Theme:
6. The Mediterranean from Within
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Eternal Rest in the West: Funerary Contexts in Western Mediterranean Protohistory
Content:
In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of research on the mobility of human groups during different periods. The Mediterranean was both an agent of unification and confluence for many cultures that developed during the 1st millennium BCE. At the same time, local cultures took on different forms, exhibiting variations based on where they developed and the nature of contact between different socio-economic groups and external or foreign actors.
This diversity of circumstances translates into the development of distinctive cultural characteristics that are understood as defining elements of the social groups that adopt them. In this session we will focus on one of the more potent material manifestations of the cultural dimension of these past groups: funerary materiality. Our aim is to provide a space for meeting and discussing the changes observed in funerary practices in different scenarios in the central and western Mediterranean focusing on the chronological period compressed between the 6th and 1st centuries BCE.
For this reason, this session will be oriented towards reflection and debate on different theoretical and methodological proposals, along with new narratives and methodologies that deal with the subject of death during the protohistoric era of the central and western Mediterranean.
This session will be open to various proposals on the proposed theme, some of the possible points for discussion will be:
- Techniques for documenting and excavating archaeological contexts. Excavation problems and strategies for solving them, such as documentary recording in fieldwork (documentary workflow, how the information is subsequently managed and the results obtained) can be addressed.
- New techniques applied to the study of funerary materiality. Studies derived from applied sciences (micromorphology, palynology, carpology, content analysis, etc.), implemented techniques (GIS, automatic remote sensing, photogrammetry, etc.) can be addressed.
- Comparisons of data and interpretation. Discussions of differing and variable funerary practices in the central and western Mediterranean with an eye toward a comparative regional lens, including grave types, treatment of the body based on age, sex, or gender, ritual practices surrounding interment, and funerary architecture.
- Knowledge Transfer. This is one of the least studied lines in the study of funerary materiality, perhaps because of the difficulty of its approach. By this we mean all the actions aimed at communicating to the general public how death was conceived in protohistoric Mediterranean societies and at making this knowledge accessible to everyone.
Keywords:
Mediterranean, Protohistory, funerary, ritual, burials
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:
Sonia Carbonell Pastor (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Alexander Smith (United States) 2
Margalida Coll Sabater (Spain) 3
Affiliations:
1. Grup Arqueològic de Recerca Protohistòrica (GRAP). Universitat de Barcelona
2. Assistant Professor of Anthropology. SUNY Brockport University
3. Grupo de Investigación de Arqueología Mediterránea (GRACME). Universitat Pompeu Fabra
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