At the grave fields at Krankmårtenhögen and Smalnäset, Härjedalen, 200 bc?ad 200, there were depositions of skull fragments and antlers on top of the graves. Some skulls and antlers have been damaged. For instance, there are some cases where the antlers have been chopped off with an axe. This paper argues that this treatment and the depositions are ways of communicating a message of regeneration to the animals, with whom people had crucial and reciprocal social relations based on trust. By symbolically shedding the antlers, people intended to persuade the animals to make new antlers. Such an interpretation is based on the assumption that the dichotomies between nature and culture, and the religious and the profane, are irrelevant to understanding the conception of the environment of the people who made the grave fields. The depositions were made prior the introduction of reindeer herding, a process with the implication that the relation of trust is transformed into one of dominance. The depositions of animal bones and antlers can be seen as strategic means of maintaining good relations and communicating differences and similarities with animal persons as well as adjacent human groups in the process towards an early ethnic dualism in southern Sápmi. As such, they have a great value of their own and should not be considered as an anomaly from cultural expressions of clearly defined Sámi and Germanic ethnicities.