Reconfiguring Normative Funeral Rite in European Prehistory: Second Thoughts on Secondary Manipulation of Human Remains

Summary

Mortuary variability in European prehistory has long been perceived through the lens of Christian worldview from which the discipline of archaeology originally developed. Expectations rooted in this conceptual perspective inevitably shaped the ways that the archaeological record was approached and interpreted. As a case study we consider the Central European Bronze Age, on which we can deconstruct the traditional ‘textbook’ understanding of ancient funerary traditions. During this period, general development observed in formal cemeteries is characterised by the gradual shift from prevailing inhumation towards cremation, but with strikingly frequent finds of complete, partial, or disarticulated human skeletons in settlement pits and ditches. We argue that what is usually regarded as a normative burial, or its opposite, i.e. seemingly careless and non-ritual deposition of human remains, may be a very problematic categorization. Gradually accumulated evidence suggests that the most visible forms of human burial in the archaeological record may not have been the dominant type of treatment of the dead. According to our research, secondary manipulation and fragmentation of human bodies, which was turning them into objects of cultural patrimony that could be shared and curated, seems to have been the most frequent destiny awaiting the deceased.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20351