Theme:
3. The Carpathian Basin: Integration, Mobility and Diversity
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
So Many Settlements so Few Graves? Neolithic and Chalcolithic Practices with the Dead in Circum Pontic Region and Southeastern Europe
Content:
During the spread of the Neolithic and subsequent consolidation, adaptation, and further expansion of Neolithic and Chalcolithic communities into diverse landscapes of Anatolia, the Caucasus, Southeastern and Eastern Europe an extraordinary variety of practices related with death such as intramural depositions, kurgan graves, cemeteries, etc. can be observed. Some of these traditions, e.g. deposits in ditches or early burial mounds, create large distribution zones that usually extend far across the boundaries of ‘archaeological cultures’. Many societies in this vast area are characterised by the absence of systematic burials and discoveries of 'practices' are rather an exception than a rule. Various explanations for this situation have been proposed which include the archaeologically invisible burial practices, or the use of other objects to build individual and collective identities. In addition, as recent discoveries suggest, this picture is partly the result of selective archaeological practice.
As session research questions, we would like to consider
• Types of burials and other practices with the dead, their spatial range (local, ‘archaeological culture’-specific, trans-regional), their relationship to material culture and their qualitative and quantitative relation with the settlement record and total population.
• New discoveries in the study region in connection with the treatment of the dead; Are burials still under-recognised features?
• Methodological problems, new approaches and theoretical models that could explain better burials and practices associated with them.
• Modes of treatments of the deceased: Where and how the majority of population were buried and are there possible additional modes of treatment.
• How are the multiple practices with the death in general and the increasing frequency of regular burials (cemeteries, burial mounds) in particular connected to the historical processes of expansion, adaptation, and transformation; what role might the treatment of the dead have played in constructing group ideologies e.g. manifestation of identity?
Keywords:
Burial practices, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Souheastern Europe, Circum Pontic Region, Quantification
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Liudmyla Shatilo (Germany) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Robert Hofmann (Germany) 2,3
Goce Naumov (Republic of North Macedonia) 4
Affiliations:
1. Institute of Archaeology NASU
2. Kiel University, Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology
3. CRC 1266: "Scales of Transformation - Human-Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies"
4. Goce Delcev University of Štip, Institute of History and Archaeology
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