Eight Human Skulls in a Dung Heap and More

Abstract

In 2000, during an archaeological excavation in the terp of Englum in the province of Groningen (the Netherlands), a peculiar finds assemblage was uncovered.1 It consisted of eight, incomplete, human skulls, piled-up cattle legs, three broken pots with perforated bases, and bone fragments of cattle and sheep, which were found together in a massive dung layer from the third century BC. Scrutinizing the assemblage in all its details made it possible to interpret it as a ritual deposit: the bones and objects were placed in the dung layer as part of a ritual that was performed when a small dwelling mound, an early terp, was enlarged with a substantial amount of cattle dung. Dung was often used in house platforms in this former salt marsh area, because of its insulating qualities. This intriguing find was the incentive to this study on the remains of rituals in the terp region of the northern Netherlands. Englum became a case study in the book. The finds from this terp gave rise to various questions, which have become leading in this investigation: Can we distinguish different types of ritual on the basis of the finds from the archaeological record? What role did ritual practice play in daily life? What was the common way to deal with the dead and what was the role of human remains in ritual practice? Can we say something about religious beliefs on the basis of the finds? Can we trace changes in ritual practice through time and relate them to social, cultural, political or environmental changes? The opportunity to include a much larger dataset in this study arose in 2011, when the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) funded a research project on the finds from the terp of Ezinge. This terp was excavated in the 1920s and 1930s by the famous professor A.E. van Giffen, but the re-