Dealing with the Dead: Representation of the individual in Neanderthal and Early Modern Human societies (original) (raw)

Abstract

The post mortem treatment of the body is a crucial element of each culture and at the same time a pan-human requisite. Archaeological evidence thoroughly confirms society’s care for the dead existing since Palaeolithic times. Information about different aspects of a culture and of its agents can be derived from the study of burial practices. This paper deals with the representation of the individual in the earliest intentional burials of Eurasia. Palaeolithic burials lack any complex architectural constructions; instead they consist of one or more skeletons, the objects surrounding them and the area where the cadaver was placed, usually a pit. Although the most elaborate burials come from Upper Palaeolithic contexts and are associated with modern humans, the presence of a large number of juvenile Neanderthal burials and the demonstrated care for the injured or the less physically capable cannot but propose strong social and emotional bonds between the individuals of a group. Upon death, such bonds would be expressed through mortuary rituals. These rituals can also serve social purposes; the construction and amplification of personal and social identity could be one of them. Thus, social bonds and cultural networks can in great extent benefit from these practices. The material culture associated with each burial varies both according to the mortuary rituals indicated by social structures and according to the individual itself, as conceived by its group. As Gamble (2007) points out the biological death of an individual is never the finishing point. At the moment of death a social being turns into a cadaver. The body can be regarded as a form of material culture, as an object, as soon as the transition to death is made. At this point, the control over the individual's body is no longer being imposed from the individual itself but from the others.

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