Burying Houses as a Ritual of Closure and Renewal. Two Cases from Bohemia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ritual Closure: A Global Perspective" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeology in Central Europe is increasingly aware that finds from prehistoric sites may reflect not only the original functions of settlement features, but also the human activities that followed after their practical use ceased. Deposits resulting from the abandonment and/or destruction of settlement features often contain indications of ritual (structured) behavior. However, their identification is not easy, as all phases of the life cycle of settlement features may have been partly ritualized and produced some kind of 'structured deposits'. The starting point of our approach to the rituals of closure is a detailed depositional analysis of pottery combined with other analyses of the settlement layers. For example, enigmatic long pits from the Late Bronze Age in Bohemia (Březnice site, 11th century BC) have been interpreted using this methodology. In our opinion, these features represent the final phase of the abandonment (burial) of houses, which were ascribed the ontological status of living beings. The second example is the early medieval houses on a large settlement site from the 7th century AD (Roztoky). In this case, the ritual closure and renewal of houses also had a social meaning confirming (creating) the identity and mutual relationships of individual user groups (families, communities).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Ritual Closure: A Global Perspective

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51427