A piece of nettle cloth retrieved from Denmark's richest
known Bronze Age burial mound Lusehøj may actually derive from Austria, new
findings suggest. The cloth thus tells a surprising story about long-distance
Bronze Age trade connections around 800 BC. The findings have just been
published in Nature's online journal Scientific Reports.
2,800 years ago, one of Denmark's richest and most powerful
men died. His body was burned. And the bereaved wrapped his bones in a cloth
made from stinging nettle and put them in a stately bronze container, which
also functioned as urn.