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Norwegian Archaeological Review
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sarc20
Creating a sense of belonging: religion and
migration in the context of the 3rd millennium BC
Corded Ware complex in the eastern and northern
Baltic Sea region
Marja Ahola
To cite this article: Marja Ahola (2020): Creating a sense of belonging: religion and migration in
the context of the 3rd millennium BC Corded Ware complex in the eastern and northern Baltic Sea
region, Norwegian Archaeological Review, DOI: 10.1080/00293652.2020.1852305
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2020.1852305
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group.
Published online: 29 Dec 2020.
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Creating a sense of belonging: religion and
migration in the context of the 3
rd
millennium BC Corded Ware complex in
the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region
MARJA AHOLA
Although not often discussed in an archaeological context, religion plays an
important role in human migrations by working as an anchor of collective
identity and distinction among the migrants. By establishing permanent religious
structures – such as burials – the newcomers can also use religion as a tool to
indicate an enduring presence in their new homeland. Remarkably, such practices
can also be seen among the groups connected with the Corded Ware complex that
migrated and settled in the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region roughly
5000 years ago. According to the material remains of the mortuary practices
associated with this complex, these people did not travel alone; they carried with
them a novel religion. Dened in this paper as a ‘steppe-originated religion’, this
belief system continued mortuary practices known from the Pontic Steppe, while
also incorporating material and ritual elements from different regions over the
course of time. Despite this syncretism, the core ideas of the religion nevertheless
persisted. As these ideas seem to relate to the mixing of past and present genera-
tions, as well as the merging of homeland and new land, this religion could have
provided much-needed aid and comfort for a people on the move.
INTRODUCTION
Roughly 5000 years ago, cord-decorated
pottery and battle axes (Fig. 1) of the so-
called Corded Ware Complex (henceforth
CWC) appeared in the eastern and northern
Baltic Sea region (e.g., Lõugas et al. 2007,
Nordqvist and Häkälä 2014, Nordqvist
2016, 2018).
1
According to recent genetic
analyses (Saag et al. 2017, Mittnik et al.
2018), these pots and axes did not travel
alone, but along with new genetic lineages –
new people – who also arrived in the area.
Although the picture is still largely blurred,
the genetic data nevertheless allow us to
move past the discussion of whether the
migration event ever occurred, and to step
into a more nuanced discussion of the rele-
vance of the different aspects of the reloca-
tions (cf. Trabert 2019). Indeed, in the eld
of migration studies these nuanced discus-
sions are now a regular part of the ongoing
debate, as they aim to understand issues
related to migration and gender, explain
community creation, and investigate migrant
group identity, to mention but a few of their
Marja Ahola, Email: marja.ahola@helsinki. Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
ARTICLE Norwegian Archaeological Review, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2020.1852305
subjects (Gold and Nawyn 2013). Although
archaeological research lacks the privilege of
access to the realm of living tradition, asso-
ciated questions have nonetheless recently
been addressed, for instance by investigating
the signicance of the migrants’ material cul-
ture (e.g., Naum 2015, Holmqvist et al. 2018,
Trabert 2019).
This paper contributes to the more rened
discussion on prehistoric migrations by explor-
ing the CWC migration to the eastern and
northern Baltic Sea region from the perspective
of religion. Although not often discussed in an
archaeological context, religion plays an impor-
tant role in human migrations. For example, in
forced migration, religious identity is often the
root cause of the ight, while also offering emo-
tional support for the immigrants (Goździak
and Shandy 2002). According to Paul Johnson
(2012), religion migrates with people because
migrants can carry religion with them more
easily than, for example, agricultural, architec-
tural, or culinary cultural clusters. Aside from
being easy to carry, religion also works as an
anchor for collective identity and distinction
among the migrants.
However, religion does not come without
politics and power. On the contrary, political
and religious actions are largely entangled. For
example, the manipulation of traditional ritual
practices has been seen as a way to legitimize
political change, by framing the new within the
symbolism of the old (Kertzer 1988). For exam-
ple, early Christians commonly built their
churches on locations of prior sacred sites
(Grinsell 1986). Such practice not only saved
time from constructing a new building; the mes-
sage of the new religion was probably trans-
mitted more easily from a location where
people had previously been accustomed to per-
form their religious practices. However, cosmo-
logical knowledge can also be formalized in its
structuring principles through completely new
religious practices (Fowles 2013). Aside from
converting people to this cosmological knowl-
edge by force, the introduction of new religious
practices might also happen as a broadly parti-
cipatory action that can be promoted, e.g., as
a way for the participants to gain access to new
supernatural powers (Baltus and Wilson 2019).
At the same time, however, the introduction of
these practices can bring power to the indivi-
duals that have access to this esoteric knowl-
edge and the expertise to conduct these
practices. In the context of migration, such pro-
cesses might be able to change even the socio-
political organization of the area of
immigration.
Despite the important role of religion in
human migrations, religion and its role in the
3
rd
millennium BC migrations have remained
largely an untouched subject. This is not
entirely surprising, since the denition of ‘reli-
gion’ has long been connected with cultural
evolutionist thinking, in which monotheism is
seen as superior to concepts such as animism,
Fig. 1. A Corded Ware beaker and two battle axes
discovered at the Tammenmäki site, Finland. Photo:
M. Haverinen 2010, Finnish Heritage Agency.
2Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
magic, and ancestral cults (Bielo 2015, pp. 6–7).
At the same time, the denition of ‘religion’ is
also seen specically as a Christian project
(Asad 1993), as well as an expression of
Western colonialism, in which a division
between sacred and profane is forced on sys-
tems that did not foster such a dichotomy (van
der Veer 2014). Consequently, it has been pro-
posed that the whole concept of religion is
inapplicable to non-Western contexts
(Dubuisson 2007), and that there cannot even
be a universal denition of religion, as all such
denitions reect more of their historical and
ideological context than the phenomenon itself
(Asad 1993, p. 29).
