Countryside versus urban area - gotlandic executions that reveals.

Gustafsson, O. 2018. Landsbygd kontra stadsmiljö–gotländska avrättningsplatser som talar. Gustafsson, O. 2018. Countryside versus urban area–Gotlandic executions that reveals. This bachelor thesis covers two executional sites on Gotland, one on the east coast near Visby, called Galgberget and the second one on the southern part of Gotland called Grötlingbo. The focus of this bachelor thesis will be on separating the sites and comparing them with each other based on their executional marks found on the bones from each site. I examined the 29 boxes recovered remains, with 25 boxes from Galgberget and four boxes from Grötlingbo, excavated from these two sites and used different methods to determine what kind of weapon and crime can be linked to the executional marks on the remains. One of the four methods that was used for this examination was sharp force trauma, that revealed a similarity in cervical vertebra damage on the individuals from both sites. The second method was dismembering, which was only identified on the bone fragments from Galgberget. The third method that was used to examine the remains was penetration wounds, which only appears on the remains that had been through violence-related circumstances or torture with a 20-centimetre nail through the head, the remains with these kinds of wounds were only discovered at Galgberget. The fourth method that was used was bone fractures, which showed; after examining the 29 remains that it was only discovered at the Galgberget executional site. It can be concluded from this that even if the execution sites are near-by each other, they performed different kinds of executions, with different kinds of execution marks. For example, from Grötlingbo the only execution mark there was the cervical vertebra sharp force trauma. Meanwhile from Galgberget there were several execution marks, which are mentioned in the methods above. Keywords: Galgberget, Grötlingbo, execution marks, Gotland, execution