Cremation grave
Intro
The roundabout where you are standing was constructed in 1998, during which Skanderborg Museum dug up a well-preserved urn from the Late Bronze Age with burnt bones inside. The site is called a cremation grave, and this one is about 3,000 years old.
In 2010, the museum dug further into the area and several interesting finds emerged, including two graves, four pits and a posthole.
One of the graves dates back to the single grave culture of the Stone Age, around 2,500 BC. At that time, the dead were buried in a shallow hole in the subsoil, and then a small mound was built on top. When another person needed to be buried, the same mound was often used for a new hole. In this way, mounds of the single grave culture may hold several graves. Archaeologists talk about the bottom grave, the ground grave and the upper grave. The upper graves often being the most damaged when farmers ploughed them over.
It is probably a bottom grave which the museum found, and possibly a woman’s grave. In the single grave culture women, were buried with heads towards the east, and the museum found some amber beads at the eastern end, but no remains of the dead were found.
The second grave was found about 14 meters from the first, and it is a completely diffent type. It originated in the Iron Age around the year zero plus or minus 400 to 500 years. The grave was quite small, so it was probably a child’s grave, but contained no remains of the dead. The grave contained two earthen pots which help determine the date. These were a drinking cup and a bowl – maybe for sustenance on the journey.