Alken Enge

In the meadows of Alken, Denmark, archaeologists made a wonderful discovering in a bog. The bodies of what appeared to be an entire army of soldiers dating back some 2,000 years ago. More than two hundred ancient warriors' skeletons were unearthed in the excavations held in 2009. It was also found a small number of spearheads, shields, clubs, and axes, and scientists have been studying them ever since, trying to piece together the final moments of these warriors.

The archaeological works took place in an area close to Jutland's Lake in Denmark, and it was very hard to unearth the bodies because they were some two meters below the surface of the thick bog. It appears that the low-oxygen content of the water had delayed decomposition so the bones were still in a well-preserved state.

The human remains, which have been found to belong to males between the ages of roughly 13 and 45, date to a time in which the Roman Empire had extended its northern border some 185 miles south of Alken. This expansion resulted in unrest, skirmishes between Romans and Germanic tribes, and increased militarization of local peoples, leading researchers to believe that the men had died in battle and their bodies dumped in the bog. It is true that their bones revealed traumatic injuries such as slices, cuts, and blows from sword, axes, and other weapons.

Ever since this discovery, archaeologists have been working to find out who these victims were and what the sequence of events led to such a gruesome ending for these warriors. Based on latest findings, some scholars now believe that the bodies of the victims underwent complex post-war rituals before being cast into the bog more or less 6 months after their deaths.

Several sacrificial sites of a different nature had been observed in nearby areas, leading to the suggestion that ritualistic activity was commonplace in the region at the time. For instance, one site known as Forley Nymolle was believed to be an area of daily rituals in which the inhabitants made offerings of pottery, wooden objects, and various stone collections. Archaeologists and other experts maintain that one of the wooden objects recovered at the site is a goddess figurine, and perhaps may have been the deity that they were making offerings to.

But there were even more clues leading scientists to believe that the Alken Wetlands was a location for complex sacrificial events. Among the Alken Enge remains, archaeologists found a wooden stick threaded through the pelvic bones of four different men. More proves that after these warriors' death, a violent sequel took place.

Researchers believe that these facts may have formed part of a religious ritual in preparation for offering the remains as a sacrifice, the bodies of the warriors were entirely defleshed, the bones sorted, and in some cases, they were threaded onto sticks. The pile of remains was then tossed into the water, along with the remains of slaughtered animals and clay pots that probably contained food sacrifices. This indicates that this place was certainly a holy site for the germanic pagan religion.

The buried army at Alken Enge are not the first set of human remains to have been found in this specific area. The Illerup River which runs into Lake Mosso is well known for its store of human bones along with other finds such as the world-renowned offering of weapons near Fuglsang Forest.

Archaeologists have not been able to determine the nationality of the slaughtered warriors based on the objects found alongside them, as very few weapons were found at the site and radiocarbon dating on those that were found has revealed that they could not have belonged to the buried army. However, some DNA has been preserved, so we can get a good profile of what Iron Age man looked like. An anthropological analysis of the bones will provide us with a picture of their diet and their physical appearance. It is also hoped that the DNA analysis may help to reveal who the soldiers were and where they came from.

Iron age horse found

As the global warming advances every year it melts glaciers and ice sheets, leaving perfectly preserved relics behind, to be found by archaeologists. This was what happened in the past August at Norway. At the high alpine zone, it seems that Iron Age people used hourses to travel from one place to another, or to trade with the near by villages, but going over the mountain passages, which is something extremely difficult. At the Lendbreen glacier near Lillehammer, archaeologists are working fast against the environmental changes, deep in the ice, it might hold ancient relics and preserve them, but once the ice melts and these same relics are exposed to the weather outsider, archaeologists have little time to try to conserve the relic as much as possible in its original state.  It is important to keep the melting ice under constant observation as once an artefact defrosts, archaeologists have just days to begin preserving it.

In this area it is believed that Iron Age people all the way to the  early medieval period, used shortcuts in the mountains to go from village to village and also this might have been the hunting grounds, because when it gets hot in the summer, the reindeer will get pestered by horseflies, and when that happens they move up to the ice to avoid such insects, and this fact made the ice excellent hunting grounds. The horse whose bonés were discovered was probably used to carry reindeer carcasses back off the mountains to the villages below. Along with such discoveries. other items were found, because these people from time to time, going to hunt or trading, they droped personal objects once in a while.

The team of archaeologists have previously found perfectly preserved 1000-year-old horse manure, and horse shoes dropped in the ice. Earlier this year of 2013, they made headlines across the world when they found a 1,700-year-old woollen tunic, fully intact apart from the two patches sewed into it by its iron age owner.

