Ancient stinging nettles reveal Bronze Age trade connections

A piece of nettle cloth retrieved from Denmark's richest known Bronze Age burial mound Lusehøj may actually derive from Austria, new findings suggest. The cloth thus tells a surprising story about long-distance Bronze Age trade connections around 800 BC.

2,800 years ago, one of Denmark's richest and most powerful men died. His body was burned. And the bereaved wrapped his bones in a cloth made from stinging nettle and put them in a stately bronze container, which also functioned as urn.

Now new findings suggest that the man's voyage to his final resting place may have been longer than such voyages usually were during the Bronze Age: the nettle cloth, which was wrapped around the deceased's bones, was not made in Denmark, and the evidence points to present-day Austria as the place of origin.

"I expected the nettles to have grown in Danish soil on the island of Funen, but when I analysed the plant fibres' strontium isotope levels, I could see that this was not the case," explains postdoc Karin Margarita Frei from the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen [...] ScienceDaily

Actualización 30-09-12. Trozos de tela de ortigas revelan conexiones comerciales durante la Edad del Bronce en centroeuropa
Trozos de tela de ortigas, recuperados en el rico túmulo de enterramiento conocido como Lusehøj, en Dinamarca, y correspondiente a la Edad del Bronce, pueden en realidad proceder de Austria, según sugieren nuevos análisis. De este modo, los trozos de tela cuentan una historia sorprendente acerca de las conexiones comerciales de larga distancia durante la Edad del Bronce, alrededor de 800 años a.C....