Archaeology wonders about the original purpose of a pair of snub-nosed figurines excavated from a Bronze Age hillfort in northern Europe. Were they religious relics or children’s toys?:
“There are important similarities between religious ritual and child’s play,” says archaeologist Marcin S. Przybyła of Jagiellonian University. “They both pretend something, reenact a story.” Regardless of the figurines’ exact use, he says, swine were clearly crucial to local subsistence. Pig remains comprise up to one-fifth of the animal bones recovered from the site’s Early Bronze Age levels.