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<< Other Photo Pages >> Vedbæk mesolithic cemetery - Ancient Village or Settlement in Denmark in Hovedstaden

Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 01 November 2012  Page Views: 35253

Multi-periodSite Name: Vedbæk mesolithic cemetery Alternative Name: Vedbaek burial, Bøgebakken archaeological site
Country: Denmark County: Hovedstaden Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
 Nearest Village: Vedbæk
Latitude: 55.852000N  Longitude: 12.560540E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 Destroyed Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 2

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Vedbæk mesolithic cemetery
Vedbæk mesolithic cemetery submitted by Andy B : The Vedbæk Finds - mother with child Photo credit: Anne Gurlev, Vedbæk Finds Museum (Vote or comment on this photo)
A Mesolithic cemetery of the Ertebølle culture. The cemetry comprises one empty grave, sixteen single burials, two double and one triple burial. Both double burials consist of a female and an infant, perhaps women who died in childbirth. The richest burial of Vedbæk is that of one of the juvenile women, who was buried together with a baby on a swan’s wing

The triple burial yielded two adults and a one-year-old child. While all individuals except one were buried in a supine position, other aspects of the
burials were varied and related to age and sex.

The five children’s burials all contain ochre, while of the seven women’s burials two have no grave goods at all and three others only ochre. One woman was buried with a flint blade and various roe-deer bones, another woman was buried in a
dress decorated with pendants of red-deer and pig teeth alongside small perforated shells.

It appears that the age of the women determined the grave goods: the mature women received no grave goods apart from ochre, while the sole adult woman in the cemetery received a blade and bones of a roe deer.

. Seven of the nine male adult burials contained one or more flint blades, often in association with other
goods: ochre, an antler axe, a bone tool, pig-tooth pendants.

The child's gravegoods suggest that the culture involved ascribed status – the passing of power between generations.

The cemetery is located in the northern part of the Maglemosen peat bog, and was discovered in 1975 during excavation for the new Vedbæk School. (It should not be confused with the earlier Maglemosian culture, named for a different Maglemose near Slagelse.)

Source:
The process of Neolithisation, Leiden University (PDF)

See also
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/marco.meniketti/courses/LostCiv2/s0/Vedbeack.pdf

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 1.4km SSE 167° Vedbæk Kirke Stenkiste* Cist
 1.7km SSE 152° Lokeshøi* Round Barrow(s)
 1.9km WNW 294° Folehaven Rundhøj 12* Round Barrow(s)
 1.9km WNW 294° Folehaven Rundhøj 11* Round Barrow(s)
 2.1km NW 313° Folehaven Langdysse 2* Long Barrow
 2.3km WNW 299° Folehaven Langdysse 4* Long Barrow
 2.3km NW 321° Folehaven Rundhøj 7* Round Barrow(s)
 2.4km NW 321° Folehaven Rundhøj 6* Round Barrow(s)
 2.4km NW 322° Folehaven Rundhøj 5* Round Barrow(s)
 2.4km WNW 298° Sandbjerg Østerskov Hellekiste* Cist
 2.5km NW 305° Folehaven Rundhøj 8* Round Barrow(s)
 2.5km SW 224° Kohave Skov Hellekiste* Cist
 2.7km WNW 300° Folehaven Rundhøj 9* Round Barrow(s)
 2.7km WNW 299° Folehaven Rundhøj 10* Round Barrow(s)
 2.7km NW 315° Folehaven Rundhøj 4* Round Barrow(s)
 2.8km W 270° Sandbjerg Langdysse* Long Barrow
 2.8km NW 318° Folehaven Rundhøj 3* Round Barrow(s)
 3.1km WNW 298° Folehaven Langdysse 3* Long Barrow
 3.2km WNW 299° Folehaven Langdysse 1* Long Barrow
 3.5km SSE 167° Skodsborg Hellekister* Cist
 3.8km NW 319° Folehaven Rundhøj 2* Round Barrow(s)
 3.8km NW 320° Folehaven Rundhøj 1* Round Barrow(s)
 3.8km NW 320° Folehaven Stensætning* Ring Cairn
 4.9km NW 322° Vallerød Runddysse* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 5.3km SSE 166° Møllevang* Round Barrow(s)
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"Vedbæk mesolithic cemetery" | Login/Create an Account | 5 News and Comments
  
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Re: Vedbæk mesolithic cemetery by Anonymous on Saturday, 05 December 2020
I wonder what you think the flint blade lying on the baby signified.
[ Reply to This ]

Sensible dress: the sight, sound, smell and touch of Late Ertebølle Mesolithic cloth by Andy B on Friday, 28 April 2017
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Susanna Harris,(2014) Sensible dress: the sight, sound, smell and touch of Late Ertebølle Mesolithic cloth types. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 24(1), pp. 37-56

