General site information
The Ire site is located in the north-western coast of the Baltic Sea island of Gotland and represents another site from the Pitted Ware Culture. The close geographic vicinity to other Neolithic hunter-gatherer sites on Gotland (e.g. Ajvide) links dietary or other cultural features. Graves found here consists of flat-earth constructions. First excavations at the beginning of the 20th century revealed numerous ceramic items and were added by a large number of seal bones.
Ancient humans from the site
At least eight graves have been described previously and several humans have been analyzed. Nonetheless, only one individual has been investigated genetically. the grave contained pottery, a typical burial gift of the PWC. The morphological assessment of the sex of this particular individual was inconclusive but genetic evidence suggest a female. While the individual listed here has been analyzed at genomic level, additional five samples from different graves have been investigated with regard to their respective mitochondrial DNA variation.