However, to make the denition of religion
more inclusive, recent theoretical advances
emphasize religious practices and the materi-
ality of religion over inner belief separated
from an action (e.g., Fogelin 2008a, Meyer
et al. 2010, Fowles 2013, Christensen et al.
2013, Baltus and Wilson 2019). As Baltus and
Wilson (2019, p. 439) explain:
The performative processes of religion provide
the means by which ideologies and cosmologies
are lived, experienced, transmitted, and trans-
formed. These practices are material - engaging
things and places that are powerful or vibrant (à
la Bennet 2010) - as well as multiscalar, occurring
on a personal, daily level as well as part of larger
communal events.
Indeed, when emphasising religious practices
and the materiality of religion, it becomes evi-
dent that things, bodies, places, and practices
are not something added to a religion, but
rather are inseparable from it (Meyer et al.
2010). For example, icons or talismans are not
inanimate objects, but agencies within them-
selves. Similarly, places are the scene between
bodies, things, and practices in which religion
happens. Since religion is even ‘unable to do
without things, places, or bodies’ (Meyer et al.
2010, p. 210), the material record of prehistoric
religions is, in fact, no less important than more
recent sources concerning questions of inner
belief and experience, only harder to reach. To
put it differently, even though the dogma
behind the archaeological record might be
long gone, the phenomenon can nevertheless
be studied further by investigating how, when,
and where this religion happened materially.
Since the immaterial is made material
through religious practices, a dialectic must
also exist between ritual and religion (Fogelin
2007). As Fogelin (2007, p. 56) explains, this
means that aspects of one are necessarily
related to the other. Accordingly, by investi-
gating how, when, and where the people con-
nected with the CWC buried their dead, we
should also be able to explore the role of
death and the dead within their cosmology.
Since CWC burials have been investigated
around Europe for decades, we already
know that these people commonly buried
their dead as single burials under barrows
with a west-east orientation (Furholt 2014,
p. 70). The burials typically show gender-
based differentiation in body positioning,
with the males being placed in a crouched
position on their right side, head to the
west, and women on their left side with
head to the east (Furholt 2014, Fig. 2). Male
graves are also associated with axes, while
pottery vessels were placed in the burials of
both genders. Although regional variation
occurs, e.g., in the shape of the grave and in
the presence or absence of a covering barrow
(Furholt 2014, pp. 75–76), the mortuary prac-
tices nevertheless share enough common
ground to be acknowledged as the shared
ritual performances of this particular religion.
Indeed, as Bourgeois et al. (2017), note:
The very similar way in which CWC communities
created burials and dressed their dead highlights that
these communities shared information on this burial
ritual over a large area. A person from the Czech
Republic attending a funeral in the Netherlands
would have recognized and related to many of the
actions carried out during the burial ritual.
Although archaeology might never fully
grasp the meaning of these mortuary
Creating a Sense of Belonging 3
practices, the archaeological record with its
time span of thousands of years is especially
suitable to tracing change and continuation,
and in this sense the way religion travelled
with people. Indeed, before the appearance
of the people connected with the CWC, the
eastern and northern Baltic Sea region was
inhabited by hunter-sher-gatherer commu-
nities who buried their dead in differing
manners. Although the archaeological burial
record concerning the hunter-gatherers is
scarce from ca. 3500 cal BC onwards, it
seems that these communities followed the
core practices documented from earlier bur-
ial sites (e.g., Tõrv 2016, Ahola 2019).
Although other mortuary practices, such as
air burials, probably also existed (Tõrv 2016,
pp. 336–339), most of the excavated hunter-
gatherer burials from the region represent
single or multiple inhumation burials in
varying body positions (e.g., Zagorskis
2004, Nilsson Stutz 2006, Butrimas 2012,
Tõrv 2016, Ahola 2019). The buried bodies
were occasionally tightly wrapped, or placed
either on soft containers or platforms, or
buried with a set of objects including perso-
nal ornamentation or tools made of stone,
amber, bone, and antler.
Although the burial customs of the hunter-
gatherers already differed from the CWC mor-
tuary tradition, further differences can also be
seen in the materials that have not been included
in the graves. Indeed, in contrast with the CWC
burials, stone axes are not commonly discov-
ered in the Neolithic hunter-gatherer burials of
the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region. For
example, of the over 300 hunter-gatherer bur-
ials of the Zvejnieki cemetery, northern Latvia,
axes or adzes have been discovered from only
four graves (Zagorskis 2004, appendix 1). These
items are also rare in the Finnish hunter-
gatherer burials (Ahola 2017a, p. 208). In addi-
tion, if pottery is present, it often represents
sherds or partial vessels rather than intact ves-
sels (Zagorskis 2004, pp. 69–72, Kriiska et al.
2007, Ahola 2017a, pp. 211–212). Accordingly,
when we compare the CWC mortuary practices
to the hunter-gatherer burial traditions, it seems
evident that a novel funerary practice, encoding
a novel religion, arrived with the groups con-
nected with the CWC.
In this article, I aim to dig deeper into this
phenomenon and 1) explore what could have
been the role of this religion during the
migrations, and 2) investigate what hap-
pened after this religion was introduced to
the area. Rather than exploring what studies
concerning the Proto-Indo-European lan-
guage, occasionally connected with the
CWC (Kristiansen et al. 2017), might say
about religion and migration, I will direct
my attention to the important questions of
how, when, and where this religion hap-
pened materially. My special emphasis will
be on sites that contain both CWC and hun-
ter-gatherer burials. That is, places that
could have been, for example, taken over
by the immigrants, or sacred sites in which
we see an interaction between the hunter-
gather communities and the groups con-
nected with the CWC (Ahola 2017b, pp.
108–110). At the same time, I will explore
the materialization of the novel religion
within other hunter-gatherer burial contexts,
and also investigate whether traces of the
hunter-gatherer cosmology can be seen
within the CWC burials of the region.
EXPLORING RELIGION AND
MIGRATION IN 3
RD
MILLENNIUM BC
EUROPE
A NOVEL RELIGION FROM THE
PONTIC STEPPE?
