Archaeologists have identified traces of deerskin clothing and a woodpecker-feather headdress in the grave of a Stone Age boy buried more than 7,000 years ago at a site in southern Sweden, offering a rare glimpse into Mesolithic funerary dress.
The findings come from Skateholm, a Late Mesolithic cemetery near the Baltic Sea coast used by hunter-gatherer groups between 5200 and 4800 B.C. A study published on February 20 in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences details evidence of organic materials recovered from 35 burials at the site, drawn from 139 soil samples.
A technique that reads soil
The discovery was made possible by a newly developed analytical method that detects microscopic traces of hair and feathers in burial soil. Researchers sieved and centrifuged soil samples, then examined the remaining microparticles under a microscope, alongside fragments of bone, flint, charcoal, and seeds.
Tuija Kirkinen, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki and lead researcher on the study, explained the significance: “In general, fur, plant fibres and other soft organic materials have been recovered only under specific conditions, such as in underwater sites or in glaciers. With our method, it is possible to find microscopic fibres even in areas with poor preservation conditions.”
Mammalian hairs appeared in 20 of the graves examined. Only 25% of those samples could be matched to a specific animal, with identifications including otters, deer, and cows.
What the graves contained
In the grave holding both a child and an adult male, excavators also found brown-bear teeth, amber beads, bone and stone tools, and red ocher. A soil sample taken from the space between the two individuals produced one deer hair and what researchers identified as a possible woodpecker feather, suggesting the child was buried wearing a deerskin garment and a feathered headdress.
At least 21 individuals across the site were buried with feathers, many originating from waterfowl species. Several feather particles concentrated in soil from the head-and-neck region of multiple burials point toward the use of headdresses.
One grave containing a young adult male produced an especially varied assemblage. Hair from a mountain hare, a weasel or stoat, a bat, and an owl were all recovered from around the skull. Red-deer tooth beads found in the same area suggest the man wore decorative headgear combining multiple animals.
An older woman’s grave added further detail to the picture. Soil samples from around her neck contained waterfowl feathers consistent with a headdress or feather-fringed cape. At her right heel, researchers found a white hair from a weasel or stoat and a brown hair from an unidentified carnivore, indicating she had been interred wearing multicolored footwear assembled from different animal pelts.
Rewriting what survives
Organic materials rarely survive in terrestrial archaeological sites, which has historically skewed the record toward durable objects like stone tools and bone ornaments. The Skateholm findings suggest that elaborate textile and feather-work traditions existed among Mesolithic communities in northern Europe far earlier than the physical evidence has previously shown.
The method Kirkinen’s team applied could now be used to re-examine soil archives from other ancient burial sites where perishable materials were long assumed to have vanished entirely.
Photo by Carl Tronders on Unsplash
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