dates to the Early Neolithic period, about 3500 B.C.,” Sjögren said, “making it one of the oldest stone burial chambers in Sweden and across the whole of Scandinavia.”
Photos show the burial chamber during and after the recent excavations.
Researchers are still analyzing DNA from the ancient grave to reconstruct any relationships among the deceased and identify any diseases they might have suffered from, the release said.
Tiarp is in southern Sweden and about 170 miles southwest of Stockholm.
The research team included Karl-Göran Sjögren, Malou Blank, Torbjörn Ahlström, Tony Axelsson, Stefan Dreibrodt and Johannes Müller.
This story was originally published January 30, 2024 at 1:19 PM with the headline "5,500-year-old burial chamber — mysteriously missing some bones — excavated in Sweden."
