Remains at Bronze Age Funeral Pyre in Italy Analyzed

STONY BROOK, NEW YORK—According to a Gizmodo report, researchers including Federica Crivellaro of Stoney Brook University have returned to a Late Bronze Age cremation platform discovered in northern Italy in the 1980s for additional study. Known as Salorno, the site was in use from about 1150 to 950 B.C. Usually, remains were buried after a body was burned on a cremation platform, but at Salorno, they were left in place. The team members estimate the remains represent from 48 to 172 people, in addition to animal bone fragments, pottery, and bronze burial goods. The estimate takes into account the possibility that some of the bones may have been removed and buried, Crivellaro explained. “Salorno must have been a ‘sacred’ place for its community, in the way it was chosen but also protected from being looted or destroyed, but we cannot assess why exactly,” she said. It may have been reserved for a small number of families or elites over a period of generations, Crivellaro surmised. To read about a massive wooden pool structure where a Bronze Age culture in northern Italy performed water rituals some 3,500 years ago, go to "Italian Master Builders."