Prehistoric Burial

Thanks to HFO, here we have two articles looking at the 4,000-year-old cremation burial of a young woman.  The grave goods include not only her tin and Baltic amber jewels, but the fur in which they were buried with her bones and the box in which they were sealed, under a peat mound.

At the second of the two article links, the photographs are accompanied by a very good summary of the objects found, including decoration and basketry which are of extremely fine craftsmanship.  Very much worth a look; even the information about the animal artifacts is illuminating.  Also interesting is the judgment that the subject of the burial was female, based on the jewelry.  This assertion may be backed up by objective factors I am not privy to, but the bald face of it is "pretty stuff equals gurly stuff" - which is an interesting reduction in itself ... perhaps ...

As to the jewelry, the possible wooden ear plugs are made *exactly* the same way modern ear-stretching plugs are today.  As my brother put it, "They buried a hipster!"

Aww.  Hee.

Also, "peat hag" is the coolest phrase I've come across today.  I'd have said "all weekend" but I got together with the SBC yesterday, and my writing friends and colleagues would be hard to top, cool phrase-wise.