There seems to be a past with findings of this nature noted in the article Alken Enge - The mass grave at Lake Mossø which offers some further insights to this matter.
It does note the current work being done there, and identifies the research project titled: The army and post-war rituals in the Iron Age - warriors sacrificed in the bog at Alken Enge in Illerup Ådal.
Some of that the material.
Other discoveries at Alken Enge
The discovery of human skeletal remains at the Alken Enge location has come as no surprise. With several well-known sacrificial locations of different character in the river valley of Illerup Ådal, also known as the "Holy Valley", there is no doubt that the area has been a focal point for a wider hinterland as a place to conduct sacrificial rituals, which appear to have taken place regularly during the Iron Age. Forlev Nymølle is a well-known ritual location where more every-day sacrifice patterns in the form of pottery, stone collections and various other manufactured wooden objects have been found. One of these wooden objects has been interpreted as a female goddess figurine. It is thought that several of the other excavated objects could have been sacrificed to this goddess.
Alken Wetlands is primarily interesting in connection with the discovery of sacrificed warriors, but there are also other sacrifices of various kinds with various datings. Within the deposited peat layers in roughly the same horizon as the human remains, a discovery was made of three lanceheads in iron and a shield of wood. The weapon finds are generally so few in number that they are not considered to have been sacrificed. In several horizons there are large amounts of manufactured and raw wood. The manufactured wood consists of both wood planks and timber, both smaller and larger in dimension. A myriad of more or less vertical sticks that have been hammered down are also found in the peat layers. Furthermore, pottery has been discovered, which can be dated from the Early Pre-Roman Iron Age to Early Medieval. Moreover, several excavation sites were found to contain sacrificed animal bones. In conclusion, the location of Alken Wetlands is thought to be a temporally very complex sacrificial location
I am looking forward to see "Who" the army is that is presumed to have been a sacrifice. I will keep bring info here, when more is available.
Ciao
Shane
