Living with the Dead: Burial Practice at Kenan Tepe, Turkey, During the Ubaid Period

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Due to the generosity of Dr. Bradley Parker I had the opportunity to analyse the Ubaid Period burials from Kenan Tepe, Turkey. These burials provide a glimpse into the social dynamics and ritual practice of Kenan Tepe’s Ubaid Period community. The burials are divided into two groups: infants buried in courtyards adjacent to building structures and foundation burials interred between phases of construction of domestic structures. Aside from the foundation burials, adult burials--in fact any burial of an individual above the age of two--are absent from the site. This practice indicates that the residents of Kenan Tepe conducted age-based burial practices and that infants were viewed in a separate manner than the other members of the Kenan Tepe community. The practice of foundation burial observed at Kenan Tepe is rarely seen anywhere else during the Ubaid Period in Mesopotamia. In those few cases where it has been suggested the burials were of infants and not adult individuals. The lack of any comparable burials in Mesopotamia during this time makes the foundation burials at Kenan Tepe a unique burial practice and reflect that in some way the dead still had power in the world of the living.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24779