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Abstract
Despite a growing body of evidence concerning accelerated organic degradation at archaeological sites, there have been few follow-up investigations to examine the status of the remaining archaeological materials in the ground. To address the question of archaeo-organic preservation, we revisited the Swedish, Mesolithic key-site Ageröd and could show that the bone material had been subjected to an accelerated deterioration during the last 75 years, which had destroyed the bones in the areas where they had previously been best preserved. To understand why this has happened and to quantify and qualify the extent of the organic degradation, we here analyse the soil chemistry, bone histology, collagen preservation and palaeobotany at the site. Our results show that the soil at Ageröd is losing, or has already lost, its preservative and buffering qualities, and that pH-values in the still wet areas of the site have dropped to levels where no bone preservation is possible. Our results suggest that this acidification process is enhanced by the release of sulphuric acid as pyrite in the bones oxidizes. While we are still able to find well-preserved palaeobotanical remains, they are also starting to corrode through re-introduced oxygen into the archaeological layers. While some areas of the site have been more protected through redeposited soil on top of the archaeological layers, all areas of Ageröd are rapidly deteriorating. Lastly, while it is still possible to perform molecular analyses on the best-preserved bones from the most protected areas, this opportunity will likely be lost within a few decades. In conclusion, we find that if we, as a society, wish to keep this valuable climatic, environmental and cultural archive, both at Ageröd and elsewhere, the time to act is now and if we wait we will soon be in a situation where this record will be irretrievably lost forever.
Highlights
When working with organic remains from archaeological sites, researchers have noticed that remains stored at museums are often in a better condition compared to what is recovered on more recent excavations
The site was deemed appropriate for this purpose due to the large amounts of organic remains recovered on two former excavations of the site and because it is located in a secluded part of southern Sweden, which has not seen any major road constructions, railroads or modern buildings in the close vicinity of the site
The intrusions to the site do not, in general, exceed the minimum damage done to most other archaeological wetland sites in Northern Europe; that is, the site has been drained with low technological means and no mechanical pumps or major drainage channels have been used
Summary
When working with organic remains from archaeological sites, researchers have noticed that remains stored at museums are often in a better condition compared to what is recovered on more recent excavations. In an attempt to investigate the archaeo-organic preservation conditions, quantify the ongoing degradation and understand why the bones are rapidly deteriorating, a multiproxy approach to investigate different aspects of organic preservation and the soil properties related to the organic remains recovered at the 2019 re-excavation at the site is used. The present study shall be viewed as a part of investigating the prerequisites for the future survival of our long-term archaeo-environmental archive of climatic and environmental changes and/or its relation to past human cultural interaction [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], in a time when reports of ongoing and accelerated destruction of this valuable record emerge from all over the world [1, 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]
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