Bronze Age Medicine House

In the Irish countryside and in Northern Portugal, among so many buildings of the Bronze and Iron ages, it has been found some really interesting buildings with the same function as the Sweat tents so well known among the Lakota indians of Northern America, known as Medicine Lodges or Medicine Houses. These buildings like anyother similar ancient constructions in Finland, Sibéria, and other countries where Saunas existed, have the same function of ritual purification and to communicate with the spirits. These houses are all very similar in the way they work, a simple hole in the ground with tree trunks covered with earth and stones. In Northern Portugal and Galicia, both on Portuguese and Spanish soil, such buildings were found, dated from the Bronze and Iron Ages, when the Celts and the Celtic tribe of the Lusitanians lived there, it is known that these people took at least two steam baths per week, but this wasn't just to clean the body, in truth it was more for religious and spiritual practices, for the purification of the body and to interact with the spirits of the elements, of fire, water, air and earth, all combined in one place and making steam, this also helped enter in trance and actually communicate with other spirits. After this long bath, making the body sweat and all the impurities of the body cleansed in a way to protect oneself from evil beings, the person would dive in cold water of the near by well or river to wash away any negativity in the body.
Nowadays we know about the ancient practices and even the rituals that take place in such occasions, because shamanic tribes still exist and use the same method, but unfortunatelly we don't know what kind of sacred ritual was performed during these ceremonies in the Celtic culture, but it is interesting to see that worldwide people share the same habits, and that many European countries even share the same type of architectural style and the buildings have exactly the same function.
To know more about these ancient European practices we have to take a close look to the similar practices of the North American indians, or the Siberian peoples, to have a little idea about these steam baths with spiritual purposes, because unfortunatelly with the coming of Christianity, there practices were also banned, what seems to be a simple steam bath, was indeed a cause to pursuit those who did it.
It is possible that people might add hallucinogenic herbs in the process, so the steam might help to induce trance, some Indo-European tribes did it, and also the Eurasian tribe of the Scythians did it and there are accounts of it because their kingdoms spread all the way to Bulgaria.

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Scotland's Iron Age: Into the Underworld

There has been a lot of recent discoveries about the Iron Age period in Scotland, which shows us the mystical and magical way of living in those times, how people act when the people closest to them died, how they treated their dead and also the their daily ways of living. One of the recent findings, perfect to talk about the Iron Age, was in the Isle of Skype, such a wonderful place rich in Iron Age culture and History, and of course a good insight of how people traditionally interact with subterranean spaces. The place is called  High Pasture Cave, where people once carved steps leading down into a cave where they used to deposit the remainings of butchered pigs. Well we know that people all over Great Britain in the Iron Age and before, had specific places where they would poured the remains of what they ate, some kind of ancient recycling acts, away from the community, in proper places where the smell couldn't spread and attract wild animals and possible threats, and also a place where those remainings would undergo a change and feed the earth with the minerals that come from rotten things in decomposition ( this reminds me of the post i have written about Nidhog in the month of April of 2013, you might want to check it ). The High Pasture Cave wasn't just the place to deposit such things because also a woman and her two children were left there, a new born and one still a fetus. Well this might seem strange, but it isn't rare to find these things especially in places that gave origin to the Celtic Myths of the Underworld, by entering a cave, a tomb, a hole in the ground, well any place that could lead to a dark chamber, the symbolism of two places completely different, the world outside, and the dark places on earth below, the entrace was the boundary between the two worlds, and such a myth comes for the Neolithic times as such - these were the places of transformation, where things passed through the process of transformation, in these tombs in addition of being found the remains of animals and also people, it is often found pottery, and this has tree meanings that always comes to mind, the need to leave with the dead their belongings so they may take with them to the afterlife, objects according to their social lifes, their place in the community, their works and their gender, another meaning is that they used to feast with their dead especially on seasonal celebrations in order to be in touch with their loved ones, closer to understand the true meaning of death, to ask aid and wisdom to their ancestors, also the other meaning ( which is exactly the purpose of this post ) is that these people use to make their cooking here, not only because of the reasons i have written previously but also because of that i have already said, this was a place os transformation, where the raw fish or meat apparently inappropriated to be cosumed, would become something  life-sustaining, the carcasses of animals would become food, the remainings of what couldn't be eaten, would feed the earth and the recently dead of these people's communities would also pass through the transformation of death, when they leave their body and start a new way of life and are united with their ancestors.
In many places in Scotland we find a Broch right on top of a neolithic tomb, this isn't a coincidence, of all the places to build, they had to build right on top of these ancient neolithic chambered tombs and caves, and also the entrances of the Brochs were aligned exactly with the entrance to the tomb, also the people that build the Brochs in most places when these tombs hadn't an opening on the top, they would build an entrance right to the tomb again, so it is possible that the people in later times were still using the neolitich tombs to place their dead, because the newly built passage had carving symbols associated with death and the burial rites, as it is the good example of the Broch at Howe on Orkney.
Some tombs where also found, that were not covered by later houses, such as the Calf of Eday, also in Orkney, seem to have been the focus for feasting during the Iron Age, as pottery and animal bones were discarded around them. Moreover, at Unival on North Uist, the chamber of a tomb was incorporated into an Iron Age roundhouse and used as a cooking pit. This also matches High Pasture Cave, with its collection of butchered pig remains.
Such places are an interesting view of the the mind of these people in ancient times, places laced with symbolism and meaning, the opposite of two worlds and how people naturaly interacted with them.

Note: A Broch is an Iron Age structure of a type only found in Scotland, great examples of the most sophisticated architecture ever created. The theory was that these buildings were defensive military structures, the Iron Age equivalent to castles but as you can read in this post, was also more than that.

Note2:  If you have any questions for me or if you want to see my artistic works, check out my Facebook page and make a Like if you can by following this link --> http://www.facebook.com/ArithHarger