To understand the role of religion in the
CWC migrations to the eastern and northern
Baltic Sea region, I will start by exploring
what happened a few generations before in
Central and Eastern Europe. During this per-
iod, novel burial practices also appear in this
region. In contrast with the collective burials
of the Neolithic farmer communities (e.g.,
Kristiansen 1989, Furholt 2019), these
4Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
practices highlighted single burials of gen-
dered individuals that were positioned in
a exed position on their side (Furholt 2014,
p. 75–76). The burials were often (but not
always) covered by a mound. The tradition
seems to have originated in the Pontic Steppe
and was probably introduced to Central and
Eastern Europe via intensive social networks
and migrations associated with the people
living in the steppes (e.g., Harrison and
Heyd 2007, Allentoft et al. 2015, Haak et al.
2015, Kristiansen et al. 2017, Preda-Bălănică
et al. 2020). The novel funerary practice
spread rapidly, and within just a few hundred
years it was practiced throughout various
regions of Europe (Furholt 2003, 2014).
Although the origins of the CWC have com-
monly been connected with the so-called
Yamnaya migrations from the steppe to south-
eastern Europe (Allentoft et al. 2015, Haak
et al. 2015, Kristiansen et al. 2017), the material
culture of the CWC burials does not resemble
the Yamnaya burials west of the Black Sea.
Indeed, the Yamnaya graves of south-eastern
Europe usually contain ochre, while being
otherwise devoid of any other grave goods
(Heyd 2011, p. 540). Similarities can be seen
between the Yamnaya kurgans and the CWC
barrows, as well as in the tradition of burying
a single individual underground (Harrison and
Heyd 2007, Kristiansen et al. 2017).
Nonetheless the use of beakers, stone axes
and, e.g., so-called hammer-headed stone pins
(e.g., Tebelškis and Jankauskas 2006) have
more common ground with burials from the
Pontic Steppe (e.g. Shislina 2008).
Nevertheless, the CWC grave and burial cus-
toms seem to underline a steppe-identity, and
accordingly encode a movement of a novel reli-
gion from the Pontic Steppe to the west.
Consequently, in this paper this religion is
dened as a ‘steppe-originated religion’.
According to archaeological evidence, the
steppe-originated burial practice – dened
by Martin Furholt (2019) as the ‘Late
Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Single
Grave Burial Ritual Complex’ (henceforth
SGBR) – was present in the archaeological
record for a millennium at least. Indeed,
aside from the groups connected with the
CWC, many archaeological cultures roughly
contemporary or succeeding the complex
(for example, the so-called Bell Beaker,
Únětice, Mierzanowice, and Nitra cultures)
follow the SGBR tradition (Furholt 2019,
p. 117). This phenomenon seems to suggest
that this funerary practice – or the religion it
encodes – was somehow appealing to the
people of 3
rd
millennium BC Europe. It
may have been that the core assumptions of
this religion were durable even when trans-
lated into different contexts. Perhaps the
religious practices themselves were easy to
learn and required relatively little esoteric
knowledge, at least, these seem to be the
two qualities that dene religions that spread
successfully (Csordas 2009).
In fact, for people on the move, religion
offers a way to create a sense of connectedness
and control over their new homeland. For
example, religion provides a way for the
migrating people to take or retake control
over their lives, and shape and sacralise spaces
during their relocations (Horstmann and Jung
2015, p. 2). On the other hand, by establishing
a permanent religious institution – such as
a burial mound – migrants can indicate an
enduring and committed presence in their
new homeland (Goździak and Shandy 2002,
p. 131). From this perspective, it is no wonder
that, for example, the people connected with
the Yamnaya raised thousands of mounds in
the Southeast European lowlands: these con-
structions would have underlined the enduring
and committed presence of the migrating peo-
ple within the immigration area (Heyd 2011,
p. 535, 546).
NEGOTIATING WITH THE
SUPERNATURAL TO CREATE
A SENSE OF BELONGING
Building a barrow or sacralising a location
by other means is only half of the story,
Creating a Sense of Belonging 5
however. Indeed, to inscribe themselves
more durably into history, people have
often reactivated important sites from the
past by building new monuments on these
locations (Bradley 2002, Olivier 2011). For
example, the Greeks of the Classical Age
erected shrines on sites thought to have
been the scenes of mythological battles,
while in Mesopotamia, Babylonian shrines
were erected on locations that were origin-
ally older holy sites (Olivier 2011, pp.
15–16). Even in European prehistory, impor-
tant burial sites have often been either con-
tinuously in use for millennia or were reused
after a considerable hiatus of several hun-
dred years (e.g.,Wessman 2010, Williams
2013, Ahola 2017b). For example, the people
connected with the Yamnaya in south-eastern
Europe occasionally made new internments
in their burial mounds (Heyd 2011). In this
sense, the barrows acted not only as land-
marks of their committed presence in the
area but also as repeatedly used communal
places, ‘sites of memory’, where social mem-
ory was recalled and passed on (Zerubavel
2003, p. 6). Since these sites were probably
also seen as powerful liminal places, a new
burial in such a place would have provided
a way to re-enact links with either ancestors
or the supernatural (Williams 1998).
Interestingly, recent studies have shown
that groups connected with the CWC also
reused older burial monuments with new
burials (e.g., Holtorf 1998, Malmer 2002,
Ebbesen 2008, Bourgeois 2013, Jeunesse
2014, Tunia and Włodarczak et al. 2016,
Ahola 2017b, Malmström et al. 2019).
Although some of the reused burial sites
have been identied as previous CWC
graves (e.g., Tunia and Włodarczak 2016,
p. 224), considerably older monuments
were also chosen as burial locations. For
example, several megalithic tombs of the
Neolithic Funnelbeaker culture (henceforth
TRB) were reused by single grave culture
groups (a local variant of the CWC) in
Northern Germany, Denmark, and
Southern Sweden (Holtorf 1998, Malmer
2002, Ebbesen 2008). In Northern
Germany (Holtorf 1998, p. 26), most of
these megaliths had already been covered
over by earth when the new burials were
made, and accordingly they had to be car-
ried out by breaking into the monument.
