Erwin Gáll: Analysis and comparison of burial customs in the 10-11th century in the Transylvanian basin, Crişana and Banat. Dacia NS 48–49, 2004–2005, 334‒454 (original) (raw)
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The 11th cent. BC in the southern Carpathian Basin was marked by the Urnfield culture. The typological and chronological analysis of the ceramic and metal finds collected in the Late Bronze Age cemetery in Slatina, excavated in 2009, date the cemetery to the Ha A2 phase according to the periodization of H. Müller-Karpe. Absolute radiocarbon dating from the Slatina graves suggests the period of the 11th cent. BC. The analyzed 38 graves give the opportunity to reconstruct the burial practices on the central Drava, while the geographic location of Slatina makes it possible to relate the observed burial practices with the wider communication network of the researched contemporary cemeteries in the wider area of the southern Carpathian Basin.
Mortuary practices in the Wietenberg Culture from Transylvania
Funerary Practices During the Bronze and Iron Ages in Central and Southeast Europe. Proceedings of the 14th International Colloquium of Funerary Archaeology in Čačak, Serbia, 24th – 27th September 2015, 2016
The ampleness of the archaeological research from the last years, following mainly the large infrastructure projects, has led to significant discoveries regarding the Wietenberg Culture. Among these, several funerary discoveries (cemeteries) should be mentioned, but also pits with human skeletal remains, found in settlements. The present contribution consists in a data recapitulation, many times ambiguous and incomplete and an updating and order of its, necessary at this moment, for an objective reevaluation of some conclusions regarding the mortuary practices in the Wietenberg Culture. We say "mortuary", not "funerary", because we referred not just to funerals which followed as a matter of course the decease of an individual, no matter the rite, but as well to other contexts and aspects, where the buried human remains was discovered and which are susceptible to be the consequence of some secondary burials or sacrificial rituals. The analyze of the archaeological information available at the moment gives us the opportunity to advance some interpretations regarding the process of the funeral rituals of the deceased, inside the Wietenberg Culture communities, but also other rituals which implied the manipulation of the bodies or of the skeletal remains, in certain religious ceremonies.
LATE BRONZE AGE MORTUARY PRACTICES AND SOCIETY IN THE CARPATHIAN BASIN
This paper analyses the unearthed graves of the Bosut culture. An analysis of the graves from Hrtkovci, the site of 117 skeletons from the Early Iron Age. Cremation was introduced into the rite in the initial phase of the culture. A child's grave from Petrovaradin and the Beška-Petlja necropolis (18 urns and a grave with a tumulus cremation). The mass grave within the Novi Sad-Klisa settlement also belongs to the early phase of the culture. It has remains of at least ten people, most of them partially buried. This phenomenon can be linked to similar graves of the Babadag culture and sites in eastern Hungary (Pusztataskony-Ledence I), where fragments of Kalakača-type pottery have been found. The funerary rite went through changes in all three development phases of the culture.
Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica XX, 2014, 37-67
The current paper aims to present and discuss a series of funerary discoveries which indicate specific mortuary practices by the communities of the Transylvanian Neolithic and Eneolithic, both older and more recent. A special attention was given to the cremation rite, still considered an unusual practice for the period and area under research. We believe that these new funerary discoveries confirm the practice of cremation of the N-W Romanian Neolithic communities. Rezumat. Arheologia funerară preistorică cunoaște o perioadă de dezvoltare și de acumulări în plan calitativ și metodologic. Lucrarea de față își propune să prezinte de o manieră sintetică cele mai relevante manifestări privind practicile funerare specifice neoliticului și eneoliticului transilvănean, cu accent pe descoperirile recente. Am acordat atenție tratării cu predilecție a practicilor mortuare considerate neobișnuite, între care includem complexul funerar aparținând grupului Foeni din situl de la Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă și dovezile privind ritul incinerației la comunitățile de tip Suplac din N-V României.
In the scientific debates published to date, there is a huge number of contributions addressing the archaeological spectrum of burial sites in the Transylvanian Basin, Oltenia, and Muntenia from a general and comprehensive perspective, however, without taking into account regional or microregional conditions. This omission is mainly caused by an antagonistic presumption of uniformity, perpetuated in the theoretical approaches in archaeology. This article proposes to debate the lack of burial sites in certain regions of the Transylvanian Basin, Oltenia and Muntenia and it explains this hiatus to a lesser extent by the current state of research and much more probably by the differences in burial customs, respectively by the differently demographical indexes between these regions. Thus, the lack of funerary sites in the aforementioned regions, can be attributed primarily to the fact that in the 8‒10/11th centuries these areas were a kind of “stateless”, unintegrated into the “network” of powers in the early medieval times (“Avar”, “Bulgarian”, or “Hungarian”). Thus, without a doubt, in these regions, the identification of the funerary behaviour of the populations from the 7th‒10th centuries remains one of the future challenges for the archaeologists of the early medieval period. Keywords: 7/8–10th Centuries, Transylvanian Basin, Muntenia, Oltenia, funerary sites, lack of burial sites, cultural habitus