In 1907 two early medieval cemeteries were excavated in Srednja vas in Bohinj, Žale to the northeast of the then village, and Podojnce to the west. The excavator Walter Šmid recorded 24 graves at Žale and two at Podojnce. The material is kept in the National museum of Slovenia in Ljubljana.
Most burials contained gravegoods, most often head rings, finger rings and knives, but also fibulae, glass bead necklaces, a firesteel and an unidentified, now lost iron object. The spatial distribution of certain objects in the Žale cemetery shows that they appear in limited areas. Using those ‘leading’ objects we identified three groups of graves: group with knives and/or rings with a loop and hook in the south and east part, group with rings with thickened ends in the northwest part and between them a group of graves without gravegoods. Graves with no gravegoods could not be dated using available data. The other two groups are internally chronologically homogenous, the group with knives and/or rings with a loop and hook is dated to the end of the 8th and first half of the 9th c. and the group with rings with thickened ends to the middle or second half of the 9th c.
Based on remains of leather and textile two most probable styles of wearing the head rings were proposed. The rings with leather or textile remains were probably attached to a head-band while the rings without those remains were worn in the ears.
The question of who wore the head rings could not be answered with certainty. The published data and osteological analyses of three preserved skulls from the graves with head rings in functional position indicate male graves. In the future, DNA analyses may prove or disprove the results of the archaeological and osteological analyses and we shall also have to consider the possibility that the rings were added to the grave as gravegoods and were not necessarily worn by the deceased.
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