Although these break-ins could be con-
ducted from either side of the monument
or from the top, the new burial was usually
positioned near the top of the chamber so
that it did not disturb the older burials.
Remarkably, a similar pattern also occurs
in Poland, where the groups connected with
CWC also reused TRB monuments for new
burials that did not disturb the previous
ones (Tunia and Włodarczak 2016).
Accordingly, it seems that the older burial
was intentionally treated with respect, and
that the intention of the new burial was not
to destroy the older one, but rather to be
associated with it through direct proximity.
The tradition of reusing considerably older
burials for new interments is interesting
because these sites were probably no longer
commonly used communal places, but rather
places that had lost their original meaning and
consequently could be reinvented (Olivier
2011, p. 70). Indeed, Williams (1998, p. 103)
has suggested that the practice of burial reuse
could have been signicant in a variety of
ways. It could have, for example, worked as
a means to support claims and rights over land
and wealth, and served to legitimize political
strategies in the present. For example, immi-
grant Germanic groups of Anglo-Saxon
Britain probably reused older monuments to
portray themselves as the legitimate heirs of
the ancient peoples or supernatural beings that
originally built these structures (Williams
1998, p. 104). Accordingly, by reusing an
older burial mound, religion could also be
used to claim rights over the land; if the super-
natural beings or the ancestors accepted the
new burial, the presence of the immigrant peo-
ple would be accepted as well. In this sense, the
reuse of an old burial monument for a new
6Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
burial would have been the ultimate tool to
create a sense of belonging in a new land.
However, the groups connected with the
CWC did not only reuse older burials to
create a sense of belonging. A similar afnity
to the past can also be seen in other aspects
of their material culture. Indeed, among the
groups associated with the CWC in Estonia,
Finland, and Sweden, new pottery vessels
were manufactured by adding parts of
older vessels into the clay matrix
(Holmqvist et al. 2018, see also Larsson
2009). Remarkably, even though the new
vessel was made of local clay, the small
pieces of old vessels added into the clay
matrix had a foreign origin. As Holmqvist
et al. (2018, p. 89) explain:
It might be that the foreign grog represents traces
of potters who arrived at a new home (e.g., due to
migration or marriage), with their personal cera-
mic utensils. These beakers were later recycled as
temper in new ones, as a way of keeping
a symbolic connection with past generations and
the Corded Ware community at large.
With this mix of past and present genera-
tions in burials, as well as the joining of the
soils of the homeland and new land in craft-
work, the people were able to create
a continuous link between past and present,
and accordingly establish a sense of belong-
ing to the new land.
STEPPE-ORIGINATED RELIGION IN
THE EASTERN AND NORTHERN
BALTIC SEA REGION
THE MATERIALIZATION OF THE
STEPPE-ORIGINATED RELIGION IN
THE EASTERN AND NORTHERN
BALTIC SEA REGION
After setting the scene, it is now time to return
to the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region
and explore how the above-described phe-
nomena unfold there. The most prominent
materialization of the steppe-originated reli-
gion is, of course, the appearance of the
SGBR style burials. According to the sparse
radiocarbon determinations available (2018,
Fig 7, Ahola and Heyd 2020, Appendix), the
rst CWC graves of the eastern and northern
Baltic Sea region date to ca. 2800 cal BC, while
the youngest graves associated with the tradi-
tion date to ca. 2300–2200 cal BC. In contrast
with CWC graves recorded elsewhere, the
graves from the region generally lack burial
mounds, and accordingly represent at burials
that are situated either as solitary graves, set-
tlement site graves or in small cemeteries
(2018, 540, Ahola and Heyd 2020, pp.
87–88). Nonetheless, the graves mainly follow
the material culture and burial customs of
central and northern European CWC graves,
and contain, e.g., battle axes, bone pins, and
items made of the bones and pelts of domes-
ticated animals (Loze 2006, Lõugas et al. 2007,
Ahola et al. 2018, Ahola and Heyd 2020).
However, pottery is commonly present only
in the Finnish graves (Ahola and Heyd 2020,
p. 86), and ceramic vessels are rare in the
burials south of the Gulf of Finland (2018,
p. 540). Since only about 20 graves of the
total of ca. 100 internments (Ahola and Heyd
2020, p. 14) have been radiocarbon dated so
far, any possible temporal variation between
these graves is more or less blurred.
Aside from burial contexts, thousands of
battle axes have also been discovered as stray
nds in the region (e.g., Johanson 2006,
Nordqvist and Häkälä 2014). Although these
nds have often been interpreted as the
remains of destroyed burials (e.g., Nordqvist
and Häkälä 2014, p. 12), in Estonia many of
these axes have been recovered from wetland
contexts (Johanson 2006, for a similar phe-
nomenon in Northern Germany and
Denmark, see, Iversen 2016, Schultrich 2018).
That is, places that are usually connected with
votive deposits (Bradley 2000). Although no
exhaustive study covering the whole of the
eastern and northern Baltic Sea region has
been conducted so far, the phenomenon
Creating a Sense of Belonging 7
nevertheless suggests that a wider system of
rules, patterns, and connections (á la Fogelin
2008b) emerged in the context of taking battle
axes out of circulation. This, on the other
hand, suggests that the religion in question
was not materially manifested solely in the
mortuary realm, but also within other ritual
practices.
THE REUSE OF HUNTER-GATHERER
BURIAL SITES
Although the CWC burials of the eastern
and northern Baltic Sea region differ from
the central and north European graves, for
instance in terms of grave custom, they
nevertheless share the practice of reusing
older burial sites for new internments.
However, differing from the visible TRB
megaliths, these sites are compromised of
‘invisible’ at cemeteries (Table 1). For
example, at least three burials assigned to
the CWC have been discovered at the
Zvejnieki cemetery in northern Latvia (Fig.
