Topic
Excavation and interpretation of burial deposits, body treatment and grave goods.
Return to Vulci archaeologists excavated a 2,700-year-old Etruscan tomb inside a mound Stephane Gsell outlined in 1889 before running out of time and money. Early calculations suggest the mound may be more than twice the 31-meter width he estimated.
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Live Science asked three researchers for evidence that Vikings lit funeral boats adrift with flaming arrows. The archaeological record cannot answer the question, so the case rests on written accounts and on one archaeologist's burn tests.
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A team at Nicolaus Copernicus University ran isotopes, DNA and textile analysis on a 17th century Polish burial, and the sequence they report puts the padlock on the toe at interment and the sickle at the throat only after someone dug the grave open again.
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More than 8,000 arthropod remains from the Cruz de la Esquina cave on Gran Canaria put bulk grain in it before the wrapped bodies, and the same assemblage argues the dead were placed there soon after death.
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A 10th-century timber chamber at Gnezdilovo held a man, a horse, a dog and riding gear. With only 80 others known in western Russia, one find carries unusual inferential weight.
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