Twin Burials in Prehistory Iron Age Germany

(Not where bodies were found, but most likely very similar to what the structure looked like during that time period. The bodies were found buried under the house posts)

 The idea of twin burials first appeared to me when I came across Carly McNeill's blog post on Ice Age twins that had been found buried together thousands of years ago (here's the link to her blog so you can check it out http://archaeologyofdeathandburials.blogspot.ca/). I wanted to see if any other cultures experienced or had commonalities when dealing with twin burials. I wasn't able to locate much information on twin burials but there was one abstract ( I wasn't able to access the full article but still.. good information for a blog post) on an Iron Age settlement that was uncovered on 2001 near Ochtendung, Germany. Two skeletons of perinatal infants in shallow impression were found in postholes of a settlement (Flohr, S. 2012). The infants that were found seemed to have buried without care and one was face down (Flohr, S. 2012). There were no artifacts found with the bodies and they appeared to be between 36- 40 weeks (Flohr, S. 2012). Investigation of the bones concludes that they died around the same stage of development; evidence also suggests that they were most likely related (Flohr, S. 2012). Ideas were proposed that these individuals may have been used for sacrificial purposes but were quickly denied due to the careless treatment of the bodies and how/where they were buried (Flohr, S. 2012). I really would have liked to been able to read the whole article but alas this is all I could piece together. It would be interesting to cross examine different cultures around this time to try and indicate if the birth or burial of twins was common during these early time periods. It would be interesting to see if burials such as these could be seen cross culturally, was it related to religion? Sacrifice? Or was a family simply the mourning the loss of young lives by keeping their bodies close to their dwellings. In any case I found this article along with Carly's to be extremely interesting when examining infant burial practices. 

 Source: Flohr, S. (2012), Twin Burials in Prehistory: A Possible Case from the Iron Age of Germany. Int. J. Osteoarchaeol.. doi: 10.1002/oa.2236