Petrified animals: fossil beads from a Neolithic hunter-gatherer double burial at Zvejnieki in Latvia

The cemetery at Zvejnieki in Latvia was in use from c. 7500-2600 BC, spanning part of the regional Mesolithic and Neolithic. This article presents a reanalysis of finds from a double inhumation burial of a male and a female dating to 3786-3521 BC. A unique leg ornament associated with the female is composed of tubular beads. Previously believed to have been made of bird bone, reanalysis of 68 of these beads now demonstrates that they were produced from fossilised sea lilies (Crinoided). This new identification of a rarely recognised raw material is discussed in the context of other hunter-gatherer encounters with unusual materials and their environments. Keywords: Latvia, Baltic Sea, Mesolithic, hunter-gatherers, fossils, Crinoidea, tubular beads
Introduction The Zvejnieki cemetery in north-eastern Latvia (Figure 1) is one of the largest hunter-gatherer cemeteries in Northern Europe (Larsson et al. 2017). The site is located on a drumlin [...]