Recent Studies on the Formation of Iron Pans around the Oaken Log Coffins of the Bronze Age Burial Mounds of Denmark

Abstract

In 1921 a burial mound from the Danish Early Bronze Age was excavated near the village of Egtved, Central Jutland. The mound contained a well-preserved oaken log coffin with remnants of a young woman, the Egtved girl. The central parts of the mound including the coffin were surrounded by a strongly cemented iron pan from which a number of samples were taken. Previous finds of well preserved coffins showed similar iron pan formations and different theories on the development of these pans have been proposed, e.g. podzolization. During the last decade a number of new burial mounds containing iron pans have been excavated, unfortunately without well-preserved oaken log coffins. Chemical analyses have been carried out on soil samples from these newly excavated mounds and compared with similar analyses on samples from the iron pan of the Egtved mound. The results show that the iron pans of the Bronze Age burial mounds were formed by redox processes.