2, Table 1).
2
Since over 300 hunter-gatherer
inhumation burials dating from the
Mesolithic to the Neolithic (ca. 7000–3000
cal BC, Meadows et al. 2018) have been
unearthed from this cemetery, the site was
clearly an important communal place for the
hunter-gatherer groups of the region
(Nilsson Stutz et al. 2013). Accordingly,
even if the cemetery is not a monumental
burial site as such, its location on an island
and its long-term use over several millennia
might nevertheless have made it monumen-
tal in the minds of the people (Ahola 2017b).
According to the radiocarbon data available
(Meadows et al. 2018), the Zvejnieki burials
associated with the CWC were added to the
hunter-gatherer cemetery a few hundred
years after the hunter-gatherer groups had
ceased to use the place as a cemetery.
Similarly, at the Kukkarkoski I cemetery in
southern Finland (Fig 2 and Fig 3), the sin-
gle CWC burial unearthed from the ceme-
tery succeeded the previous hunter-gatherer
graves by several hundred years (Ahola
2019, Appendix 1). Although radiocarbon
data from these cemeteries is scarce,
3
it
seems that, similar to the situation in central
and northern Europe, the CWC people seem
to have chosen sites that were no longer
actively used as burial sites. What is remark-
able, however, is that even though posi-
tioned as at cemeteries, these burials also
do not disturb the previous burials
(Zagorskis 2004, Figs 3–4, Ahola 2019,
p. 63). It thus seems that either the hunter-
gatherer underground burials were marked
somehow, or their exact location was
remembered for a considerable time.
However, even though groups in this
region connected with the CWC reused
older hunter-gatherer cemeteries, the practice
was not as common as in Central and
Northern Europe. Indeed, aside from the
above-mentioned Kukkarkoski I and
Zvejnieki sites, CWC graves have only been
discovered at the hunter-gatherer cemetery of
Jönsas, Southern Finland (Fig. 2, Purhonen
1986). Since the poorly preserved Jönsas hun-
ter-gatherer graves lack radiocarbon determi-
nations, the graves could also be
contemporary with the CWC internments
(Ahola 2017a, pp. 108–110). However, given
the scope of the reuse practice among the
CWC groups of Europe, it seems more rea-
sonable to assume that the Jönsas hunter-
gatherer graves did indeed precede the CWC
phase of use. This idea is further supported
by the fact that shards from a Corded Ware
pottery vessel were also discovered upon one
hunter-gatherer grave, possibly having been
left as a votive deposit (Ahola 2016).
PAST GENERATIONS OUTSIDE THE
BURIAL REALM
On some rare occasions, CWC burials have
also been located within prior hunter-
gatherer settlement sites (Table 1).
Although this phenomenon is recorded only
north of the Gulf of Bothnia, settlement sites
8Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
associated with the CWC have also com-
monly been founded on abandoned hunter-
gatherer or farmer sites around the Baltic
Sea region (Lõugas et al. 2007, p. 22,
Larsson 2009, p. 68, Nordqvist and Häkälä
2014, p. 6, Piličiauskas 2018, pp. 214–221).
The reuse of older settlements has, for
instance in Finland, been interpreted as
being based on practical reasons (the phos-
phate-rich soils being suitable for pastoral
farming due to differing vegetation types,
Äyräpää 1939, p. 118). Still, Larsson (2009,
p. 68, 410) has suggested that the groups
associated with the CWC in eastern central
Sweden might also have reused these sites to
connect with a mythical past. Indeed, just
like modern day archaeologists, these people
may have recognized the material remains –
stone axes, pottery sherds, and stone akes –
in the soils of the older sites and thus inten-
tionally chosen them for their own settle-
ments. In this sense, these sites also portray
religion in action outside the funeral realm.
In fact, it seems that by reusing these sites
Fig. 2. The locations of the burial and settlement sites from of the eastern and northern Baltic Sea
region that have been reused with new burials by the groups connected with the CWC. Map: M. Ahola
(2020).
Creating a Sense of Belonging 9
the people mixed the material remains of the
past and present generations in a very simi-
lar manner as they did when reusing older
burial sites.
In a wider context, the practice of using
earlier settlement sites as burial sites is also
documented in central Europe, where at
CWC graves have been discovered, e.g., in
TRB settlements (Dobrakowska and
Włodarczak 2018, p. 153). Moreover, when
moving further to the east, the tradition can
also be noted within the Fatyanovo culture,
the Volga catchment variant of the CWC
(Nordqvist and Heyd 2020). It is thus rea-
sonable to assume that abandoned, older
settlements could also have been considered
Fig. 3. The positioning of the Kukkarkoski 1 CWC grave among the older hunter-gatherer burials.
Drawing: M. Ahola (2020) (after Torvinen 1979, Figs 1 and 19, Ahola 2015, Fig 3).
10 Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
as sites where links with the ancestors and
the supernatural could be re-enacted.
Accordingly, instead of seeing these sites
solely through the lenses of mundane or
accidental practices, the reactivation of
these old sites can be understood as a way
for the people connected with the CWC to
inscribe themselves durably onto the history
of the immigration area. However, the prac-
tical and spiritual reasons do not need not to
exclude each other. Rather, the soils of these
sites could have been seen as suitable, e.g.,
for pastoral farming, because the superna-
tural powers of the site made them so.
ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN OLD AND
NEW COSMOLOGIES
When the graves positioned in the old hun-
ter-gatherer sites are investigated in more
detail (Table 2), it is interesting to note
that, in general, the Finnish and Russian
Karelian CWC graves follow the SGBR
style more closely than the Latvian graves.
Indeed, the Zvejnieki CWC graves contain
roughly only half of the main elements of the
SGBR, while also displaying heavy inuence
from hunter-gatherer mortuary practices.
The most striking element is the absence of
battle axes, even from the burials of mature
males, along with the tradition of placing
a pottery vessel in the grave either as an
incomplete pot or as scattered sherds
(Table 2: Zvejnieki burials 88 and 137).
