Death and Memory. A study of the funerary landscapes of the Eastern Carpathian Basin from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age (original) (raw)
Related papers
COMPLEX ANALYSES OF THE LATE COPPER AGE BURIALS IN THE CARPATHIAN BASIN
Hungarian Archaeology 2018 Autumn, 2018
In the framework of our four year research we will examine the burials of the so-called Baden Culture that inhabited the major part of the Carpathian Basin from 3600/3000 BC until 2800 BC. Heterogenous burial practices are characteristic to the Baden Culture; one can find burial grounds with several hundred graves, minor graveyards with 10-30 graves as well as lonely burials. Burials reminiscent of mass graves and the interment of animals are also common. Both cremation and skeletal burial rites are present and symbolic graves contaning no human remains also occur. During the centuries of the Baden Culture major changes occurred in the life of societies who had no literary records of their own; many innovations were made that had lasting effects on the history of humanity. These novities spread fast and wide and further deepened economic and social disparities within communities that were reflected in burials. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF BURIAL GROUNDS The archaeology of burial grounds, studies on funerary rites, i.e. the "archaeology of death", has received particularly great attention in international research, reflected by the immense number of studies that alone would fill a smaller library. Although first applied in the research of ancient high civilisations, the chronological and spatial boundaries of this field of research have been greatly expanded to include also prehistoric periods for which written sources are entirely lacking. 1 The interpretation of cemeteries as "ritual spaces" only gained ground in Hungarian research during the past few years. The funerary symbols and cultural codes used by prehistoric communities were a perfectly intelligible set of symbols that encoded customs and social relations transmitted from one generation to the next. However, the identification and interpretation of these codes is no simple task after several millennia have passed. One of the difficulties encountered when attempting to decode these symbols is that various liminal rites were performed from the onset of death to the funeral and the community's final farewell to the deceased. 2 Inquiries into these all but forgotten practices have been largely neglected by scholarship, which has begun to show an interest in these issues only more recently. While cemeteries are certainly not the direct continuation of one-time life, they are ritual, mystical spaces that have preserved various imprints of former beliefs, ceremonies and rites. Traditional archaeological assessments focus on the grave goods, their position in the grave and their analogies. The goal of complex cemetery analyses is to identify the elements of mortuary traditions preserved and passed on in mortuary rites alongside possible changes in these practices, as well as to identify the archaeological imprints of how a community related to its dead, and to draw meaningful conclusions 1
Nils Müller-Scheeßel (Hrsg.): ‚Irreguläre‘ Bestattungen in der Urgeschichte: Norm, Ritual, Strafe …? / Akten der Internationalen Tagung in Frankfurt a. M. vom 3. bis 5. Februar 2012. Kolloquien zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte der RGK, Band 19. / Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH ∙ Bonn; pp.307-326, 2013
""Between 2009 and 2011, three Late Bronze Age / Early Iron Age settlement pits, containing large amounts of human remains in different states of decomposition, were unearthed at the site Pusztataskony- Ledence 1 (Eastern Hungary). The deposits contained both single bones and clear crania, complete skeletons and body parts in approximate anatomical order. Associated finds – with a potsherd of the Kalakača culture amongst them – were sporadic and fragmented. In the first part of the paper the authors summarize stratigraphical observations, giving a description of the deposit structure, while in the second part methods, problems and the possibilities of interpretation are examined. The results of the anthropological survey and the soil micromorphological analysis, placed in context with contemporaneous mass deposits of human remains from South-Eastern Europe raise the possibility of an emerging multi-stage funerary practice in the area. Zwischen 2009 und 2011 wurden in Pusztataskony-Ledence 1 (Ostungarn) drei spätbronze-/ früheisenzeitliche Siedlungsgruben ausgegraben, die große Mengen menschlicher Knochen in verschiedenen Stadien der Dekomposition erbrachten. Die Komplexe enthielten sowohl einzelne Knochen, Schädel wie auch Teil- und komplette Skelette in annähernd anatomischem Verband. Zugehörige Funde – u. a. eine der Kalakačakultur zuzuordnende Keramikscherbe – waren selten und fragmentiert. Im ersten Teil des Beitrags geben die Autoren einen Überblick über die stratigraphischen Beobachtungen und die Struktur der Befunde. Im zweiten werden die Methoden, Probleme und Möglichkeiten der Interpretation ausgelotet. Die Ergebnisse der anthropologischen Untersuchung und der mikromorphologischen Analysen, gestellt in den Kontext gleichzeitiger Massenfunde menschlicher Skelettreste aus Südosteuropa, eröffnet die Möglichkeit, die Entstehung einer mehrstufigen Bestattungspraxis zu diskutieren.""
