Study has revealed new insights into Stone Age life and death, showing that stone tools were just as likely to be buried with women and children as with men.
The discovery, from Zvejnieki cemetery in northern Latvia, one of the largest Stone Age burial sites in Europe, challenges the idea that stone tools were strictly associated with men.
The site was used for more than 5,000 years, and contains over 330 graves, but until now, stone artefacts found in burials had not been studied, with stone tools at Zvejnieki and other Stone Age burial sites often disregarded as utilitarian and therefore uninteresting.
As part of the Stone Dead Project, led by Dr Aimée Little at the University of York, and working with the Latvian National Museum of History and colleagues across Europe, the team took a powerful microscope to Riga to look at how the tools were made and used.
The research showed that stone tools played a far deeper role in burial rituals, as not only were the tools discovered that had been used to work animal hides, but some tools appear to have been specifically made and then broken as part of funerary rites.
They found that women were as, or even more, likely than men to be buried with stone tools, and that children and older adults were the most common age group to receive stone artefacts.
The long-held stereotype of women in this era was that they played a more domestic role - cooking animals hunted by the men, doing crafts, and caring for the family.
Dr Aimée Little, from the Centre for Artefacts and Materials Analysis, part of the University of York's Department of Archaeology, said: "The site in Latvia has seen numerous investigations of the skeletal remains and other types of grave goods, such as thousands of animal teeth pendants.
"A missing part of the story was understanding, with greater depth, why people gave seemingly utilitarian items to the dead.
"Our findings overturn the old stereotype of "Man the Hunter" which has been a dominant theme in Stone Age studies, and has even influenced, on occasion, how some infants have even been sexed, on the basis that they were given lithic tools."
Dr Anđa Petrović, from the University of Belgrade, said: "This research demonstrates that we cannot make these gendered assumptions and that lithic grave goods played an important role in the mourning rituals of children and women, as well as men."
Tools that had never been used before, hint at their symbolic significance in burial practice, particularly as some tools appear to have been deliberately broken before being placed with the deceased, suggesting a shared ritual tradition across the eastern Baltic region where similar funerary practices have been noted.
Dr Little added: "The study highlights how much more there is to learn about the lives - and deaths - of Europe's earliest communities, and why even the seemingly simplest objects can unlock insights about our shared human past and how people responded to death."
The research, published in the journal PLOS One and in collaboration with University of Belgrade, University of Helsinki, the University of Latvia and University of Tartu, is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
