Dragby burial ground

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The cemetery of Dragby ( Swedish Dragby gravfält ) in the parish Skuttunge , between Uppsala and Björklinge in the province of Uppland , is a 2000 year-occupied burial ground with more than 300 graves and several ravines . Dragbygravfaltet is the largest of a number of ancient burial grounds in the region. Most of the grounds are stone circles (over 300), but there are also burial mounds , roos and 10 building stones . The round stone mounds of the Rösen are difficult to date without excavation. The Cairns can also be from the Bronze Age or the Younger Iron Age . In the 1960s, 142 graves were examined by Uppsala University . At the bottom of one of the hills, the archaeologists found Sweden's northernmost megalithic stone box .

description

The place was used as a burial ground during the Bronze Age and earlier Iron Age. Some ravines lead across the field , which can be interpreted as hiking or riding trails. According to another interpretation, they were gullies in which boats were pulled over the ridge, which the name Dragby could have something to do with. There may have been a prehistoric settlement in an area west of the burial ground. Between 500 and 300 BC Then four stone circles with burials were erected. A final stone circle was not built until 640 AD.

In 1963, a ceramic shard with a runic inscription was found in a round stone setting . Initially it was assumed that the runes were only scratched as a joke by one of the excavators after they were found; a renewed investigation in 1992 could prove the authenticity of the inscription. The previously indistinguishable inscription of four Umordian runes on the shard from the younger Iron Age is considered the oldest ceramic object with a runic inscription in Europe.

Dragby's stone chest

The stone box is of the heavy shape that can be assigned to the latter part of the Stone Age or the Early Bronze Age. The stone box is around 1300 BC. BC was used again in the Nordic Bronze Age. The north-west-south-east oriented stone box, built from orthostats of different shapes and sizes, is slightly curved and 3.2 m long inside. Originally covered by a low stone mound with a curb chain made of large, erect stone blocks, the box was covered with a mighty stone mantle during the Bronze Age after the last body burials were placed, in which more than 20 cremation graves were found. The northern end stone of the box is a natural boulder , the straight side of which faces the chamber. The ten supporting stones on the side are made of sheet material. The box has a kind of anteroom made of round stones at the southern end, outside the half-closed access area. It contained disordered skeletal parts of more than 20 individuals, essentially clustered in the northern half. The skeletons of two individuals, probably the last to be buried, lay stretched out side by side in the southern part of the box. They included a pair of tweezers and a bronze double button from the older Bronze Age. The rest of the finds in the box consisted of two arrowheads and a flint scraper , an amber bead and pieces of beaded ceramics that were found in different levels. The bones from the last burial had Harris lines , a sign of deficiency symptoms.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mattias Schönbeck: En runinskrift från yngre Romersk järnålder. Ett upgrades fynd on ceramics. In: Fornvännen 89 (1994). Pp. 107-109. ( online ; PDF; 456 kB)

Web links

Coordinates: 59 ° 58 ′ 37 "  N , 17 ° 34 ′ 52.8"  E