The mourners selected an exceptional bronze drinking vessel known as a situla to hold his cremated remains. A series of fabulous objects – many imported from afar – were selected as grave goods: two horse bridles with rich ornaments and bits, yoke components, textiles, a butchering knife, an axe, two razors, a drinking bowl, and a long sword that was richly decorated with gold, bronze, worked bone, and lead. During his funeral, the blade of the sword was bent round and wrapped in a woollen cloth – the latter was also done with his tools and iron rings from the yoke. In life these possessions spoke of the man’s high status within his community and his ability to maintain contacts with elites across Europe. In death they would do the same.
Everything was carefully placed in the urn, which was then interred in a Bronze Age burial mound that lay within an ancient funerary landscape. By selecting this already ancient barrow they created a connection with the ancestor buried here. They then constructed a new mound over it. At 53 metres in diameter, its size spoke of the man’s standing. It is the largest burial mound known in the Netherlands: the Chieftain’s grave of Oss.
Elite burials
The Chieftain’s grave of Oss is not an isolated phenomenon. For over a century, archaeologists
