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In east-central Sweden, workers demolishing a railway that crossed the Motala Ström River discovered something bizarre. For roughly 7,500 years, a shallow, swampy lake in the area had hidden a pile of stones that contained the skeletal remains of at least 10 people and weapons made of stone and antler. They also found the bones of bears, deer, boar, and a badger. Two of the human skulls were mounted on pointed stakes.
Thousands of years ago, this semi-submerged burial ground must have been an imposing sight for the small settlements located nearby. A pile of rocks rose above the water, covered in weapons, wooden structures, and the grisly remains of fearsome animals—as well as the skulls of some carefully chosen people. Now dubbed "Kanaljorden," the archaeological site has finally begun to yield some secrets about the people who created it. In a recent article for Antiquity, Stockholm University archaeologist Sara Gummesson and her colleagues explain what the evidence reveals about how this ritual site was used.
Though we've seen lots of heads on stakes in Game of Thrones and various movies, Kanaljorden is the first time anyone has found evidence in real life that Stone Age people in this area were mounting heads on stakes. And their reasons are not quite what you might imagine.
Antiquity, 2018. DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2017.210
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:30AM
It's a jump to conclude that these were from sacrifices. It was so long ago that for all we know it might have even been how they announced the death of someone notable. Or maybe they just were on the wrong side of a larger fight. After all, another group not that far away, the Celts, were renowned headhunters much more recently. There's no way to say why with so much time passed.
Down in the far south of Sweden at least the museums there have more skulls than they really can manage. Many of the skulls both described and on display had holes because they had been nailed to posts while fresh. I got the impression that when doing any digging downtown in certain old urban areas, archeologists often found bones. What's now the southern tip of Sweden went back and forth between Denmark and Sweden up until a key battle as recently as 1676. Each time parts of it changed hands there was a bit of what would nowadays be called ethnic cleansing. Beheading was also a quick way to deal with convicts. The heads were usually displayed on spikes for criminals as well as notables, but especially if the head had belonged to any former competitor with ambitions of power and influence. Nils Dacke would have been an example of the latter. It was so commonplace that around the country individual counties kept executioners on the payrolls until the mid-1800s.
On a literary tangent, Pär Lagerkvist's novella, The Hangman (Bödeln) from 1933, is most unfortunately becoming relevant again due to the world's situation. The Executioner would have been a better translation of the title.
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