LiveScience reports that the burial contains the remains of a father, son and four others.
LiveScience reports that a 1,200-year-old burial in Latvia contains the remains of a father, son and four others. The group may have been victims of a Viking raid.
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Archaeologists studying an unusual ninth-century grave in Latvia found evidence that at least three of the six people buried there died violently. Ancient DNA also revealed family ties among some of the dead, while genetic analysis pointed to local Baltic ancestry rather than predominantly Scandinavian ancestry.
The peer-reviewed study examined Burial 351 at the Čunkāni-Dreņģeri cemetery in the Zemgale region. Of 750 excavated inhumation graves at the site, only seven contained more than one person. Burial 351, which held four men, a boy and a girl, was the largest of those rare multiple burials.
Paleopathological analysis found sharp-force injuries inflicted around the time of death on three adult men. Live Science reports that one man had defensive cuts on his forearm and hand, another suffered a blow that shattered his jaw, and a third was nearly decapitated. The surviving bones did not reveal how the other man and two children died; soft-tissue injuries would not necessarily leave skeletal evidence.
DNA analysis identified one adult man as the boy’s father. Another man was a third-degree relative of the boy, a category that can include a first cousin or great-uncle, while two other men were not biologically related to the rest of the tested group. Researchers could not recover DNA from the girl.
The genetic profiles the team could analyze most closely resembled ancient Baltic populations. The bodies were also arranged according to Semigallian burial customs, supporting the conclusion that they were local people rather than Scandinavian Vikings.
The grave dates to the second half of the ninth century, during the early Viking Age. Despite the trauma, the six bodies were carefully positioned and accompanied by traditional grave goods. The researchers therefore describe the site as a multiple burial, not a mass grave where bodies had been deposited without order. The shared grave and orderly arrangement suggest the group died at about the same time and was buried by people who treated them with respect.
Who killed them remains unknown. The study says the date and evidence of violence raise the possibility of a Viking raid, and Scandinavian raiders or their predecessors were active elsewhere in the eastern Baltic during this period. But the wounds cannot identify the attackers. The group could instead have died in a battle involving a neighboring or local community, so the Viking explanation remains a hypothesis rather than a finding.
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