The Hoarded Dead : Late Iron Age silver hoards as graves

Abstract

As archaeologists increasingly recognise alternative ways of dealing with death and burial – in heaps of fire-cracked stones, settlement debris etc. – new inquiries and alternative explanations may be presented. This paper proposes that the hoarding of precious metals was one way of burying the dead during the Scandinavian Late Iron Age, through the inclusion of a few of the dead person’s belongings, or objects thought to be good metaphors for him or her. The contents of the hoard, as well as the act of depositing it, were considered to be essential for the correct transition of the dead person into their new status in the afterlife. Thus, as part of a social contract between the dead and the living, it was in everybody’s interest to properly “create an ancestor”.