Pitkin poikin Aurajokea - Arkeologisia tutkimuksia

In 2011–14, the Museum Centre of Turku conducted archaeological excavations at the site of a 19th-century burial ground. The excavations were connected with building work done at the site. During the excavations, 45 graves were detected of which 37 were thoroughly documented. Eight of the observed graves did not coincide with the construction site and these where left untouched. The graves were preserved to different degrees: some were almost completely decomposed while others were quite well preserved. The bodies had been placed in simple wooden coffins. Some of the coffins were placed in the same pit side by side and on top of each other in two layers. Some of them included plant remains such as straw or twigs that had been placed under the body, especially under the head. Three of the burials contained a small metal Orthodox cross pendant and two of the graves showed signs of amputated legs. One of these was a young man whose left lower leg (tibia) had been amputated. He had died before the amputation had begun to heal. Still, the off-cut part of the leg had not been included in the burial. The other case was an amputated femur that was found in a grave where the buried individual had two whole legs. It seems that the off-cut part was buried in another person’s coffin. However, it is possible that the femur belonged in the coffin on top of the one it was found in, since this quite decomposed coffin had partly collapsed into the nether one. This burial ground has not been marked on maps. Human bones and burials were first found there in the early 21th century, when the area was constructed into a residential zone. In the 1970s, when bones were again found, the museum was informed that this was a Cholera burial ground. Indeed, historical sources confirm that a Cholera burial ground had been founded somewhere in the area in 1831, during the first epidemic. However, two major questions remain. First, why was the burial ground forgotten so soon after its use period? In 1905 when the residential area was being built, newspapers reported the finds of mysterious human bones as if there was no recollection of a burial ground founded there only around 70 years earlier. Moreover, only ten years earlier, in 1895, a local newspaper reported that funds were appropriated for building a fence around the Cholera burial ground, since relatives of the deceased were distressed about the neglected state of the graves. The second question might provide a clue for the first one. All 14 of the deceased whose sex was possible to estimate were male. All were adults, except one was juvenile. Moreover, the Orthodox cross pendants and amputated legs (together with earlier observations of soldier clothing) seem to point towards Russian soldiers. The Cholera burial ground of the Russian military hospital did indeed situate close to the area. However, if the area excavated was mainly in use by the Russian troops, it would mean that the burial ground of ordinary townspeople is still to be located. Continued excavations in the area may shed more light to this question.</p

Cases of trisomy 21 and trisomy 18 among historic and prehistoric individuals discovered from ancient DNA

Aneuploidies, and in particular, trisomies represent the most common genetic aberrations observed in human genetics today. To explore the presence of trisomies in historic and prehistoric populations we screen nearly 10,000 ancient human individuals for the presence of three copies of any of the target autosomes. We find clear genetic evidence for six cases of trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) and one case of trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome), and all cases are present in infant or perinatal burials. We perform comparative osteological examinations of the skeletal remains and find overlapping skeletal markers, many of which are consistent with these syndromes. Interestingly, three cases of trisomy 21, and the case of trisomy 18 were detected in two contemporaneous sites in early Iron Age Spain (800-400 BCE), potentially suggesting a higher frequency of burials of trisomy carriers in those societies. Notably, the care with which the burials were conducted, and the items found with these individuals indicate that ancient societies likely acknowledged these individuals with trisomy 18 and 21 as members of their communities, from the perspective of burial practice

Cemetery Considerations: The Case of Nokia Viik, Finland

Finnish cairn sites are typically defined through the concepts of ‘grave’ or ‘cemetery’, their main purpose being associated with burials. However, when one examines cemetery-related contexts in Iron Age Finland, they exhibit a great deal of variation with regard to the existence of interments, how they can be identified, and how they correlate with other finds. The case study, a re-examination of Cairn 4 at Nokia Viik, excavated in 1986–1987, illustrates some of these issues. With a focus on understanding the chronology, osteology, formation, and more detailed spatial character of the cairn, it is revealed that the monument has been accumulated over several centuries and includes elements that cannot easily be explained as individual burials or even cremation remains in a collective grave context. The site’s timespan extends from the Late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period to the Merovingian Period and the Viking Age, where especially the latter periods seem to include deposited materials not related to any actual or distinguishable funerals. One major issue addressed is how to interpret complex structures, where distinct burials are difficult to define, and human remains only occur as one component