Session: #1013

Regular session

Examining European Prehistory through the lens of funerary archaeology reveals overarching trends such as single or collective burials, diverse burial forms like flat graves or burial mounds, and shifts in burial practices across the continent, including transitions from inhumation to cremation. On a local scale, however, we find a mosaic of local burial rites merging into “one” big picture. Besides the spread of specific burial rites (e.g., the use of passage tombs in the Neolithic or in the Bronze and Iron Age cremation burials in metal urns), we see an adoption of ideas from distant or neighbouring regions, a resumption of earlier traditions and local innovations. Whereby the application of scientific methods like isotopes and aDNA shifts our perception and challenges established narratives (Kristiansen 2014). Here, in the spread of funerary rites a transfer of knowledge becomes visible in the material culture.
In this session we examine the spread of (specific aspects of) funerary practices and their temporal and spatial expansion across Europe exploring the concept of knowledge transfer. The term knowledge has been used in archaeology mostly intuitively (Hansen 2018) rather than systematically (Renn 2012), although different dimensions of knowledge (e.g., cosmological, political, and technological) are evident in funerary rites.
We welcome studies ranging from the Neolithic to the Iron Age which approach the topic on a Europe-wide scale as well as those who integrate local practices into a bigger picture. The session is open to theoretical contributions that conceptualize the notion of knowledge transfer in archaeology, as well as ethnological and ethno-archaeological studies and contributions from the archaeological sciences. We seek to identify visible routes of knowledge transfer and contacts as well as barriers, boundaries and fringes of knowledge. We inquire whether this concept can extend the discussion beyond terms like mobility and exchange.

Funerary archaeology, Knowledge transfer, Burials, Material culture, Exchange, Prehistory

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Johanna Brinkmann (Germany) ^1,2

Mirco Brunner (Switzerland) ^3,4
Alexis Gorgues (France) ⁵
Eleonore Pape (Germany) ⁶
Malou Blank (Sweden) ⁷