From the source to the sea − A regional study of Bronze Age depositions from eastern Funen, Denmark

Abstract Depositions from the South Scandinavian Bronze Age are traditionally associated with a landscape context that is restricted to division into field and bog finds. This obscures the important role of water as a location factor for depositions and the variation in the choice of deposition sites is not immediately clear. The starting point of the article is a period V multi-type deposition from Hedegyden near Nyborg, where an excavation has demonstrated that the deposition was placed at a spring. Together with more than 300 other Bronze Age depositions from the East Funen region in Denmark, relationships between the period’s depositions and the locations where they were placed in the landscape are examined chronologically and geographically, as well as within three partially overlapping water themes: in relation to springs – or places where water flows out, along watercourses and on the coast. In this study, especially the finds from springs should be highlighted, as a previously under-illuminated element of the Bronze Age wetland tradition.