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Archaeologists in Sweden have see an ancient iron pocket knife jabbed into the burying of an Iron Age woman . The graveyard , which dates to between 500 B.C. and 400 A.D. , contained at least 50 burials , but this one was particularly unusual .
The people who buried the woman century ago " stuck the knife in ; we do n’t eff why , but it is clean that it is intend for the woman , " Moa Gillberg , an archaeologist at Sweden ’s National Historical Museums , said in a translatedstatement .
Moa Gillberg, an archaeologist at Sweden’s National Historical Museums, excavates one of the Pryssgården Iron Age graves.
The burial ground was uncovered in the southern Swedish borough of Pryssgården , about 105 miles ( 169 kilometers ) southwest of Stockholm . archaeologist were clued into its presence by a late-17th - century school text compose by the Swedish priest Ericus Hemengius , who was tasked with cataloging ancient cemeteries within his parish . But they were incertain if any of the graves survived into the 21st century .
During their preliminary investigations this past spring , archaeologists with the National Historical Museums establish some jewelry with alloy detectors . And while excavating , they identified ancient dwellings , a storehouse and a well , in gain to dozens of graves .
Most of the graves were pit where cremated remains were placed — a common burial rite in the Iron Age — but some were covered by small , symmetrically set Harlan Fiske Stone .
Tamara Gomez Kobayashi, an archaeologist at Sweden’s National Historical Museums, excavates an Iron Age burial in the borough of Pryssgården.
pertain : Early - mediaeval woman was buried with a rare item : a alloy folding chair
In one fussy grave , there was a thick , burn layer containing ashes and bone piece .
" When we dug down , we go through that they had put an atomic number 26 folding tongue straight into the earth , " Gillberg articulate . In improver to the knife , archeologist discovered a minor needle in the woman ’s grave .
The well - preserve knife may have been used for leather preparation , Gillberg said , but its presence and unusual position in the grave are not understand .
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tongue were useful objects in that time period ; they were useful for preparing food or making clothing , and they may have been used for self - defense . Other examples of women ’s graves with knife and needles from the former Iron Age and earlyViking Age(A.D. 793 to 1066 ) have been find in southern Sweden .
Further work at the Pryssgården land site is design . One pit that the archeologist recollect was a grave was actually a prominent posthole — evidence that some kind of Natalie Wood social system live there .
" We want to see if we can find more such pits , " Gillberg tell . " Sometimes you build monuments on the funeral pyre , so perhaps this was one of those . "