The aim of this paper is to investigate the sight, sound, smell and touch of different cloth-types in the Late Ertebølle of southern Scandinavia and to argue that such an
approach provides stimulating new insights into an area of material culture that has previously been studied by archaeologists in a highly empirical manner

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/116075/7/116075.pdf
[ Reply to This ]

Reflections on ritual and identity at the time of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition by Andy B on Thursday, 01 November 2012
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The way we bury our dead. Reflections on mortuary ritual, community and identity at the time of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition
Liv Nilsson Stutz, Oxford College of Emory University, Oxford, USA

This paper discusses how archaeologists can approach ways in which the ritual treatment of the dead body was a means of reproducing a sense of identity and community in the past. The approach combines a theoretical framework grounded in practice and body theory with a methodological approach based on taphonomic analysis.

This framework is introduced to analyze the mortuarypractices at the Mesolithic cemeteries of Skateholm I and II, Vedbæk, Bøgebakken and Zvej- nieki.

Beyond the immediate context, the study seeks to reflect on how similarities and differencesnoticeable over time and space may provide an insight into changing identity processes

http://www.academia.edu/398337/The_way_we_bury_our_dead._Reflections_on_mortuary_ritual_community_and_identity_at_the_time_of_the_Mesolithic-Neolithic_transition
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The Vedbæk Finds Museum by Andy B on Thursday, 01 November 2012
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In a side building to the Gl Holtegaard art gallery you will find the archeological department of Rudersdal Museum: Vedbækfundene (the Vedbæk Finds Museum)

Here you can experience unique finds from Danish prehistory. In the main exhibition a reconstruction of the life in the Stone Age Denmark, containing both graves and lifelike dioramas, will bring you back in time. The Special Exhibitions gives you the opportunity of meeting Jacob – a bog skeleton from the Iron Age, admiring beautiful neckpieces from the Bronze Age and much more...

Opening hours
Tuesday-Friday 12-16
Saturday-Sunday 12-17

Admission fee for adults
Children under 18 free

Visit the Vedbæk Finds Museum's website here
http://museer.rudersdal.dk/FrontEnd.aspx?id=529
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Vedbæk mesolithic cemetery by Andy B on Thursday, 01 November 2012
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Eternal Humanity

The burial site lies by the inlet of a cold sea. The ground is uneven to the foot, hummocked with an unknown number of older graves. The people there that day, though, aren’t thinking of those already buried: their purpose is only to give the earth two more of the dead.

At the base of the gaping grave lies a platform made of narrow beams of wood, widely spaced. The girl’s body is placed upon it, neatly: stretched out, arms at her side. This was her eighteenth year. Someone crouches at the graveside and lifts her head, sliding beneath it one of her dresses, bundled up. It was her pride and joy, covered with many scores of pendants made of wild pig and red deer teeth. She’s wearing her second-favourite dress already, the hip area of which is adorned with snail shells and carefully-perforated deer, elk and seal teeth.

Beside her there is a swan’s wing, pristine against the dirt. The baby is laid upon it gently, its feet just beside the girl’s right hand. Tiny, newborn, dead. Again someone crouches by the grave, and this time places a heavy flint knife across the baby’s belly.

Rusty red ochre is now scattered thickly across the infant, the girl’s head, and her pelvis. Perhaps someone says words of religion, of comfort, of grief. Perhaps someone (or many people) have been speaking all this time – or singing, or playing music, or weeping. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. The girl and the baby were buried eight thousand years ago, in a site we now call Vedbaek-Bogebakken, in a country we now call Denmark.

Vedbaek 8

This burial (Grave 8 at Vedbaek) is well-known, in the circles of prehistoric archaeology, for the particular poignancy of the baby on a swan’s wing. It is easy to forget the humanity of an adult burial, to forget that the bones were once part of a living person. Archaeology is about the physical remains of the past: so bones are interpreted, studied, analysed. Except in areas of the world where there is post-colonial conflict over “ownership” of ancient human remains (e.g. Australia, North America), interpreting the bones through anything other than scientific evidence is a definite no-no.

But for one exception: infants tend to awaken an emotional response. And this particular one – only aged eight or nine months of foetal age – is doubly humanised in the grave for that swan’s wing beneath it. It becomes so easy to imagine a grieving relative laying it tenderly on the swan’s wing. So easy to imagine a little sad story of death in childbirth. So easy to imagine mourners weeping at the graveside. What’s the evidence for that emotional interpretation? Well, they were human too.

Source: Emily writing at
http://emilydreams.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/eternal-humanity/
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