Death and Continuity. Journal of European Archaeology 3.1, 1995, 71-90.
This article suggests that the common appearance of cultural ('midden') material under barrows of the Trichterbecher culture (TRB) is interpreted as the purposeful metaphor of continuity of the small-scale society that has just suffered the loss of one or more of its actors. The three stages of rites de passage as outlined by van Gennep are used to explain the mortuary rituals further. Separation was signified by the enclosure (ditch or palisade) around the future barrow site and a 'facade'. The liminal stage may be marked archaeologically by the 'cleansing' of fire or dismantling of facades at the barrow entrance, and sometimes by ploughing, which destroyed the cultural material on the site. Reintegration was the 'planting' of the deceased under soil and the erection of the barrow. The paper concludes with implications for the growth of a lineage organisation of society.
Le Mort dans la Ville. Deuxièmes Rencontres d'Archéologie de l'IFEA, Istanbul 8-9 Novembre 2012
Le développement de rites mortuaires complexes dans l’histoire de l’Homme a résulté dans un rôle croissant joué par les pratiques funéraires utilisées comme moyen de resserrer les liens à l’intérieur d’une même communauté. À cet égard, le singulier usage d'inhumer un individu au coeur de la communauté révèle avec acuité la force de cette relation que pouvaient entretenir les vivants et les morts. Les découvertes archéologiques récentes ont souligné l’importance de telles pratiques liées aux inhumations intra-muros en Anatolie. Bien qu’il semble possible de tisser un lien continu entre ces coutumes, les contextes dans lesquels s’inscrivent la pratique d’inhumer une personne au coeur même de la communauté, depuis l’enfant du Néolithique à Çatalhöyük à la libraire de Celsius à Ephèse, en passant par le Mausolée d'Halicarnasse, ont néanmoins radicalement changés en fonction des époques et des lieux. L’objectif de ce volume, en rassemblant des spécialistes de périodes et d’horizons différents, est d’offrir non seulement un point général de nos connaissances sur ces questions, mais aussi un éclairage concernant le mécanisme de ces pratiques, leur contexte et leur impact en Anatolie, du début de l’Âge du Bronze à l’époque romaine.
Touchstones in graves from the Avar and Great Moravian periods
Archaologisches Korrespondenzblatt, 2016
Mithilfe eines Elektronenmikroskops haben die Autoren des vorliegenden Artikels Spuren eisenfreier Metalle – einschlieslich Edelmetalle – auf ausgewahlten Steinartefakten aus Grabern der awarischen und grosmahrischen Zeit (7.-10. Jh.) entdeckt. Die Funde, ursprunglich als Schleifsteine identifiziert, dienten eigentlich als Probiersteine – Werkzeuge, mit denen man die Beschaffenheit eines bestimmten Metalls untersucht. Die Autoren interpretieren Probiersteine in fruhmittelalterlichen Grabern als einen Hinweis auf den Zugang der bestatteten Person zu Edelmetallen. Zusatzlich zur Frage nach der sozialen Gliederung innerhalb der fruhmittelalterlichen Gesellschaft eroffnen die Probiersteine ein weites Feld fur die Archaometallurgie: Die chemische Mikroanalyse erlaubt die Bestimmung der Zusammensetzungen der Legierungen, welche im vorliegenden Aufsatz diskutiert werden.