Macabre Finds In The Bog At Alken Enge, Iron Age Warriors Ritually Sacrificed

Credit: Fotograf Rikke Grøn Larsson. Foto/Media department Moesgaard  
    
‘It’s clear that this must have been a quite far-reaching and dramatic event that must have had profound effect on the society of the time,’ explains Project Manager Mads Kähler Holst, professor of archaeology at Aarhus University.

For almost two months now, Dr Holst and a team of fifteen archaeologists and geologists have been working to excavate the remains of a large army that was sacrificed at the site around the time of the birth of Christ. The skeletal remains of hundreds of warriors lie buried in the Alken Enge wetlands near Lake Mossø in East Jutland, Denmark.

The remains will be exhumed from the excavation site over the coming days. Then an international team of researchers will attempt to discover who these warriors were and where they came from by performing detailed analyses of the remains.

‘The dig has produced a large quantity of skeletal remains, and we believe that they will give us the answers to some of our questions about what kind of events led up to the army ending up here,’ explains Dr Holst.

Forty hectares of remains

The archaeological investigation of the site is nearing its conclusion for this year. But there are many indications that the find is much larger than the area archaeologists have excavated thus far.

‘We’ve done small test digs at different places in the 40 hectare Alken Enge wetlands area, and new finds keep emerging,’ says Field Director Ejvind Hertz of Scanderborg Museum, who is directing the dig. 

This is the first skull from the 2012 dig with a mortal wound caused by a spear or an arrow.

Credit: Curator Ejvind Hertz, Skanderborg Museum