Location of Bredarör, in Kivik, south-east Sweden (image courtesy of NASA, Visible Earth: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team). 

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... Bronze Age cairn Bredarör on Kivik, which is situated in Scania in south-east Sweden ( Figure 1), is one of the largest burial monuments in northern Europe. The cairn, looted in 1748 and excavated by Gustaf Hallström in 1931, famously contained a stone cist with elaborate rock art in which survived some fragmented bronze objects. Following its excavation the cairn was restored and now measures 75m in diameter with a height of 3.5m. In spite of what the name of the cairn suggests in Swedish (Bredarör – ‘broad cairn’), several researchers have claimed that the original height of this Bronze Age cairn was between 7-15m (Hallström 1932; Nordén 1942; Larsson 1993; Randsborg 1993). For the modern visitor, the sense of awe is enhanced by the restored monumental stone-built entrance and a protective door made of solid copper, intended as a reference to the famous Lion Gate of Mycenae in Greece (Figure 2). The decorated slabs formed the inner sides of a stone cist that was about 4m long and 1.5m broad (Figure 3). Bredarör is one of the few Scandinavian prehistoric monuments that is regularly mentioned in textbooks on the European Bronze Age, often in the same sentence as the sun- disc from Trundholm, the women and child from Egtved, the bronze lures from Brudevælte and the rock art from Bohuslän (Briard 1979; Coles & Harding 1979; Kristiansen 1998; Harding 2000; Kristiansen & Larsson 2005). On the basis of the over-sized decorated cist, scholars have interpreted Bredarör as the tomb of a chief and/or a shaman. Accordingly, the road signs in the village of Kivik direct a visitor to ‘the King’s Grave’. Using the first analysis of the human bones that were discovered during the excavation in 1931, I intend to question this interpretation. At least five human beings are represented in the cist, four adolescents and one adult. Radiocarbon dates from the bones distinguish at least three different episodes of deposition, ranging from 1400 to 800 cal BC. The only adult individual dates from the ninth century cal BC, that is, much later than both the rock art and the bronze objects which are used to support the traditional interpretation. The tomb can therefore be shown to have had several phases of use, and could command a number of different interpretations. At the time of its rediscovery in the middle of the eighteenth century the interpretation of Bredarör was grounded in folklore (Jensen 2002b; Baudou 2004); horses had refused to pass the cairn at dusk and dawn, and lights from dead souls had been seen flickering over the cairn during the night. Stories about hidden treasures flourished and had been passed down from one generation to another. On 14 June 1748 two local farmers – Lasse Pärsson and Anders Sahlberg – discovered and looted the cist. They were not in search of treasure, but had plundered the cairn of stone for the purpose of building stone fences around their fields. When people in the vicinity heard about the discovery of the large cist in the giant ‘broad cairn’, rumour started to flourish. Soon Lasse and Anders found themselves arrested and were later charged for robbing the cairn and withholding the treasure from its proper owner – the Swedish State. The court gathered in August and October 1748 and the trial against the thieves was partly held at Bredarör itself. Strangely enough, nobody at these hearings mentioned the decorated slabs, neither did the famous natural scientist Carl von Linné when he passed the cairn in late May 1749 (Linné 1975: 158-9). Pärsson and Sahlberg were finally released on 8 June 1749 for lack of evidence and by giving oaths. According to their statements at the trial, they did notice some artefacts in the cist, but none of these were saved or taken care of, and accordingly, they are only known through historical sources (Randsborg 1993: 11-23). The rock art were not spotted until 1756 (Nordén 1942). Because of the lack of artefacts, the focal point of antiquarians and archaeologists has been the pecked and grounded images on the inner part of the cist. In his comparative ethnology published between 1838 and 1843, Sven Nilsson proposed that Celtic people built the Bredarör cairn, but later in 1862 switched his choice to Phoenician settlers that had migrated to the southern parts of Sweden (Nilsson 1862). Nilsson believed that the rock art showed ‘cultic affairs’ devoted to the God Baal – the Lord of Heaven. His interpretations were very celebrated to begin with but with an enlarging empirical knowledge of the archaeological record, soon became rejected by more ‘sound scholars’ (see Christensson 2005), such as Bror Emil Hildebrand and Oscar Montelius. After the field of archaeology began to acquire its own recognised method, theory and language, historical sources were put in the background (see Trigger 1989), and the rock art in Bredarör were interpreted in the combined light of Swedish folklore and the history of religion (e.g. Montelius 1899). In the early twentieth century we witness how a functionalistic paradigm was established (Vogt 2001). The images in Bredarör were interpreted as a magical spell for the well-being of the deceased chief, or as a sun fertility cult. The distinction between these perspectives was in fact very small, and researchers often embodied both aspects in their interpretation (e.g. Almgren 1934: 179-86). Most archaeologists followed the Montelian typological paradigm that claimed to have found different parallels to Bredarör in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean. They were also clear regarding the gender and status of the deceased person – a male leader, spiritual or secular. This discourse has been faithfully replicated and/or reinvented by later scholars, such as Henrik Thrane (1990), Lars Larsson (1993), Klavs Randsborg (1993), Thomas B. Larsson (1999), Kristian Kristiansen (2004, 2005), and most recently, Christopher Tilley, for whom the occupant was ‘a swimming shaman’ (2004: 200-15). Despite the changing theoretical standpoint of the interpreter, ranging from antiquarianism to post-structuralism, the interpretation of the buried chief or shaman has remained the same. Already in the late eighteenth century the images were ‘read’ as depicting the burial ceremony of a prominent male authority, and even those who prefer a more modern archaeological framework have stayed truthful to this interpretation. Both Klavs Randsborg (1993: 134) and Kristian Kristiansen (2004) have interpreted the deceased as a shaman and/or chief who travelled widely during his life, visiting foreign and mythical countries and places. Kristiansen has provided the most enthusiastic accounts of the chief buried in Bredarör and his stunning ...