Riksantikvarieämbetet

In the current exhibition on Swedish prehistory at the Swedish History Museum, visitors can observe an extraordinarily emotive Stone Age grave containing the skeletons of a man and a small child. However, the grave was interpreted by the excavators as containing three skeletons. The third skeleton has for some reason been omitted from the exhibition altogether. At the time of the excavation the omitted skeleton was found without the cranium and was placed slightly below the bent legs of the other two skeletons. I argue that the three skeletons, although perhaps representing two burial episodes, should be regarded as relating to one another in a grave assemblage. Instead of presenting the cropped grave assemblage in order to discuss family norms in the past, as is the case in the current exhibition at the museum, we might instead exhibit the assemblage in its entirety as a means to discuss temporal and cultural variations in the attitudes towards "proper" graves, the body and the sacred.