Towards a Classification of Grave Types and Burial Rites in the 10th–11th Century Carpathian Basin (original) (raw)
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This article investigates and classifies the various types of graves and burial practices in the Carpathian Basin during the 10th and 11th centuries. Highlighting significant archaeological findings from recent excavations, the work organizes burial practices into three main categories—burials into or under kurgans, stepped grave pits, and graves with sidewall niches. The paper aims to fill the gap in existing literature regarding the distinctive features of these burial types and their cultural implications.
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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.
János Dani: Research of Pit-grave culture kurgans in Hungary in the last three decades.
In: Á. Pető – A. Barczi (eds.): Kurgan Studies. An environmental and archaeological multiproxy study of burial mounds in the Eurasian steppe zone. BAR International Series 2238, 2011., Oxford, 25-70., 2011
"This paper attempts to summarize the research of the Pit–Grave culture kurgans (Yamnaya culture) done in the last 3 decades in Hungary. It is sure, that the first Eastern European effects came into the Carpathian Basin yet at the end of the Early Copper Age (Tiszapolgár culture). From the Late Copper Age (Baden culture) onwards till the 1st phase of the Early Bronze Age we can detect the presence of the elements of Eastern European origin. Based on the examination of the burial rite of the graves under the Tiszavasvári–Deákhalom kurgan we can assume Pre-Yamnaya phenomenon in Hungary, too. According to several new and the re-evaluated old discoveries the population of the Pit–Grave culture played an important role in the transformation of the Late Copper Age and in the formation of the Early Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin. It is probable that the newcomer Eastern elite with the custom of kurgan burial had been ruled and assimilated to the autochtonous Late Copper Age and later Early Bronze Age population of the Great Hungarian Plain. After the biggest local Late Copper Age cultures (Baden, Coþofeni) later the new Early Bronze Age cultures (Vuþedol, Somogyvár– Vinkovci, Livezile) had been adopted the rite of burying the dead under kurgans. We have to make distinction in time and in space between this earlier mentioned population and between the so called Corded Ware culture."
V. Heyd, G. Kulcsár and V. Szeverényi (eds.): BUDAPEST 2013 TRANSITIONS TO THE BRONZE AGE Interregional Interaction and Socio-Cultural Change in the Third Millennium BC Carpathian Basin and Neighbouring Regions. Archaeolingua Kiadó, Budapest (2013) 153-179., 2013
The aim of our paper is to provide analytical data to the multidisciplinary research of Pit Grave culture kurgans of the Carpathian Basin. The data presented in the following have chronological, cultural, environmental and anthropological implications. People of the Pit Grave culture inhabited the Carpathian Basin during the Late Copper and Early Bronze Age. Radiocarbon dates of Pit Grave culture kurgans and other contemporary cultures help to integrate this cultural complex in the prehistory of the Carpathian Basin. Environmental data – from two archaeological sites – provide detailed information on the environmental setting this culture lived in, and information on nutritional habits as well as burial rituals.
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
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