Human bones in Salme I boat-grave, the island of Saaremaa; Estonia

In the autumn of 2008 human and animal bones came to light during the cabling works in the village of Salme, on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia. Some days later a contour of an ancient boat was discovered. The ancient boat, as well as human and animal bones inside it, dates to the second half of the 7th century or the beginning of the 8th century. The osteological analyses of the human bone material featured the specific quality of this burial-skeletal remains of seven men, which are unknown in the boat- and ship-burials around the Baltic Sea and in the broader context of Northern Europe. The absence of bones of dogs and horses, which are very common in Scandinavian boat- and ship-burials, is also exceptional

Occasional archaeological human skeletal remains from Läänemaa, Western Estonia

During archaeological excavations in 2012 human skeletal remains were recovered from two sites in Läänemaa: four 16th–17th centuries skeletons from Ehte Street in the town of Haapsalu and two Late Iron Age (12th–13th cc.) skeletons from the Maidla grave-field. The skeletal data from Läänemaa are scanty, thus anthropological analyses of these occasionally found remains were conducted and some characteristics of body build were calculated

OBSERVATIONS ON ESTONIAN IRON AGE CREMATIONS

Several Estonian burial places with cremations were investigated in the period 1997 to 2011. During the research, various descriptive and metric data on cremated bone materials was observed. The present paper is an attempt to systematise and interpret the data collected, in order to provide some generalisations on Estonian cremations. A comparative study of graves on the basis of the minimum number of buried individuals and the number of determined bone finds in graves, as well as bone fragmentation, is presented. Radiocarbon dating (AMS method) of burnt human bones from six investigated graves was conducted in order to specify the usage time of the graves. Some conclusions on possible temporal changes and cultural differences in burial practices are made on the basis of these characteristics. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/ab.v19i0.272 Key words: cremation, Iron Age, bone fragment size, radiocarbon dates, cremated bone, Estonia

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Conventional ageing and sexing methods based on teeth and dry bone morphology in the person’s identification (victims of red terror in 1946)

Human skeletal remains exhumated from the post-war multiple grave in Southern Estonia were anthropologically analysed. Conventional ageing and sexing methods were used to esimate biological sex and age at death of buried people. The blind test was carried out by two independent researchers; the obtained results were compared with historic data concerning the chronological age at death and the sex of buried people

Physical anthropology and bioarchaeology at the Institute of History in the last 20 years

Human populations and their history have been studied at the Institute of History since 1952 when the young researcher Karin Mark started her career here. Later, Karin Mark became a leading researcher in palaeoanthro pology and somatology of Finno-Ugric peoples, and her working group grew. At the end of the 1980s, Leiu Heapost took over the position as group leader in anthropological research. In 1988 Raili Allmäe and in 2004 Jana Limbo-Simovart joined the group. Since 1998, Estonian research has been project-based; in the present paper we give a brief overview of our anthropological research at the Institute of History (and its descendants) in the last twenty years

The content of chemical elements in archaeological human bones as a source of nutrition research

The aim of the present research was to determine chemical elements using the inductive plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) in Estonian archaeological human bones to establish the possible content of the menu in different communities. Among the studied material clear differentiation can be made between the Pärnu cemetery of St John’s church (the cemetery of the Pärnu garrison) from the 16–18th cc. and the Tääksi village cemetery from the 14–18th century. The material from the 12–13th cc. Pada cemetery remains between the two above-mentioned cemeteries concerning the content of the observed elements. The initial data show only the differences of the general trends of the content of chemical elements between the inland and the coastal areas, the village and the town, the higher and the lower social status communities. The contents of chemical elements in the Estonian archaeological bones were similar to the respective contents in Latvia

The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region

Correction: Nature communications 9 (2018), art. no. 1494 doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03872-yWhile the series of events that shaped the transition between foraging societies and food producers are well described for Central and Southern Europe, genetic evidence from Northern Europe surrounding the Baltic Sea is still sparse. Here, we report genome-wide DNA data from 38 ancient North Europeans ranging from similar to 9500 to 2200 years before present. Our analysis provides genetic evidence that hunter-gatherers settled Scandinavia via two routes. We reveal that the first Scandinavian farmers derive their ancestry from Anatolia 1000 years earlier than previously demonstrated. The range of Mesolithic Western hunter-gatherers extended to the east of the Baltic Sea, where these populations persisted without gene-flow from Central European farmers during the Early and Middle Neolithic. The arrival of steppe pastoralists in the Late Neolithic introduced a major shift in economy and mediated the spread of a new ancestry associated with the Corded Ware Complex in Northern Europe.Peer reviewe

Author Correction: The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region

The original version of this Article omitted references to previous work, which are detailed in the associated Author Correction. These omissions have been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article