Buried, Burned, Bundled and Broken: Approaches to Co-Occurrence of Multiple Methods, Treatments and Styles of Burials Within Past Societies
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)
Bioarchaeology and mortuary archaeology have historically relied on complete inhumations as the source of data based on human remains. However, not all cemeteries have only inhumed burials- cremation, secondary burial and other methods can co-occur at these sites. Despite this, the cremated or commingled remains have often deteriorated in museums, been relegated to appendices or ignored due to their interpretive difficulty. Over the past two decades, the value of cremated, commingled and fragmentary remains has been recognized, and recent publications have shown that cremated, disarticulated and commingled remains can provide important information on past people and their behavior that isn’t always apparent with complete inhumations. These conversations often address a specific type of body treatment, and there is little discussion occurring between them. Increased conversation is needed about the presence of multiple burial treatments within single sites, and how different forms of body treatment compare. While each treatment is unique and requires specific contextual analysis, when multiple forms of body treatment co-occur at the same site- complete discussion is required. This session brings together archaeologists studying co-occurrence of multiple forms of burial in order to generate discussion, and promote the study of alternative types of treatments alongside complete inhumations.
Other Keywords
Mortuary archaeology •
bioarchaeology •
Maya •
Mortuary Ritual •
Relics •
Identity •
mortuary practices •
Cremation •
Bronze Age •
Copper Age
Geographic Keywords
Europe •
Mesoamerica •
North America - Southeast •
West Asia
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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Burial Diversity at the Angel Site: How Many People and How Many Ways? (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The Angel site is a Middle Mississippian civic-ceremonial center that sat on the northeastern periphery of the Mississippian world. Excavations at the site, especially during the WPA era and a series of archaeological field schools just after World War II, created a collection representing several hundred human burials. Previous studies of this collection have emphasized relatively intact burials, either primary fleshed inhumations or easily identified secondary burials of single individuals....
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Discerning Patterns of Intentional and Unintentional Movement of Human Bones in Maya Caves (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The caves of Central Belize were used extensively by the Maya, primarily during the Late Preclassic and Classic periods (approx. 300 BC to AD 900). Archaeological investigations of human bone deposits in these caves typically seek to identify specific mortuary rituals, often based on analogy with ethnohistoric, epigraphic, and artistic sources, and to interpret these behaviors within broader sociopolitical and environmental contexts. However, because of the long history of cave use in the area...
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Mingled Bones, Mingled Bodies: Primary and Commingled Burials at Nabataean Petra, Jordan (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Although bioarchaeologists have recently developed best practices for the analysis of commingled samples, few scholars have theorized the significance of communal, commingled burial. In many cases, the practice of commingling skeletal remains is but one possible variant in the mortuary process. Numerous societies, including the Nabataeans at Petra, utilize collective burial in addition to primary inhumation within the overall mortuary program. The actual practice of commingling, such as when and...
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Mortuary multiplicity: Variability in mortuary treatment at a Late Prehistoric matrix village from Spain (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
At 113 ha, Marroquíes Bajos (Jaén, Spain) is one of the largest villages known for the Iberian Copper Age. Attention was first focused on the site in the 1960s after construction work underneath the modern city of Jaén unearthed a series of elaborate artificial burial caves. However, over the past several decades salvage excavations revealed even more mortuary areas at the site, including commingled depositions in enclosure ditches, primary and secondary inhumations in discrete subterranean...
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The power of relics: curating human bone in the British Bronze Age (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This paper will investigate evidence for the curation of ‘relics’ (pieces of human bone that were deliberately retained over long periods of time) in the British Bronze Age. Isolated fragments of human bone have frequently been identified in settlement contexts, for example pits and ditches; they have also been found in graves alongside the complete bodies of other individuals. It is widely recognised that Bronze Age artefacts such as jet beads and ceramic vessels were kept and circulated as...
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Preparing Their Deaths: Examining Variation in Co-occurrence of Cremation and Inhumation in Early Medieval England (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The practice of cremation and inhumation can occur within the same cemetery during the same time period. This co-mingling of burial forms is found throughout Western history from Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe to Ancient Rome and Greece through the Early Medieval Europe and today. Despite its wide chronological and geographic extent, data-driven study of co-occurrence of burial treatments is limited for a number of reasons; the most problematic being the disciplinary perception that cremation...
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Urns, Mounds, Pyres, and Pits: The Many Pathways of Middle Bronze Age Bodies in Transylvania (2016)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Communities of the Wietenberg Culture in Middle Bronze Age Transylvania (2000-1500 BC) participated in diverse and dynamic social, economic, political, and ideological institutions. Traditional approaches to the mortuary practices of this period, however, have obscured diversity in the archaeological record in favor of a more homogeneous characterization of burial practices as cremation and burial in urn cemeteries. This paper traces the many different pathways that Middle Bronze Age...