Mysterious Stone Age Cemetery Found Near The Arctic – Why Are The Graves Empty?

Snippet: "We have reviewed the archival material from the original excavations and undertaken further test excavations to confirm some of the findings. We argue that the site of Tainiaro was most likely, although not certainly, a large Stone Age cemetery of the fifth millennium BC.

If correct, it would be among the largest such sites to date to this period known in northern Europe. We have interpreted as many as 44 of the pits excavated at the site as burials and, since only one-fifth of the site's area has been excavated, the total number could be more than 200.

The site is unusual in other ways too, not least because of the range of activities attested and its location in the northern subarctic, further north than any other known large cemetery of this date. Many questions about Tainiaro remain unanswered.

For the time being, however, the notion that a large cemetery seems to have existed near the Arctic Circle should cause us to reconsider our impressions of the north and its peripheral place in world prehistory," the research team concluded in their study published in Antiquity.”

Journal article: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.160