Furthermore, even though two of the buried
individuals were positioned in a crouched
position, another of the deceased was also
placed in a supine position (Table 2:
Zvejnieki burial 88). Connecting the graves
even more closely to the hunter-gatherer mor-
tuary traditions, one of the graves contained
a small amount of ochre, while some were also
lled with black earth containing hunter-
gatherer settlement site nds (Zagorskis 2004,
pp. 28–29, 34). Indeed, the use of black earth
to ll the burial pit or cover the bottom of the
grave is a relatively common feature of the
hunter-gatherer graves of the Zvejnieki site
(Zagorskis 2004, pp. 81–82). This was
a remarkable practice, as the black earth was
collected from nearby abandoned settlement
sites, and has been explained as the hunter-
gatherer way of creating a meaningful link to
the past (Larsson 2017).
Given the above, the Zvejnieki burials
seem to represent a case in which traditional
cosmologies negotiate with the new. This is
not surprising though, since every religion is
Table 1. Summary of reused burial and settlement sites from the eastern and northern Baltic Sea
region.
Site Country
Archaeological
context Dating Type of reuse Reference
Jönsas Finland hunter-gatherer
cemetery
unknown Five CWC
burials
Purhonen 1986; Ahola
2017b
Kehioja Finland hunter-gatherer
settlement site
5th
Millennium BC
Single CWC
burial
Kivikoski 1934
Kukkarkoski
I
Finland hunter-gatherer
cemetery
4th
Millennium BC
Single CWC
burial
Torvinen 1979; Ahola
et al. 2016
Ravi Russia hunter-gatherer
settlement site
4th
Millennium BC
Single CWC
burial
Äyräpää 1921
Uusi-Jaara Finland hunter-gatherer
settlement site
5th-4th
Millennium BC
Single CWC
burial
Äyräpää 1927
Zvejnieki Latvia hunter-gatherer
cemetery
7th-4th
Millennium BC
Three CWC
burials,
possibly more
Zagorskis 2004; Jones
et al. 2017; Meadows
et al. 2018
Creating a Sense of Belonging 11
Table 2. Summary of the corded ware burials interred in older sites in the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region.
Site
Burial
nro
Radiocarbon
determination
(uncal BP) Short description Reference
Jönsas I A possible double burial with no preserved human remains. The grave
consisted of two oval-shaped burial features side by side, surrounded by
a small ditch-like arch. Two Corded Ware vessels (discovered in shards) were
positioned on opposite sides of the grave (NE corner & SW corner) and two
four-sided axes located on the SW side of the grave
Purhonen 1986; Ahola
2017b
Jönsas II A rectangular-shaped single burial with no preserved human remains.
A Corded Ware vessel was discovered in an upward position at the NE end of
the grave structure and a four-sided axe from the SW end of the grave.
Purhonen 1986; Ahola
2017a
Jönsas III A oval-shaped single burial with no preserved human remains. A CW vessel (a
cup) in an upward position was discovered c. 10 cm outside the possible burial
feature at the depht of 50 cm. In addition, small pottery shard were collected
from the feature itself.
Purhonen 1986; Ahola
2017b
Jönsas IV A rectangular-shaped single burial with no preserved human remains.
A Corded Ware vessel located at the NE corner of the grave while the lling of
the pit consisted of small pottery shards, stone akes and burnt animal bones
that probably derived from the settlement soils.
Purhonen 1986; Ahola
2017b
Jönsas V A rectangular-shaped single grave with no preserved human remains. The
grave structure was surrounded by a small ring-ditch and accompanied by
a Corded Ware vessel in an upward position. Small amount of pottery shards
were also collected from the northern side of the burial feature.
Purhonen 1986; Ahola
2017b
Kehioja 1 A rectangular-shaped grave feature with no preserved human remains.
A battle axe and a half of a Corded Ware pottery vessel were discovered from
the location of the grave prior to the excavation.
Kivikoski 1934; Ahola
and Heyd 2020
Kukkarkoski I 9 (Hela-4083)
4181 ± 60
A rectangular-shaped single burial with no preserved human remains.
A Corded Ware vessel was discovered from the SW corner of the grave
structure. The grave probably contained a wooden chamber.
Torvinen 1979; Ahola
2019; Ahola and Heyd
2020
(continued)
12 Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
Table 2. (Continued ).
Site
Burial
nro
Radiocarbon
determination
(uncal BP) Short description Reference
Ravi 1 A possible burial that was almost completely destroyed prior to excavations
conducted during the early 20th century. The burial might have been an
underground inhumation portrayed by a dark, sooty layer with the diameters
of ca. 0.5 × 2 cm that was discovered from the depth of 40 cm. An almost
complete Corded Ware vessel was obtained as a stray nd nearby this feature.
The vessel was also discovered from the depth of ca. 40 cm.
Äyräpää 1921
Uusi-Jaara 1 A possible burial that was destroyed prior to excavations conducted during
the 1920’s. According to the nder, the feature consisted of ‘black soil and
pieces of charcoal’ at the depth of c. 50 cm and was accompanied by shards
from a Corded Ware pottery vessel and a battle axe.
Äyräpää 1927; Ahola and
Heyd 2020
Zvejnieki 88 A poorly preserved burial of a child buried in a supine position head to South.
Large granite stone left of head at shoulder. A partial Corded Ware pottery
vessel (representing the basal part) positioned at left shoulder.
Zagorskis 2004
Zvejnieki 137 (Ua-19,811)
4280 ± 60
A poorly preserved burial of a mature male with determined steppe-ancestry.
The body of the deceased was positioned on left side with head to East. The
dead was accompanied by a bone awl of sheep/goat bone (positioned at the
back of the skull), two tooth pendants (dog and beaver teeth) and a bone
chisel made roe deer long bone that was surrounded by a layer of ochre. In
addition, potsherds of an Corded Ware amphora was discovered from various
places in the grave. The grave was lled with black earth.
