Post-Mortem Interactions with Human Remains at the Covesea Caves in NE Scotland

Summary

As liminal places between the above-ground world of daily experience and the underworld, caves form a persistent focus for human engagements with the supernatural. As such they have frequently been used as places for the dead, whether as final resting places or as places of transformation. Late Bronze Age human remains were recovered from the Sculptor’s Cave, on the Moray Firth in North-East Scotland, during the 1920s and 1970s. They suggest the curation and display of human bodies and body parts, associated with wooden structures and a range of objects dominated by small personal ornaments. Recent fieldwork at the nearby Covesea Cave 2 has revealed similar evidence, as have other caves along the same stretch of coast. The Cave 2 assemblage displays evidence for excarnation, trauma, selective redeposition and processing of bodies and body parts. Although individuals appear to have entered the cave whole, certain elements were subsequently removed, while others appear to have been displayed. In this paper we consider the ways in which the Late Bronze Age communities of this region interacted with their dead and consider the role of the Covesea sea caves as a coastal mortuary landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Manipulated Bodies: Investigating Postmortem Interactions with Human Remains

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14350