Grave goods, refuse or the remains of rituals? Differences in the assemblages from the LBK burials of Arnoldsweiler-Ellebach. (original) (raw)

Pots for the ancestors.The structure and meaning of pottery depositions at passage graves

Megaliths – Societies – Landscapes Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation in Neolithic Europe. Volume 3, 2019

Despite the total destruction of the passage grave at Nørremarksgård, part of the pottery deposited in front of the tomb was exceptionally well preserved. This has made it possible to reconstruct the sequence of depositions in front of the tomb in detail, adding valuable information to our knowledge of this type of events. The first part of the paper describes and analyse the depositions at Nørremarksgård. Based on vertical and horizontal stratigraphic evidence and stylistic differences, I separate eight depositions and place them in a chronological sequence. Further, the paper demonstrates the deliberate destruction of pots and the deposition of incomplete pots. The second part of the paper draws the lines from the depositions at Nørremarksgård to other megalithic tombs and to causewayed enclosures. The development in burial practices is discussed and it is shown that a shift in depositions from causewayed enclosures to megalithic tombs may occur at the turn from EN II to MN A I. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for the social structure of society in the TBR culture.

Grave Goods in Burial Archaeology Essay

In many ancient societies , people include grave goods as part of their burial practice. Can we reconstruct the society of the living from these? How can grave goods be useful for dating , understanding ritual , or identifying gender, ethnicity, social status , occupation, and connections with the outside world ? enliven your answer with specific examples.

Hoards from the Neolithic to the Metal Ages Technical and codified practices Session of the XIth Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists Edited by

The choice of a very homogeneous corpus (typology, geographic area and chronology -Late Bronze Age (LBA) = 'Bronze final IIIb'-allows to compare the deposits which make it up through the study of forming of the objects, and of the exhaustive components analysis. These investigations highlight, beyond the traditions of bronze work, common of each deposit, an image very different from each set according to the types of objects and elementary composition. Some are heteroclite where each object results of a different operation of casting, others homogeneous, are composed of groups of objects resulting from only one operation of casting. These last observations suggest that the objects had bonds between them before the deposition and kept them. Other similarities of the metal component show bonds between various deposits and let's approach the historical level of deposition phenomenon. Thus the technical investigations represent an additional means to apprehend the hoards and to open a door to their interpretation.

The Niersen Beaker Burial: A Renewed Study of a Century-Old Excavation

Journal of Archaeology in …, 2009

In 1907, Holwerda uncovered an exceptional primary grave underneath a barrow on the eastern slope of the ice-pushed ridge of the Veluwe. The Niersen Beaker burial contained the human skeletal remains of multiple individuals. The preservation of the bones, extremely rare on the Dutch sandy upland, motivated Holwerda to lift the grave and transport it to the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO). The grave presents a rare insight into Beaker graves in the Netherlands, where skeletal remains are rarely preserved. A new physical anthropological analysis, paying particular attention to the taphonomy in the grave, and a critical review of what Holwerda observed in the field has allowed us to re-interpret the grave. In this article it will be argued that this grave contained not only the remains of a female in crouched position, but also the disarticulated remains of two more individuals placed at the back of the grave. Surprisingly not only human remains were uncovered, but also two bones belonging to a large mammal (a cow or a horse). The specific position of some skeletal remains and the description by Holwerda allow us to interpret the grave as a small open burial chamber on top of which a barrow was constructed. Keywords: Niersen, Holwerda, Late Neolithic, burial mound, Bell Beaker, physical anthropology, barrows, burial chamber, animal bones, disarticulated remains, secondary burial.