Zagorskis 2004; Lõugas
et al. 2007; Jones et al.
2017; Meadows et al. 2018
Zvejnieki 186 (Ua-15,545)
4190 ± 90
A burial of an adolescent in a crouched position with head to WSW. A pair of
ornamented antler plaquettes were discovered at the wrists of the individual,
otherwise the grave was devoid of nds. The grave was lled with black soil
that contained some settlement site nds.
Zagorskis 2004; Loze
2006; Meadows et al. 2018
Creating a Sense of Belonging 13
syncretistic and incorporates cultural, mate-
rial, and ritual elements over time (Clack
2011). Although the other reused sites seem
to follow the SGBR tradition more closely,
the Zvejnieki site is not unique. Instead,
further evidence of religious syncretism can
also be detected from other solitary graves
associated with the CWC (Ahola and Heyd
2020). For example, even though the Finnish
CWC graves contain pottery vessels, occa-
sionally, these items are not intact beakers
but partial vessels (Ahola and Heyd 2020,
p. 87). Although this could also be
a taphonomical issue, further connections
to the hunter-gatherer mortuary traditions
exist in the inclusion of additional pottery
sherds from different vessels, in the place-
ment of vessels upside down or in the repla-
cement of the battle axe with an adze of the
hunter-gatherer tradition (Fig. 4, Ahola
2019, p. 56, Ahola and Heyd 2020, pp. 87,
95). As two ‘battle axe imitations’ (i.e. battle
axes lacking the know-how of actual axe
production) have also been discovered in
a narrow burial below a stone cairn that
was located outside the core area of the
CWC habitation in Finland (Äyräpää
1952), the inuence seems to be go the
other way around as well. Indeed, a similar
case has been noted from the island of
Gotland (Sweden), where battle axes have
been discovered in burials associated with
the Pitted Ware culture (a Scandinavian
hunter-gatherer group that is partly contem-
porary with the CWC) (Malmer 2002, p. 93,
see also Coutinho et al. 2020). It thus seems
evident that the groups connected with the
CWC interacted with the local hunter-
gatherer communities in ways that resulted
in religious syncretism.
TRAVELLING WITH RELIGION
In his recent paper, Furholt (2019) argues
that the CWC should not be seen either as
a biological population or as a monothetic
archaeological culture, but instead should be
regarded as a set of burial principles shared
Fig. 4. Partial pottery vessels and sherds from additional pots discovered from the Forsberg site, Finland.
Note that the largest vessel has been repaired after excavation, and in reality, was not intact. Photo:
J. Salo 1958, Finnish Heritage Agency.
14 Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
by many 3
rd
millennium BC communities.
Since a dialectic exists between ritual and
religion (Fogelin 2007), in this paper,
I have argued even further, and suggested
that the material remains of these burial
principles encode a shared religion that ori-
ginates in the Pontic Steppe. However, as
this religion travelled with the people to
northern and central Europe, and all the
way to the Baltic Sea region, it was also
converted into something new by incorpor-
ating material and ritual elements from dif-
ferent regions during different times. For
example, even though there are SGBR ele-
ments present in the Zvejnieki burials
described above, the way these components
were used as part of the mortuary practice
might have been alien for people living in the
original past homeland. In this sense,
Furholt (2014) is right when stating:
(…) when comparing Corded Ware traits in dif-
ferent regions, we have to acknowledge that these
vessels and weapons as symbols were integrated
into clearly diverse ways, and they were altered
and transformed within local contexts. So, what
the Corded Ware elements meant in one region
might have been very different from what they
meant in another.
However, since these symbols – and the
religious practices relating to the symbols –
were durable even when translated into dif-
ferent contexts, the core ideas of this religion
likely persisted. This could be due to the fact
that religion plays an important role in
human migrations: it creates not only
a sense of collective identity and distinction
among the immigrants, but can also be used
to build a sense of belonging to the new land
(e.g., Goździak and Shandy 2002,
Horstmann and Jung 2015). For example,
when the groups connected with the CWC
arrived in the eastern and northern Baltic
Sea region, they created – and manifested –
an enduring and committed presence in the
area by burying their dead in the new land.
These religious practices not only enforced
the collective identity of the group but also
resulted in a religious landscape that con-
nected the people to the new land in a very
powerful way. In this sense, the core ideas of
the religion might have persisted simply
because they were needed.
At the same time, the steppe-originated
religion seems to have been very adjustable.
Indeed, in the light of the hunter-gatherer
and CWC burials of the Baltic Sea region,
the groups associated with the CWC inter-
acted with the hunter-gatherer communities
within the sphere of religion. However, this
interaction did not result in a situation in
which the steppe-originated religion took
over the old belief-systems, but rather, in
a religious syncretism to which both tradi-
tions contributed. In fact, this aspect of
openness and negotiation could also be one
of the reasons why the religion was so dur-
able and appealing. Indeed, if the novel reli-
gion was practiced in a broadly participatory
way, all interested parties could take part
and gain access to the novel supernatural
powers. At the same time, however, the peo-
ple who had access to the esoteric knowl-
edge, and who knew how to perform these
rituals, gained mundane respect and power.
A good example of the negotiative nature
of the steppe-originated religion is the prac-
tice of burial reuse. Indeed, while burying the
dead among your own ancestors relates to an
afnity to past generations, burying your
dead among the ancestors of others might
tell a completely different story. However, in
the light of the archaeological record, the
groups associated with the CWC did not
aim to destroy the older burials and thus
take over these important locations. On the
contrary, when the practice of reuse is
explored in detail, it seems that the new bur-
ials were made in connection with the older
ones with an attitude of respect; despite
breaking into an old burial mound to create
a new grave, for example, the previous burials
were never destroyed. From this perspective,
Creating a Sense of Belonging 15
it seems that, rather than taking over older
sites, the people aimed to negotiate their pre-
sence in the area.
