A bolt from the blue: investigations of a singular Bronze Age grave from the Chalcolithic site Ruginoasa (north-eastern Romania)

The article presents the context and multiple investigations of an unexpected discovery, made during the 2020 excavations, from the Ruginoasa-Dealul Ruginii Chalcolithic site in north-eastern Romania. The site, known before our research (aerial photography, geomagnetic survey, test trenches) only for its visible traces of WW2, belongs to the Cucuteni culture, phase A, and consists of five rows of burned dwellings and several pits. The surprise, and central to this paper, is a burial grave belonging to the Late Bronze Age (LBA), Noua culture, dug into the filling of a Chalcolithic clay extraction pit, consisting of a crouched human male and its funeral inventory—an animal deposition and a small ceramic vessel. For an exact chronology of the features, samples of bones were dated by AMS radiocarbon (of both the human and animal skeletons from the grave). Also, thorough anthropological investigations, analysis of dental wear of the human skeleton, archaeozoological analysis of the animal skeleton deposited as an offering and analysis of Phytoliths from several areas of the grave were applied. Although the paper presents a single burial, the results obtained from applying multiple interdisciplinary methods bring a series of unique insights (anthropological profile, rite and ritual, special status) regarding the end of the Bronze Age in north-eastern Romania, a period still insufficiently known.