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| Commingled crania and articulated elements at the excavation site. |
During an excavation in 1971, several articulated skeletons were found but they were not recovered. Later, in May 2001, only tens of metres from that area, human remains were unearthed during the broadening of a small gravelled road. Using radiocarbon analysis, the bones were dated to to 1440– 1650 AD at 95% probability. On the basis of the dating and location of the grave, the skeletal assemblage could be associated with the Battle of Good Friday. This battle confrontation occurred on the morning of 6 April in 1520, Good Friday, when Swedish troops attacked the Danish troops stationed in the town of Uppsala. In order to conduct a more detail investigation, an excavation supervised by the antiquarian Bent Syse at the provincial museum Upplandsmuseet was performed.
The mass was considered a secondary burial, since the commingled bones had been moved after the death of the victims and been secondarily deposited in the pits. The bones recovered were in general in a good state of preservation and belonged to at least 60 individuals. The analysis of the pelvis indicates a sample substantially dominated by males and the individuals had an age estimate between 14–34 years. The average stature of the males based on the femur was 174.5cm.
A total of 92 blade wounds were registered on the skulls. 85 blade wounds could be noted on 31 (60%) of the 52 (MNI) crania and seven blade wounds were found on six (18%) of the 33 commingled mandibulae. Also, of the blade wounds identified to either side of the skull, the parietal bones were the most often affected cranial bones on both sides. The author explains the sharp force trauma as “when analysed in detail, the trauma patterns indicate that the men were trying to escape or at least did not meet their enemy in a traditional face-to-face situation. The low prevalence of typical defence injuries, the high number of posterior injuries, the comparatively few frontal wounds on the crania, the large number of horizontal cranial wounds and the lack of a left side dominance among the wounds, all imply that most of the men in the burial were not standing upright facing the antagonists. Furthermore, scarce protective gear reflected by the trauma pattern, signs of a standardised weapon technique, and the low occurrence of antemortem injuries suggest that the victims were Swedes. Moreover, the taphonomic aspects of the skeletal remains show that the violent battle was only the beginning of a wait of several months before the men were finally buried.”
Photo: Bent Syse/Upplandsmuseet
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