BURIED IN THE DUNES: CREMATION OF THE MIGRATION PERIOD ROSSON 11 IN THE NARVA–LUGA KLINT BAY AREA

Abstract

Cremation burials of the 1st millennium AD were probably one of the most spread but the least studied funeral traditions in the north-west of Eastern Europe. In 2013, a single cremation Rosson 11 was found in a rather untypical landscape in the Narva–Luga Klint Bay area, by the Russian–Estonian border. The burial was located at the foot of Kudruküla palaeospit, 1 km away from the shoreline of the Baltic Sea, in a plain and marshy area. Burnt bones might have belonged to one individual, presumably 15–45 years old, most likely female, as judged from anthropological evidence and assemblage of the preserved burial goods. Cremation was done elsewhere, and the remains were afterwards placed in an urn and a shallow pit. Besides the burnt bones, the contents included fragments of bronze ornamented plates, of a narrow cast bracelet with a longitudinal rib, a fragment of an iron artefact, and fragments of hand-built pottery. The chronology of typologically pronounced finds allows to date the burial within 5th–6th c. AD. A burnt bone fragment was dated by AMS, within the interval from 420 to 560 cal AD. The Rosson 11 burial differs from burials with stone constructions known in the Izhora Plateau, as well as from Pskov Long Barrows and eastern Lithuanian barrows, although there are many parallels to the bracelet and other finds from the site. This burial can be considered as an evidence that the population of Ingeria did use the coastal landscape in the second half of the 1st millennium AD.