Interestingly, there seems to have been differ-
ences in the ways that the groups connected
with CWC reused older monuments in different
parts of Europe. Indeed, it seems that older
burial monuments were more frequently reused
in central and northern Europe (e.g., Holtorf
1998, Ebbesen 2008, Tunia and Włodarczak
2016) than in the northern and eastern Baltic
Sea region. There could be several reasons for
this phenomenon. For example, there might
have been more need to claim rights over land
in the more densely populated central Europe
than in the Baltic Sea region. Indeed, since the
groups connected with the CWC likely prac-
ticed a differing subsistence system than the
local populations (e.g., Cramp et al. 2014,
2018, Sikk et al. 2020), heavy competition
over resources and places for living might not
have been necessary. Indeed, while the hunter-
gatherer groups preferred locations by the
water for their settlements, the dwelling sites
of the groups associated with CWC seem to
be located further inland (Äyräpää 1939, Sikk
et al. 2020).
It could also be possible that the more
monumental burial structures of central
and northern Europe demanded more atten-
tion than the ‘invisible’ hunter-gatherer at
cemeteries of the eastern and northern Baltic
Sea region, or that the at cemeteries were
not as easy to discover, or as accessible. This
being said, it must be noted that CWC bur-
ials are nevertheless present at the Zvejnieki
cemetery. Since Zvejnieki was clearly the
most important hunter-gatherer mortuary
site in the eastern Baltic Sea region, by reus-
ing this site with new burials the groups
connected with the CWC were already mak-
ing a clear statement of an enduring presence
at the area. In fact, maybe there was no
further need to claim rights over land or
negotiate with the supernatural, when this
was already done at the ancient Zvejnieki.
From this perspective, it is interesting that
the Zvejnieki burials are indeed among the
oldest radiocarbon-dated graves associated
with the CWC in the region (Piličiauskas
2018, Fig 7, Ahola and Heyd 2020,
Appendix). Although these burials are likely
not those of the pioneering migrants, they
might represent burials of the people who
rst settled in to the region.
Given the above, it is interesting that the
practice of CWC burial and settlement site
reuse intensies north of the Gulf of
Bothnia. Although this phenomenon could
be a mere bias created by a small data set, it
could also suggest that the northern territory
was no longer under the ‘ancestral inuence’
of Zvejnieki, or that the reused Finnish and
Russian Karelian sites were more inuential
than the poorly preserved and less studied
material suggests. Indeed, due to the poor
preservation of organic materials in the
acidic Finnish soils, radiocarbon determina-
tions from the burials are scarce (Ahola and
Heyd 2020, p. 83). However, the
Kukkarkoski 1 burial contained remains of
a wooden chamber that dates roughly con-
temporary with the younger Zvejnieki burial
(Table 1, Ahola and Heyd 2020, Appendix:
Kukkarkoski 1). In the light of these scanty
data, the graves located in the hunter-
gatherer cemeteries seem to date to the ear-
lier part of the CWC occupation in the
region, and accordingly emphasize the need
to negotiate the people’s new presence in the
region.
Remarkably, when the patterns emerging
from the burial record are compared to the
other material remains of the groups asso-
ciated with the CWC, it seems that negotiation
between past and present, and new land and
homeland, seems to be a reoccurring theme in
the archaeological record of the CWC in the
eastern and northern Baltic Sea region.
Indeed, aside from older burial sites, the
groups connected with the CWC also used
old, abandoned settlement sites both as places
for living and for burying the dead. At the
same time, new pottery vessels were
16 Marja AHOLA0000-0003-2279-3788
manufactured by adding pieces of old vessels –
incorporating past generations of potters and
the soils of their past homeland – to the clay
matrix (e.g., Holmqvist et al. 2018). Since in
the past ritual practices were not as clearly
separated from the other aspects of life as
today (Bradley 2005), the presence of similar
patterns within the ritual and domestics realms
suggests that merging past, present, new land
and homeland together were at the core of the
steppe-originated religion. Indeed, for
a people on the move, a religion emphasizing
these elements would have been a strong com-
panion to travel with. Since the 3
rd
millennium BC seems to have been an era of
movement and migration (e.g., Allentoft et al.
2015, Haak et al. 2015, Sjögren et al. 2016,
Saag et al. 2017, Holmqvist et al. 2018,
Olalde et al. 2018), this religion could have
provided much-needed aid and comfort both
during these relocations and after settling in
a new area. Ultimately, this might have been
the key factor in the durability and appeal of
the steppe-originated religion.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Professor Volker Heyd
(University of Helsinki), Dr. Piotr Włodarczak
(Polish Academy of Sciences), Dr. Gytis
Piličiauskas (Lithuanian Institute of History),
Professor Aivar Kriiska (University of Tartu),
Dr. Bianca Preda-Bălănică (University of
Helsinki), and the two anonymous referees for
all the insights they have offered on this paper.
As a project associate, I am also grateful for the
support of the ERC Advanced project 788616:
The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe
(YMPACT).
FUNDING
The writing of this paper was made possible
by a three-year postdoctoral position at
University of Helsinki.
ORCID
Marja Ahola http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2279-
3788
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NOTES
1 In this paper, the northern and eastern Baltic
Sea region comprises the modern-day territories
of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and the
Republic of Karelia (Russia).
2The amount of CWC related burials in
Zvejnieki could even be higher. However, since
Baltic hunter-gatherers also occasionally posi-
tioned their dead in a crouched position (Tõrv
2016), burials dened solely by body position-
ing (Zagorskis 2004, p. 97) have been excluded
from this study. Accordingly, only burials also
accompanied by SGBR style grave goods have
been included in Table 2.
3At the Zvejnieki cemetery, only a fragment of
the excavated burials have been dated
(Meadows et al. 2018, Table 2), while at the
Kukkarkoski I cemetery, radiocarbon dates
have been obtained from only two graves of
the total of 13 (Ahola 2019, Appendix 1).
Moreover, since the Kukkarkoski I graves are
almost totally devoid of preserved human
remains, the radiocarbon data derives from the
burial structures.
Creating a Sense of Belonging 21
