Research into the oldest cemetery on Bornholm indicates the island's key role in the Iron Age

Scientists analyzed finds from the Store Frigård cemetery on Bornholm, such as women's "Scandinavian belts" and spearheads common in the region. They indicate that the local community played a key role in supra-regional contacts and the distribution of goods and people across the Baltic during the Iron Age.

The island of Bornholm in antiquity, especially in the Iron Age, could have been a natural hub for the exchange of goods and intercultural contacts between continental Europe (Poland and northern Germany) and Jutland and southern Scandinavia. However, the scale of these contacts, their variability, importance for local communities and influence on other regions in the Baltic Sea zone are not entirely clear.

The international research project "Bornholm – the island in the middle", which brings together researchers from Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Norway, is working to shed new light on the social and economic changes in the local community and on international contacts and alliances in the Baltic Sea region in the early Iron Age, based on materials from the Store Frigård cemetery.

Store Frigård is one of the few places on Bornholm and in the entire Baltic Sea region that so clearly illustrates transregional connections and population mobility.

Excavations at this site were conducted between 1954 and 1963. The artifacts found are now in the collections of the National Museum in Copenhagen.

More than 1.2 thousand cremation graves (and one skeletal grave) were found at the site, dating from the Early Iron Age to the Late Roman period (500 BC – 400 AD). This makes Store Frigård the largest and longest functioning cemetery not only on Bornholm, but in the entire Baltic region. At least 650 metal artefacts were found in the graves – ornaments, parts of clothing, tools and weapons (about 95 percent of them made of iron). The first publication, prepared as part of this project – on the research on the finds from Store Frigård, was published in the journal "Antiquity".

An example of the interregional connections of the inhabitants of Bornholm at that time are the so-called "Scandinavian belts", consisting of decorative, multi-element iron fittings, popular in the Baltic zone and southern Scandinavia. "Grave inventories and anthropological analyses indicate that they were an element of women's clothing. Although typological analysis suggests that the sets of fittings from Store Frigård come from Gotland or mainland Sweden, it is also possible that they were produced locally on Bornholm, based on imported originals," described to PAP Prof. Piotr Łuczkiewicz from the Institute of Archaeology at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.

The advanced intercultural contacts can also be evidenced by numerous brooches found in the cemetery. The patterns used locally in the last centuries BC correspond exactly to other finds from central Poland and northern Germany.

In terms of weaponry, the same types of spearheads, shields and swords were used on Bornholm as well as on Öland, Gotland and in southern Scandinavia.

"The presence of elements of foreign costume can be interpreted as evidence of the spread of cultural patterns and interregional trade. It may also indicate the mobility of the population, including craftsmen, as well as exogamy, i.e. entering into marriages outside the local group," explained Prof. Łuczkiewicz.

In turn, as he pointed out, similarities in weaponry may indicate the existence of extensive networks of military alliances.

The researcher emphasized that "contacts on such a large scale can only be clearly captured by combining archaeological methods with modern methods of natural sciences." He added that all finds from the cemetery will be subject to further analysis.

In the next part of the project, the scientists plan to conduct metallographic research that will help explain the origin and technology of iron objects, which were found in large numbers in the Bornholm cemetery. They want to answer the question of whether the island had the raw materials, craftsmen and the appropriate technological knowledge to be self-sufficient, or whether the community was dependent on imports – for example from Sweden.

In turn, osteological and statistical analyses will help to gain knowledge about the social differentiation of the local community. Paleogeographic studies are also planned, reconstructing the landscape of the time, as well as isotope analyses of bone samples from some of the graves, which contained both local and potentially foreign equipment. This will allow to determine what percentage of the population buried there could have been immigrants.

Ewelina Krajczyńska-Wujec (PAP)

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